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

distinguished the sideboard from the buffet by calling the one the “big,” the other the “little dresser.” She had been with me a month when I trusted her to prepare some melons for dessert, giving her careful and minute directions how to halve the nutmeg melons, take out the seeds and fill the cavities with cracked ice, while the watermelon—royal in proportions and the first fruits of our own vines—was to be washed, wiped, and kept in the ice-chest until it was wanted. At dinner the “nutmegs” appeared whole; the watermelon had been cut across the middle and eviscerated—scraped down to the white lining of the rind—then filled with pounded ice. The succulent sweetness, the rosy lusciousness of the heart, had gone into the garbage can. Nevertheless, I kept blue-eyed Margaret for eight years. She stands out in my grateful memory as the one and only maid I have ever had who washed dishes “in my way.” Never having learned any other, she mastered and maintained the proper method. The best nursery-maid I ever knew, and who blessed my household for eleven years, objected diffidently at our first interview to giving a list of her qualifications for the situation. She “would rather a lady would find out for herself by a fair trial whether she would fit the place or not.” I engaged her because the quaint phrase took my fancy. She proved such a perfect fit that she continued to fill the place until she went to a snug home of her own. What may be called the New Broom of Commerce has no misgivings as to her ability to fill any place, however important. Upon inquiry of the would-be employer as to the latter’s qualifications for that high position, the N. B. of C. may decline to accept her offer of an office which promises more work than “privileges.” But she could fill it—full—if she were willing to “take service” with the applicant. One of the oddest incongruities of the new-broom problem is that we are always disposed to take it at its own valuation. With each fresh