In your manner to your servants, be firm, without being severe, and kind, without being familiar. Never converse familiarly with them, unless on business, or on some point connected with their improvement; but with this reserve, and distance of manner, be particularly careful to maintain kindness, gentleness, and respect for their feelings. Their patience is often unnecessarily exercised, and their tempers wantonly irritated. “I have been sometimes shocked,” says the same amiable writer, “with the want of politeness, by which masters and mistresses provoke impertinence from their servants.”—A lady, who filled every station of life with honour, both to her head and heart, attending the death-bed of an old domestic, who had been thirty years in her service—“How do you find yourself, to-day, Mary?” said the mistress, taking hold of her withered hand. “Is that you, my _darling mistress_!” and a beam of joy overspread the old woman’s face; “O, yes,” she added, looking up, “it is you, my kind, my _mannerly_ mistress!” The poor old creature said no more; but she had, by that last simple sentence, expressed volumes of panegyric on her amiable mistress. Human nature is the same in all stations; and if you strive to convince your servants that you have a generous and compassionate regard for their comfort, they will, in return, evince their gratitude. If to protect and encourage virtue be the best preventive from vice, then will your deserving female servants be liberally encouraged. Let your commands to your servants be consistent and reasonable; and then mildly, but firmly, insist on obedience to them.—“My servants never remember what I tell them to do,” is a complaint but too common, but that might, in some degree, be obviated. Let them see that you will not pass over any neglect of orders; and when they find that this decisive measure is accompanied with kindness and consideration, and that you are not to be disobeyed with impunity, they will soon learn to remember what you command them to do. A little effort very easily overcomes a bad memory. It is very disheartening to a poor servant to be continually found fault with. Praise and reward them when you can;—human nature will not bear constant chiding. Never keep servants, however excellent they may be in their stations, whom you know to be guilty of immorality. When servants are ill, their mistress will, doubtless, recollect that she is their _patroness_ as well as their employer, and will not only remit their labour, but render them all the assistance of proper medicine, food, and comfort, in their power.—_Tender assiduity is half a cure_; it is a balsam to the mind, which has a powerful effect on the body—soothes the severest pains, and strengthens beyond the richest cordial. The poor _dependent_ creatures may have no where to go to—no one else to turn to; and their pale and impaired looks will always have a claim on your sympathy.