is very hard on china.” I have known servant girls as much interested in the collections of laces in the museums, especially the specimens made by poor peasant women in different centuries, as any high-born lady, and much more capable of reproducing specimens of this industry. The costumes of the peasants and the costumes of the kings and queens, and the furniture used by the latter, will attract crowds of ignorant people by the hour in European museums. But who ever sees any but the intelligent and rich walking about in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, or the Academy in Boston. We do not care to interest the working classes in this country; only care to see that they work well and as many hours as possible. “There remains,” says a writer on duties of contract, “outside of their actual service, or of any assumption of authority on our side, really limitless fields for the exercise of our natural influence as their immediate superiors and friends.” I think, in the matter of lodging—the rooms the Americans give their servants to sleep in—they fare infinitely better than in any foreign country; but the food is not so well adapted to their physical wants. Delicate dishes and highly seasoned food are sent into the kitchen for the servants by our American housekeepers, and you hear them say: “O, we would not think of denying our servants all the dainties of our own table.” Do they ever think that a working man or woman, no matter of what nationality, prefers boiled beef and turnips, or bacon and cabbage, to sweet breads and peas, or venison and cauliflower. But this is an inexhaustible theme, and one I must defer yet again before I venture to say what I think about the genuine American table.