“The maid Tomson had a hard fortune. Yt was her Chance to be drowned Cominge over the barr after our Cowes, & very little water on the barr, not aboue ½ foote, & we Cannot Judge how yt should be, accept that her hatt did blow from her head, & she to saue her hatt stept on the side of the barr.... I thinke yf she had lived she would haue proved a good servant in the house: she would do more worke then 3 such maides as Pryssyllea is.”[73] It is true that Maine was a remote colony and the difficulty of obtaining good servants was presumably greater than in places more accessible. Yet the same tale of trial comes from Boston and from those whose means, character, and position in society would seem to exempt them from the difficulties more naturally to be expected in other places. Mrs. Mary Winthrop Dudley writes repeatedly in 1636 to her mother, Mrs. Margaret Winthrop, begging her to send her a maid, “on that should be a good lusty seruant that hath skille in a dairy.”[74] But how unsatisfactory the “lusty servant” proved a later letter of Mrs. Dudley shows: “I thought it convenient,” she writes, “to acquaint you and my father what a great affliction I haue met withal by my maide servant, and how I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen soe insolent that her carriage towards vs, especially myselfe is vnsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge shee will bid me to doe it my selfe, and she sayes how shee can give content as wel as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I loue not quietnes I was never so fitted in my life, for shee would make mee haue enough of it. If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language shee hath vsed towards me I should but grieue you. My husband hath vsed all meanes for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth professe that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her faults. If I tell my husband of her behauiour towards me, vpon examination shee will denie all that she hath done or spoken: so that we know not how to proceede against her: but my husband now hath hired another maide and is resolved to put her away the next weeke.”[75]