did--a nasty, wicked, deceitful, liquorish-toothed “MARRIED MAN!”--and that’s what he was! When the wretch came to me, he told me he was a confirmed bachelor; but his livery, though shamefully spotted was not half worn out, when, to my horror, I discovered that the brute was a hopeless, inextricable Benedict, with not only a fond wife to support--out of my larder, drat her!--but no less than seven little incumbrances to bring up--on my cold meat, hang ’em! As a woman, of course, I’m for universal matrimony all over the world--though with regard to those necessary evils called servants, I must confess, I am of a totally different opinion. For my part, I would have them all bound by law to remain as single, all their days, as spiders. But from the parental turn of the Footmen, Housemaids, and Cooks of the nineteenth century, I’m afraid no Act of Parliament could be made binding enough to prevent the fond stupids from plunging headlong into wedlock and a chandler’s shop; and when they find that a bountiful Providence doesn’t send customers as quick as it does children to such people, then of course the husband and the father again becomes the footman and the bachelor, drat him!--while the wife and the mother gets her daily bread for her children out of her mangle, and her daily _meat_ for them out of _your_ pantry! In my eyes, the only way to prevent this frightful state of things, is for us housekeepers to see whether or not, by the high wages we are now giving for men-servants, we couldn’t prevail upon some of the poor Catholic priests--who everybody knows have taken the vow of perpetual celibacy--to put on a _toupée_, and enter our service as footmen,--though, of course, from the proverbial warm-hearted disposition of the inhabitants of the “imirald isle,” it might be as well to give notice--even in such a case--that “no Irish need apply.”