"I like house-work," she said. "There's nothing suits me so well. We girls never had any money, nor mother either, and so I went into a water-cure near the Gap and stayed awhile. Now the man that run it believed in all being one family. He called the girls helpers, and he fixed things so't each one had some time to herself every day, and he tried to teach 'em all sorts of things. The patients were cranky to wait on, but you felt as if you was a human being, anyhow, and had a chance. Well, I watched things, and I said it was discouraging, sure enough. I tried to do a square day's work, but two-thirds of 'em there shirked whenever they could; half did things and then lied to cover their tracks. I was there nine months, and I learned better'n ever I knew before how folks ought to live on this earth. And I said to myself the fault wasn't so much in the girls that hadn't ever been taught; it was in them that didn't know enough to teach 'em. A girl thought it was rather pretty and independent, and showed she was somebody, to sling dishes on the table, and never say 'ma'am' nor 'sir,' and dress up afternoons and make believe they hadn't a responsibility on earth. They hadn't sense enough to do anything first-rate, for nobody had ever put any decent ambition into 'em. It isn't to do work well; it's to get somehow to a place where there won't be any more work. So I say that it's the way of living and thinking that's all wrong; and that as soon as you get it ciphered out and plain before you that any woman, high or low, is a mean sneak that doesn't do everything in the best way she can possibly learn, and that doesn't try to help everybody to feel just so, why, things would stop being crooked and folks would get along well enough. Don't you think so?" How far the energetic speaker had solved the problem must be left to the reader, for whom there still certain unconsidered phases, all making part of the arraignment, scouted by those who are served, but more and more distinct and formidable in the mind of the server. CHAPTER TWENTIETH. MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE. Though the testimony given in the preceding chapter on this topic includes the chief objection to be made by the class of workers who would seem to be most benefited by accepting household service, there remain still one or two phases seldom mentioned, but forming an essential portion of the argument against it. They belong, not to the order we have had under consideration, but to that below it from which the mass of domestic servants is recruited, and with which the housekeeper must most often deal.