Every woman who tries to bring about a better understanding between herself and her servants helps every other woman to make home life more comfortable, so it really isn’t a little thing to do. On the contrary, if enough women try, they may bring about great results. Nothing is so absolutely destructive to an understanding between mistress and maid as the habit, so common and so catching, of looking at servants as a class by themselves, unlike other human beings and antagonistic to their mistresses. What we should do is to try to get into a sympathetic mood by remembering that human nature is the same the world over and in all classes, the great difference being in education, early surroundings, and training. If we only keep this in mind, while it really seems almost impossible to understand the ignorance of many servants and to see things from their point of view, yet we may at least realize that it would be a disgrace if our ideals of conduct were not higher than theirs. When I tell you that you will need nearly every known virtue to keep house well, you will expect to come out of the experience a piece of absolute perfection! Certainly PATIENCE is one of the foremost needed. It is so easy and natural for us to scold a servant when she has neglected her duty or done something stupid, instead of patiently following her up every time she neglects anything and with a pleasant but decided manner seeing that she does it. And yet I know, from experience, that the scolding produces no result except to make her angry, while the other method will have one of two results; she will either get into the habit of doing her work well to save herself the mortification or irritation of being corrected or else she will show you that she isn’t worth training and that you might as well let her go. One’s patience, however, may cease to be a virtue in the case of a sullen servant. I would not keep such a one, no matter how good her work was, if after having spoken to her about it she did not change, for nothing will wear you out sooner, and to no purpose, than having to contend with that kind of a disposition. Tell her the reason that you part with her and perhaps she will do better in her next place, in which case you will have helped her and her future mistress. UNSELFISHNESS—there’s plenty of opportunity for a mistress to show if she is sincere in her desire to be fair. Just one instance: It isn’t very pleasant, to say the least, if, after one has trained a servant to be skillful and she has stayed for several years so that one has grown dependent on her, she leaves for higher wages. Yet in every other calling people are praised for what is called their ambition to rise, and if we can’t pay high wages, how can we expect to keep the most skillful servants? And why should we make them feel as though they were not behaving well when they leave for more money?