Pure literature also makes its contribution, and Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood has recently given a charming picture of “A Convent Man-Servant.”[4] Nothing could prove more effectively the change in the attitude of the public mind toward the subject than does the contrast presented between such a sketch, drawn with light and sympathetic pen, and that given in the satires of Dean Swift and of Defoe. The very absence of the figure of a domestic servant in the modern novel, and in current popular literature in every form, is in itself an indication of a changed attitude of the public mind toward the question as a whole. Figaro, and even Sam Weller, are almost as far removed from us as are the servants of Potiphar and of the Queen of Sheba. The attitude of the daily press toward the subject of domestic service certainly leaves something yet to be desired,--the stock jests on the impertinent maid and the ignorant mistress, like those on the mother-in-law and the summer girl, die hard, but they will go in time. The historical investigations of the subject have been few in number, but they have been of great value. Mr. Albert Matthews has placed all students of the subject under obligation to him by his exhaustive study, “The Terms Hired Man and Help,”[5] as Mr. James D. Butler had previously done by his investigations on “British Convicts shipped to American Colonies,”[6] and Dr. Karl Frederick Geiser by his work on “Redemptioners and Indented Servants in the Colony and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”[7] The public library is always first to create as well as to satisfy a demand for literature on subjects of general interest. It is therefore not surprising to find that the Providence Public Library as far back as 1893 issued a bibliography of all works and magazine articles on domestic service, which has been followed by the still more exhaustive reference-list published in 1898 on the general subject of domestic science; and that the Salem Public Library has a similar list. The New York State Library has published a comprehensive bibliography of the whole subject of domestic economy, and it sends out, to all parts of the state, traveling libraries of the best volumes on the same subject,--the list of the volumes included being in itself an excellent guide to the study of household economics. But the greatest of all steps in advance has been made by those libraries that have changed the classification of works attempting to treat scientifically the subject of domestic service from the class of Domestic Economy to that of Economics proper. The change seems slight, but it is a recognition of the intimate relation that exists between domestic service and other forms of industry.