It was after I had been married for several years and had become weary of recalling afresh for each new servant the details of her work in order to train her into my ways of doing it, that I decided to write a small blank book for each one of them, containing her daily duties, her weekly duties, the arrangement for her Sundays and her afternoons out—something that I could keep permanently and thus save myself much trouble. If you dislike detail as much as I do these books will help you too. When the servants first came I read them to each one letting each keep her own while she was with me and taking the precaution to have a copy of them all in my housekeeping book in case any misunderstanding should arise. Realizing that much of the _general duties_ must be different in every household, according to the number of the family and the number and arrangement of rooms, and whether they live in an apartment house or not, I shall only attempt to give you an idea of how these books were written, just enough to help you make out your own books to suit the requirements of your family. This is the reason I describe the _general duties_ only in a _general_ way, and the _daily duties_ (where the manner of doing the work is practically always the same) I describe in _detail_, addressing the maids directly as I did in the books which I made for my own servants. Although the instructions to the maids are in some cases identical, yet, in order to make them clear, I repeat them in each case, even though it seems unnecessary. It would be my advice to you in making your book to arrange the daily duties of the servants so as to insure the early starting of the household. For instance, let the chambermaid wake you on her way downstairs at a specified hour, and, at the same time, let the waitress come to get the silver. If you have a safe for your silver, you could leave out just enough for your breakfast and have it brought to your room at night so that she would stop and get it in the morning. It is also a good plan to let the servants have their breakfast before the family except in the case of a maid of all work, when this is almost impossible to arrange.