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

affinity by nature or education. Where we would talk of “things,” the lower classes discuss what they name “folks.” Their range of thought is pitifully narrow; the happenings in their social life are few and tame. What wonder if they retail what we say and do and are, as sayings, doings and characters appear to them? What would be extraordinary, if it were not so common, is the opportunity gratuitously afforded in—we will say, guardedly—one family out of three for the collection of material for these sensations of the nether story. I speak by the card in asserting that the influence gained by the confidential maid over her well-born, well-mannered, well-educated mistress is greater than that possessed by any friend in the (alleged) superior’s proper circle of equals. Without taxing memory I can tell off on my fingers ten gentlewomen, in every other sense of the word, whose intimate confidantes are hirelings who were strangers until they entered the employ of their respective mistresses(?). We need not cross the ocean to listen with incredulous horror to insinuations and open assertions as to the hold a gigantic Scotch gilly acquired over a royal widow. Our next-door neighbors on both sides and our acquaintances across the way are in like bondage. I have in mind one of the best and most refined women I ever knew whose infatuation for her incomparable Jane was the laughing-stock of some, the surprise and grief of others. Jane disputed the dear soul’s will, oft and again; gave her more advice than she took, and, behind her back, ridiculed her unsparingly—as many of the mistress’s friends were aware. The dupe would resign the affection and society of one and all of her compeers sooner than part with Jane. Another “just could not live without my Mary.” The remote suggestion throws her into a paroxysm of distress. Her own husband knows it to be necessary to warn her not to tell this and that business or family secret to Mary, knowing, the while, in his sad soul, the chances to be against her keeping her promise not to