If in about a month's time you should grumble and fall out with me for not writing, you will certainly be in some degree justified; for I think it must be near upon three weeks since I wrote to you, which is a sin and a shame. To say that I have not had time to write is nonsense, for in three weeks there are too many days, hours, and minutes, for me to fancy that I _really_ had not had sufficient leisure, yet it has almost seemed as if I had not. I have been constantly driving out to the farm, to watch the progress of the painting, whitewashing, etc., etc.: in town I have been engaging servants, ordering china, glass, and furniture, choosing carpets, curtains, and house linen, and devoutly studying all the time Dr. Kitchener's "Housekeeper's Manual and Cook's Oracle." You see, I have been careful and troubled about many things, and through them all you have been several thorns in both my sides; for I thought of you perpetually, and knew I ought to write to you, and wanted and wished to do so--and didn't; for which pray forgive me. I want to tell you two circumstances about servants, illustrative of the mind and manners of that class of persons in this country. A young woman engaged herself to me, as lady's-maid, immediately before my marriage; she had been a seamstress, and her health had been much injured by constantly stooping at her sedentary employment. I took her into my service at a salary of L25 a year. She had little to do; I took care that every day she should be out walking for at least an hour; she had two holidays a week, all my discarded wardrobe, and every kindness and attention of every sort that I could bestow upon her, for she was very gentle and pleasant to me, and I liked her very much. A short time ago, she gave me warning; the first reason she assigned for doing so was that she didn't think she should like living in the country, but finally it resolved itself into this--that she could not bear _being a servant_. She told me that she had no intention of seeking any other situation, for that she knew very well that after mine she could find none that she would like, but she said the sense of entire independence was necessary to her happiness, and she could not exist any longer in a state of "_servitude_." She told me she was going to resume her former life, or rather, as I should say, her former process of dying, for it was literally that; she took her wages, and left me. She was very pretty and refined, and rejoiced in the singular Christian name of Unity.[2]