I have had to be a great deal away from my own house, owing to long-continued illness, and in consequence I have seen a great deal of the way in which other people manage, and I boldly say that I have seen more waste and real extravagance among people who ought to save absolutely every bone and piece of bread than among those who could really afford to waste, did they not consider it wicked to do so. While the lower one goes in the social scale, the more one finds waste the order of the day; and not only actual waste, but the waste of having the best joints, the most expensive butter, and the continual variety of food that no one in the upper middle classes can afford, even should they think it necessary to have it. I have noticed real want existing among a specially improvident set of people, while, at the same time, I have been shocked to see great lumps of meat and bread (unpaid for) in the pigs’ tub. The young people of these households would have their boots blacked for them, their hot water and bath water carried up for them, and be waited on, before they went out to their shops or work, as one’s own children would never dream of being waited on, in a much much higher rank of life. In these households the servants have simply an awful time of it, and hence class prejudice is fostered terribly, while the unthrifty ways of the household leave their mark on all who pass through it, and help to build up a class that is in every way unsatisfactory. We hear a great deal of the competition of the foreigner, and there are loud shouts for ‘protection’ and ‘fair trade,’ but the ‘protection’ we want is against our own wasteful habits and ways of living, and we can never have ‘fair trade’ until we comprehend what waste really is, and know what is necessary to keep a household going and what is not. And this servant question is the very _crux_ of the whole matter, and, alas! is very little understood by the public at large, which seems quite incapable of grappling with the problem, although few people exist who have not a more or less loudly-expressed opinion on the subject. It is also a problem which can never be solved until all have learned real thrift and carefulness, and until all classes learn how to trust each other, and the special conduct which should be maintained in all relations in life. Though the tendency nowadays to live in flats, and have as many meals as one can at a restaurant or hotel, may solve the servant question quicker than in any other way, regardless of the fact that a class of useful women will thus be improved off the face of the world in a manner I, for one, shall be extremely sorry to see. But flats are fleeting joys at best. I have heard of many people going to live in them, and have never known anyone renew his or her lease; so perhaps the pendulum may swing back again, and houses become the order of the day.