“Don’t put your slate there; that isn’t the place for it.” “How dirty your hands are! what have you been doing?” “Don’t sit in that chair; you break the springs, jouncing.” “Child, how your hair looks! Do go up stairs and comb it.” “There, if you haven’t torn the braid all off your coat! Dear me, what a boy!” “Don’t speak so loud; your voice goes through my head.” “I want to know, Jim, if it was you that broke up that barrel that I have been saving for brown flour.” “I believe it was you, Jim, that hacked the edge of my razor.” “Jim’s been writing at my desk, and blotted three sheets of the best paper.” Now the question is, if any of the grown people of the family had to run the gantlet of a string of criticisms on themselves equally true as those that salute unlucky Jim, would they be any better-natured about it than he is? No; but they are grown-up people; they have rights that others are bound to respect. Everybody cannot tell them exactly what he thinks about everything they do. If every one could and did, would there not be terrible reactions? Servants in general are only grown-up children, and the same considerations apply to them. A raw, untrained Irish girl introduced into an elegant house has her head bewildered in every direction. There are the gas-pipes, the water-pipes, the whole paraphernalia of elegant and delicate conveniences, about which a thousand little details are to be learned, the neglect of any one of which may flood the house, or poison it with foul air, or bring innumerable inconveniences. The setting of a genteel table and the waiting upon it involve fifty possibilities of mistake, each one of which will grate on the nerves of a whole family. There is no wonder, then, that the occasions of fault-finding in families are so constant and harassing; and there is no wonder that mistress and maid often meet each other on the terms of the bear and the man who fell together fifty feet down from the limb of a high tree, and lay at the bottom of it, looking each other in the face in helpless, growling despair. The mistress is rasped, irritated, despairing, and with good reason: the maid is the same, and with equally good reason. Yet let the mistress be suddenly introduced into a printing-office, and required, with what little teaching could be given her in a few rapid directions, to set up the editorial of a morning paper, and it is probable she would be as stupid and bewildered as Biddy in her beautifully arranged house.