After I sent off my letter to you, I turned over your last page and found a scrawl that I didn’t notice at first,—a polite little request for the details of serving one’s every day meals. Why, of course, I will give it to you, and shall take it for granted that your maid’s mind is a perfect blank on the subject. So much the better, for now you can put into it just what you want her to have there. I would begin by impressing on her how important it is to have the tablecloth smooth with the creases running straight down the middle and everything set evenly on the table. Show her yourself how neat it looks when done in this way and how badly when the things are crooked. If she hasn’t a straight eye, the only way to do is to give her a foot-rule and have her measure distances at first until her eye is trained. Don’t attempt anything elaborate and be content to use your simple china which can be easily replaced, so that when, in her awkwardness, she breaks it, your heart won’t be broken too. Perhaps you can find some old china-cabinet with glass doors in which you can keep those beautiful plates that were among your wedding presents, and be able to have them to look at without their being any care. If the maid hasn’t too much to attend to, she will be able to do what she does do, well, and if you have your meals served nicely every day, then, when you have guests, she will not be confused by some new order of things, but will be perfectly natural and serve them well as a matter of course. Your own meals, too, will go more quickly and easily and be more appetizing if always served carefully and regularly. Let us take a perfectly simple family dinner: First course, soup; second course, roast and (two) or (three) vegetables; third course, salad or dessert; fourth course, coffee; and begin to train her in this way: See that the canton flannel undercloth is perfectly smooth on the table. Over this place the tablecloth with the crease going exactly down the middle. Make sure that whatever glass, silver, china, knives, etc., is to be used on the table is bright. Put a dinner plate for each person at even distances apart from one another. To the right of each plate place as many knives as you need with their sharp edges turned toward the plate, then next to them the soup spoon with the hollow part of the bowl of the spoon turned up. Put the napkin at the right of the soup spoon, folded over neatly once, as it would take up too much room square, and lay on it exactly in the middle a piece of bread cut about three inches long by one and a half thick and two inches wide, or else a roll. Place a tumbler at the point of the knives. At the left of each plate lay as many forks as are needed for the meal, with their prongs turned upward and placed in the order in which they are to be used, the fork for the first course being on the outside and farthest from the plate. Exactly in the center of the table put your plant.