Some time after experience had shown how butter could be made successfully, a lady, who had been for years resident in the country, said, during a morning call, "My dairy-maid is gone away ill, and the cook makes the butter; but it is so bad we cannot eat it: and besides that nuisance, she has this morning given me notice to leave. She says she did not 'engage' to 'mess' about in the dairy." "Well," said the writer, "why not make the butter yourself, till you can suit yourself with a new servant?" "I have tried," said the visitor, "but cannot do it. My husband is very particular about the butter being good, so I was determined to see if I could not have some that he could eat; therefore I _pored_ over Mrs. Rundle, and other books, for a whole day, but could not find how to begin. None of them told me how to _make_ the butter, though several gave directions for potting it down when it was made. I made the boy churn for more than three hours yesterday morning, but got no butter after all. _It would not come!_ The weather was very cold, and it occurred to the listener to ask the lady _where_ the boy churned, and where the cream had been kept during the previous night. "Why, in the dairy, to be sure," was the answer; "and my feet became so chilled by standing there, that I can hardly put them to the ground since. Cook could not succeed more than I did, and said, the last time she made it, it was between four and five hours before the butter came; and then, as I have told you, it was not eatable." The writer explained to her friend that the reason why she could not get the butter, as well as why cook's was so bad, was on account of the low temperature of the cream when it was put into the churn. She then gave her plain directions how to proceed for the future, and was gratified by receiving a note from her friend, in a couple of days, containing her thanks for the "very plain directions;" and adding, "I could not have thought it was so little trouble to procure _good_ butter, and shall for the future be independent of a saucy dairymaid." I believe that a really clever servant will never give any one particulars respecting her work. She wraps them up in an impenetrable mystery. Like the farmers' wives, who, to our queries, gave no other answer than, "Why, that depends," they take care that no one shall be any the wiser for the questions asked. The reader may safely follow the directions given in these pages; not one has been inserted that has not been tested by the writer. To those who are already conversant with bread-making, churning, etc., they may appear needlessly minute; but we hope the novice may, with very little trouble, become mistress of the subjects to which they refer.