After our fatiguing time of domestic troubles, when the winter season was over, and San Miguel was once more the half empty, easy-going little town, and good Chinamen were ready to take even a place in the country, we got quite a passable cook, bad tempered, however, and very rough in his ways at such times. But we were thankful to have the work done fairly well, on any terms, and we pretended not to notice his almost brutal manner. I had been warned again and again by friends who had long experience in dealing with Chinamen, not to interfere at all, but to leave things entirely to them. So long as the work is fairly well done and things are clean, what does the rest matter? Most of them are by no means extravagant or wasteful, as servants go; but if such a one should fall to your lot, you may as well dismiss him at once, for you will never persuade him to make the least change. They are so exceedingly stubborn that interference, if it does no harm, is little likely to do any good. In most cases where a change is demanded, they will say “allie lightie,” and go on doing their own way. As I myself do the choosing and buying of the meat, I also go through the form of ordering how it shall be cooked and prepared for each meal. If my orders accord with his Celestial ideas, they are carried out, and if not, they are not. And that is the end of it. He always serves up something nice, and does not waste, which is surely good enough for any reasonable being. I confess I do resent a little the half covert smile with which I am received in the morning when I go into the kitchen to give these bogus orders; but I brazen it out, and struggle through the form with the best dignity I can. One lady friend, when advising me never to interfere about the work, told me of a striking experience she had before she learnt her lesson. She kept a large boarding-school for girls, and employed a number of Chinamen. The cook, being a very capable and respectable fellow, was the acknowledged head over the others, engaging them and dismissing them on his own responsibility. That was the plan which she had found the best, and as long as he was satisfied, all worked as smoothly as a machine, for he belonged, as most of them do, to some secret society, and whether he was a “high binder,” as seemed likely, or not, they feared and obeyed him as they would never have feared or obeyed her. One unlucky day, however, she took it into her head to go into the kitchen and prepare some small thing which he had cooked once or twice in a manner that did not please her. She had told him that she did not like it so, but next time it was served in just the same fashion, and she was annoyed. She went bravely into her own kitchen, and prepared it as she liked, leaving him in quiet possession as soon as this was finished.