dollars a week is not a large calculation for the laundry-bill of a family, especially if there are children. In America this money is generally saved, but at what a price!--the house in disorder with wash-tub and ironing-board during the beginning of every week, grumbling from all servants, anxiety on the part of the members of the family about overcrowding the soiled-linen basket, and often the clean clothes sent up "not fit to be seen." Another privilege which I find English servants possess, and which I confess surprises me, is that of inviting friends to tea at the mistress's expense. Every Sunday evening one or another servant holds a symposium of choice spirits below stairs, for whom flows the infusion of the costly leaf from far Cathay. No meat is allowed at these repasts, but tea, milk, sugar and bread and butter are permitted to be offered. There is going on now an earnest effort to put a stop to this practice. Economical housekeepers very justifiably object to paying for treats to their servants' company. But the custom has been handed down from the feudal days, when drinking and eating were the only amusements within the scope of even the very rich, and when every soul who in a friendly spirit passed the castle-walls was welcome to all he could gorge or swill, or carry away in his two arms for those he had left behind in his poor cottage. In what is known now as "noble houses" the practice is still in force to a great extent. Does master or mistress receive a call? Then wine and sweet biscuits are at once to be carried into the drawing-room to beguile the caller's tedium in waiting. Has a tradesman brought a package? Give the good man a mug of beer. Have you come in a cab, and kept it standing outside? Here, quickly take out some beer in a pewter tankard to comfort Cabby, which he tosses off as he sits perched on the high seat of his hansom. In houses as lavish as this a veritable banquet is served each day in the servants' hall, to which the upper servants have the privilege of inviting their friends. And so the custom goes on, dwindling in costliness until it reaches the homes of people in fairly comfortable circumstances, who are struggling, but almost in vain, to crush it. The trouble is, that when an English servant enters a house where giving tea to her friends is not allowed, she is apt to receive such pressure from her mother, who has been probably a servant in the "good old days," and other conservative domestics of the lavish school, that she will make the matter square by slyly appropriating that which she believes should have been legitimately given; and once in this path her peculations are apt to extend to things more valuable than bread and tea. This is a great pity, for as a rule English servants are as honest as the sun. There is not one drop of that Chinese blood which sets the almond-eyed John to pilfering everything he can lay hands on flowing in these honest Saxon veins.