The life of the ordinary domestic servant, despite the delirious joy of the tradesman’s daily calls, is an extremely dull one. The routine is everlasting, the relaxations few, and the changes still fewer. In many households a friend to tea is a crime; an unexpected holiday an impossibility; while the days follow each other in a wearisome routine which would tell on the nerves of anyone even far more highly educated than is the orthodox maid-servant. How many brilliant summer days pass, and no one suggests an afternoon or evening stroll, or even a drive through the country lanes. How many dreary winter days go by, and no one says there is a good play at such and such a theatre, go and see it. Or who takes concert seats, and sends off the maids for a couple of hours from the everlasting kitchen and the weary round of unending duties? Well, some people do, and where this occurs there the maids often stay on and on, giving real and loving service, and doing their utmost for those who try to do their utmost for them. Then once more how few maids really have and possess their mistress’s confidence. They hear a vast amount of grumbling about ‘the books,’ and the dreadful waste which does go on, often enough more through ignorance than through their carelessness; but they do not comprehend that there is an all-important reason why such waste should not be allowed, because the mistress has never explained matters to the maids, or told them there is necessity for great care in all the household departments. As a rule servants have what they consider the ‘honour of the house’ very near their hearts; and they cannot endure the notion that their mistress shall even be suspected of ‘meanness.’ And this is often the cause of the needless orders given in those establishments where the tradesmen are allowed to call; for, rather than send them away without an order, the servants will rack their brains to think of something, not because they really desire to swell the bills, but because they like their house to be one of which the tradespeople speak well, and because they will not have it spoken of as a ‘mean sort of place, where every halfpenny is counted and made to do the duty of a penny piece.’ Then too, at the bottom of a great deal of domestic mismanagement is the utter and really ghastly thriftlessness of the lower classes, which no one who has not seen it could credit.