Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: gaining her bread by honest means. To suspect all servants of being thieves, or disposed to become so, merely because they are servants, is as silly as it is unfeeling. I should never hesitate to give my keys to a servant, when it happened to be inconvenient to me to leave company, any more than I should hesitate to intrust them to one of my own family; but this act of confidence is far different in its effects from that neglect which often proceeds from mere idleness, and, while it proclaims a disregard of the value of property, is the occasion of so much waste, and in the end proves as ruinous to the employer as it is fatal in the way of example to the servant. That
servants are great plagues may be the fact; but I am, nevertheless, bold enough to assert that it is a greater plague to be without them. When all the hardships which belong to the life of a maid-servant are taken into consideration (which I am afraid they very rarely are), the wonder is, that the greater part of this class of persons are not rendered less obliging and less obedient to the will of their employers, and more callous to their displeasure, than we really find them. THE KITCHEN. The benefit of a good kitchen is well known to every housekeeper, but it is not every mistress that is aware of the importance of having a good cook. I have seen kitchens which appeared to be fitted up with every convenience, and certainly at considerable expence, which yet failed to send forth good dinners, merely because the lady of the house was not happy in her choice of a cook. I do not in the least admire epicures, or epicurism; and yet I would be more particular in the selecting of the servant who is to perform the business of preparing thafood of the family, than I should deem it necessary to be in selecting an…