If a maid is neat and clean in appearance and does her work well--these qualities cover a multitude of sins. From the standpoint of many housekeepers, too much curiosity and gossiping are the chiefest and quickest causes--next to the neglect of work--for a maid's dismissal. A housekeeper is usually disliked by the maids that do not want to do their work, just as a stepmother is hated by some stepchildren, regardless of her kindness and her consideration for their welfare. Employes in any business prefer to take their orders from the person that pays them their money. For this, they are not to be blamed; but if the proprietor or the proprietor's wife wishes to retain the services of a good housekeeper, and be relieved of the trying ordeal of training the help, he or she will not encourage tattling from the housekeeper's inferiors. THE HOTEL PROPRIETOR'S WIFE. Implicit confidence should exist between the housekeeper and the proprietor's wife. This does not mean that the proprietor's wife should take the housekeeper automobile riding. Any proprietor's wife that enters into such a degree of intimacy with any of her husband's employes distinctly displays the hallmarks of plebeanism. The writer does not want to become an iconoclast, but she believes that all business should be conducted on a business basis. There must be an unwavering loyalty to the interests mutually represented, at all times and under all circumstances. The proprietor's wife that goes to the help's dining-room or to the laundry, presumably to press a skirt or a shirt-waist, but in reality to see what she can see and to hear what she can hear, is disloyal to the management. She will always have poured into her ears stories that will annoy her and keep her worried. There are maids in a hotel always ready to "keep the pot boiling." Such a proprietor's wife not only encourages malicious slander and tattling, but she will soon be asking questions of the inferior help about the housekeeper's management. Soon the inferiors will be giving the orders instead of the housekeeper, and the discipline will be spoiled. Besides, the proprietor's wife will be told imaginary wrongs, and exaggerated stories concerning some maid employed in the hotel, which will necessitate the maid's discharge. Whether the story is real or imaginary, the proprietor's wife is not benefited by the stories she has heard. She should ask herself: Is this loyalty? Isn't it unmistakably the earmark of commonality?