Mrs. Crawshay’s scheme of lady helps has, I believe, quite collapsed; at all events, one hears nothing about it now; but I see no reason why an earnest effort should not be made to try sending our superfluous girls to Australia as lady helps, and then, if that succeeds, trying them in England, where there seems to me to be a real and crying want of good domestic servants. I am only judging from other people’s woes; for, although I dare say I have mine before me, I have not experienced them yet, and have always been able to find what I wanted without any undue exertion on my part. Of course the house would have to be reorganised to some extent. The bedrooms would have to be as fresh and pretty as one could make them; and, above all, we must reform our kitchens, which are at present the most unhealthy, disagreeable, and odious rooms in the whole house, as they are undoubtedly the ugliest, and where, in ordinary households, the unfortunate maids have winter and summer to sit while the cooking is done, and in heat that I wonder allows them to live at all, and that must exasperate their tempers as much as it must try their constitutions. Now let us consider the ideal house and the ideal kitchen, and I cannot see myself why both should not exist; let us build our washing-stands so that hot and cold water are able to be turned into the basin which can overtip and empty itself; smaller conveniences could be managed in the same manner, and all the housemaid would have to do would be to wipe out the basins daily, to sweep up the pieces with the ‘Ewbank’ carpet-sweeper, which makes no dust and picks up every morsel off the floor, to make the beds and dust, the very making of the beds being simplified by the chain and hair mattresses now general. All that has to be done is to turn the mattress daily, to spread the under blanket and sheet absolutely smoothly over it and tuck them in, to replace the bolster and pillows, and the over supply of blankets, &c., carefully straightened and tucked in. Is that harder than tennis, more menial, forsooth, than living on one’s relations, or husband-hunting genteelly under the greatest of all difficulties, the difficulty of looking nice and merry, and being good-tempered, on absolutely no means at all?