Even if a lady does keep a sufficient number of servants to perform every domestic duty efficiently, still it may prove useful to be able to give instructions to one who may, from some accidental circumstance, be called on to undertake a work to which she has been unaccustomed. A friend of the writer's, a lady of large fortune, and mistress of a very handsome establishment, said, when speaking of her dairy, "My neighborhood has the character of making very bad butter; mine is invariably good, and I always get a penny a pound more for it at the 'shop' than my neighbors. If I have occasion to change the dairymaid, and the new one sends me up bad butter, I tell her of it. If it occurs the second time, I make no more complaints; I go down the next butter-day, and make it entirely myself, having her at my side the whole time. I find I never have to complain again. She sees how it is made, and she is compelled to own it is good. I believe that a servant who is worth keeping will follow any directions, and take any amount of trouble, rather than see 'missus' a second time enter the kitchen or dairy to do her work." Perhaps the allusion this lady made to the "shop" may puzzle the London reader, but in country places, where more butter is made in a gentleman's family than is required for the consumption of the household, it is sent to--what is frequently--_the_ "shop" of the place, and sold for a penny per pound less than the price for which it is retailed by the shopkeeper. The value of the butter is set off against tea, sugar, cheese, and various other articles required in the family in which the butter is made. When the writer purchased a third cow, it was in anticipation of sending any surplus butter to "shop," and receiving groceries in exchange, nor has she been disappointed. Every month's additional experience strengthens her conviction of the advantages to be derived from living in the country; and she takes farewell of her readers, in the hope that she has succeeded in conving them that a "farm of four acres" may be made a source of health, profit, and amusement, though many of their "town" friends may threaten them with ruin, should they be rash enough to disregard their advice to take a house in a "nice quiet street," leading into one of the squares. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it, by Miss Coulton