The house was a large one. There were four children, the man and his wife, an old aunt and five hired men besides Dan and myself to cook for. The laundry had remained undone since the last girl left, and present opportunities were not to be overlooked. Such heaps of soiled clothing I never saw before. Then, when cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing were done, if perchance there was half an hour to spare, I was set at the never-ending task of tying vegetables. On Sunday the mistress of the house wanted to know whether I could darn stockings, as I ought to be able to do a good deal of mending on that day. To cap it all, the couple quarrelled constantly, nagged the children and one another and railed at the poor old aunt by the hour. When not so engaged, the woman would snoop through our scanty belongings, ask me all manner of personal questions and follow me about with talk of the good home she was giving me and how few people there were who would take tramps and hoboes right into their own comfortable houses and care for them. Poor Dan was driven like a slave from dawn till dark and after, so at the end of a week, we concluded to take to the road once more. When Dan informed the man of our intentions and asked for our money, such a storm of invective was loosed as is seldom heard. We were lazy, good-for-nothing bums who were too shiftless to do honest work, but wanted to live off thrifty, economical people who had some ambition in life. The woman declared that I was an ungrateful dog—only she did not say dog, but referred to the female of the species—that I had imposed on her hospitality for a whole week, but she supposed that was all one could expect for trying to do a good turn to dirty sewer rats. The man then burst into shocking profanity, which Dan cut short by suggesting the imminence of a stiff punch on the jaw. As we were riding away from the “good home,” I recalled experiences related by servant girls with whom I had come in contact in the practice of my profession. I remembered the little maid who was on duty habitually sixteen hours a day in the mansion of a San Francisco millionaire. She became violently insane and was sent to the Napa State Hospital. I thought of the great number of household workers to be found in such institutions, and of the terrifying increase in insanity. Then my thoughts turned to those who go astray and others who lead lives of shame, and the large percentage that are recruited from the ranks of servant girls. My mind dwelt on the attitude of friends who counted the “good home” given a girl a large part of her reward for service rendered.