relative, to whose bedside she would pretend to have been urgently summoned, and a few days later send to her employer’s for her belongings. It is not necessary to give warning; a few days’ notice may be thought due to the other party, though of course, in the case of old and tried servants, a greater consideration is mutually accorded, the domestic usually consenting to remain until a suitable successor has been found. The servant’s tenure of service is, then, generally precarious, and at the same time her mistress is never sure of having permanently secured a good servant. Indeed, if the servant is honest and diligent, it is seldom the fault of her employer if she leaves her service; for the mistress cannot do without a servant and if she has got hold of a good domestic, she is not likely to let her go willingly. The servant, on the other hand, may be quitting service to live at home, to be married, or to look for a better situation. She has more motives for parting company than her mistress. The truth is that young women have discovered that there is a great demand for their services elsewhere, as at cotton mills, tobacco and other factories, and for house-industries; and there is in consequence a dearth of servants, let alone good ones. Still, many prefer domestic service, because they have not to work with mechanical regularity as at factories, and they are on that account content with lower wages. For hard as she is worked and though she is without a young man to console her on Sunday for the week’s drudgery, her life is not altogether an unhappy one. There is at least variety in it. The tradesmen’s boys come to the kitchen for orders and most people of the artisan and trading classes go in and out by the kitchen. They have therefore plenty of chance company, The tradesmen’s boys take it easy and linger in kitchens which find favour with them. When visitors come and are entertained in the parlour, their jinrikisha-men are given a meal in the kitchen. Still another chance of gossip is afforded where a common well is used by two or more families. Here they congregate and discuss the affairs of their respective households, tearing to pieces the character of one mistress and extolling another to the skies. The “well-side council,” as it is called, is the great market for scandals of all sorts, though it would not be fair to attribute its notoriety entirely to the servants’ love of gossip, for the worst scandal-mongers in such cases are the wives of poorer tradesmen and artisans who bring their washings to the common well.