I can assure the reader it would have been much better for me in the long-run, if I had packed the fellow out of the house immediately after the accident, (as indeed I was as near doing as two pins.) Only, of course, in my stupid, kind way, I must go letting my good-nature get the upper hand of my judgment, and endeavouring to read the gentleman a strong lesson, just to teach him how to lift a simple piano for the future, by making him pay a good part of his wages towards buying me a new one in the place of that which he had so wickedly broken. For I’ve always made it a rule to make my servants pay for breakages, as it’s all very fine for a parcel of wiseacres to tell you that we are every one of us liable to accidents, but my answer to such stuff as that, has always been, “Don’t tell me, I know a great deal better--and that servants, one and all, are never happy unless they can be knocking your things about like ninepins, and the only way to let them understand that they cost money, is to make them pay for what they ‘_couldn’t help_’ breaking.” (Couldn’t help it, couldn’t they--I never knew such couldn’t helps!) Besides, who ever heard of ladies banging the teacups and wineglasses about, as if they were made of cast iron, or pouring boiling water into your very best decanters as though they were foot-baths. Now look at me! why I’m sure that without exaggeration, the things I’ve broken in my time might be put in a nut-shell--but then _I_ knew that they all cost money, and consequently, never was a “butter-fingers.”