We may not be able to save our new maid from this, but we can help her over a very ‘tight place’ if, when she arrives, we are at home to welcome her, to point out her place in the domestic routine, and to give her a few hints about those with whom she will have to live for the future. If we had a guest coming among us on equal terms, free of all our pleasures and amusements, would not this be done? Much more, then, should we hold out a welcoming hand to those on whom so very much of our pleasure and comfort depend. To know how much this is, we must, once now and then, be left without one of our staff--which is, of course, not a very extensive one, or those remarks would not apply. In an extensive staff the relations between mistress and maid are only represented by a housekeeper, who has all on her shoulders, and who must replace the missing maid in the household or do the necessary work herself. Let, for example, our housemaid be laid aside by illness, or go home for one of her well-earned holidays, and straightway we are miserable. A thousand and one small omissions show us how much she remembered for us. And as we gaze at our dusty writing-table, our chair put in exactly the angle that most offends our eye, our breakfast-table laid in an unaccustomed manner, our letters put just where they never are in ordinary, we feel inclined to count the days that stretch unendingly, it seems to us, between now and her return to work, and we wonder what is before us when that ‘young man’ claims his bride, who, we are certain, cannot be half as much wanted by him as by us. Or our cook may suddenly fall out of the ranks, and we get in temporary help. Oh dear! chaos then has most certainly come again. Butter flees, and is conspicuous for its vanishing powers; things have to be told in detail, and we have not succeeded in getting the ‘help’ into our ways before our own domestic comes back, to show us on what trifles depends the easy-going roll of the chariot wheels of life, that never seem to go so easily as after the jar occasioned by a temporary change of charioteer.