ll, in a
certain time." It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing
their own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of
the ground they stand on,--they are less open to imposition,--they can
speak and act in their own houses more as those "having authority," and
therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less
willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error
lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they
will do for themselves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human being
ever _can_ do house-work, or any other work, with the neatness and
perfection that a person of trained intelligence can. It has been
remarked in our armies that the men of cultivation, though bred in
delicate and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships of
camp-life better and longer than rough laborers. The reason is, that an
educated mind knows how to use and save its body, to work it and spare
it, as an uneducated mind cannot; and so the college-bred youth brings
himself safely through fatigues which kill the unreflective laborer.
Cultivated, intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of
their own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head
save the wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, and
arrangement, they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old New-England motto,
_Get your work done up in the forenoon_, applied to an amount of work
which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New-England towns, where there were
no servants to be hired, at last by sending to a distant city succeeded
in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense bone
and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she
established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the kitchen and
through the house, that her mistress, a delicate woman, incumbered with
the care of young children, began seriously to think that she made more
work each day than she performed, and dismissed her. What was now to be
done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring farmer was going to be
married in six months, and wanted a little ready money for her
_trousseau_. The lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come to
her, not as a servant, but as hired "help." She was fain to accept any
help wi