Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

is much larger than that of indifferent or worthless. Most cheerfully and thankfully I add to this record that, personally, I have a list of honest, virtuous, willing workers, whose terms of service in my family varied from three to thirteen years, and who went from my house to homes of their own, bearing with them the cordial esteem of those they had served. Nor is my experience singular, even in these United States. It is so far from being exceptional that I deprecate, almost as an individual grievance, any attempt to organize those who should be our coworkers into a faction that considers us as “the opposition.” It is a putting asunder of those whom a mutual need should join together. Backed by my two-score years of experiment and action, I dare believe that a leaf or two from my book of household happenings may be of service to younger women and novices in the profession which absorbs the major part of our time and strength. To begin with—beware of discouragement during the early trial-days of the new maid. Be slow to say, even to yourself: “She will never suit me!” The first days and weeks of a strange “place” are a crucial test for her as for you, and she has not your sense of proportion, your discipline of emotion and your philosophical spirit to help her to endure the discomforts of new machinery. Looking back upon my housewifely experiences, I am moved to the conclusion that the domestics who stayed with me longest and served me best were those who did not promise great things in their novitiate. One—“a greenhorn, but six weeks in the country”—frankly owned that she knew nothing of American houses and ways. She was “willing to learn,” and—with a childish tremble of the chin—“didn’t mind how hard she worked if people were kind to her.” I think the quivering chin and the clouding of the “Irish blue” eyes moved me to give her a trial. She did not know a silver fork from a pepper cruet, or a tea-strainer from a colander, and