A few weeks after their departure I closed the house. It came to me that I need endure its discomforts no longer, that I could get rid of those smelly, dull-witted, low-minded foreign animals, that I need not endure food sent up from a kitchen as to which I had from time to time disgusting proofs that it was not clean. I closed the house and left the mice and roaches and other insects to such short provender as would be provided by caretaker and family. I took an apartment in a first-class hotel. When Armitage got clear of his wife he took the adjoining apartment. And how comfortable and how cheerful we were! The women with their incompetence and indifference have about destroyed the American home. To get good service, to have capable people assisting you, you must yourself be capable. The incapacity of the “ladies” has driven good servants out of the business of domestic service, has left in it only the worthless and unreliable creatures who now take care of the homes. If you find any part of the laboring class deteriorating, don’t blame them. To do that is to get nowhere, is to be unjust and shallow to boot. Instead, look at the employers of that labor. Every time, you will find the fault is there, just as an ill-mannered or a bad child means unfaithful parents. The masses of mankind must have leadership, guidance, example. My experience has been that they respond when the dominating classes do their duty--that is, pay proper wages, demand good service, _and know what good service is_. What a relief and a joy that hotel was! Armitage and I had our own cook, and so could have the simple dishes we liked. We attended to the marketing--and both knew what sort of meat and vegetables and fruit to buy, and were not long trifled with by our butcher, our grocer, and our dairyman, spoiled though they were by the ladies. And our apartments were clean--really clean, and after the first few weeks our servants were contented, and abandoned the evil ways slip-shod mistresses had got them into. Pushing my inquiries, I found that not only our hotel, but every first-class hotel in the fashionable district was filled with the remnants of shattered homes--husbands who had compelled their wives to give up the expensive and dirty attempts at housekeeping; husbands who had abandoned their families in country homes or in other cities and towns and had, surreptitiously or boldly, returned to bachelor bliss; husbands who had been abandoned by their families, none of these last cases being more heart-breaking than Armitage’s or my own. The story ran that he was on the verge of melancholia because his beautiful wife had cast him off. There was no more truth in this than there would have been in a tale of my lonely grief. Had it not been for Armitage, pointing out to me the truth, I might have fancied myself a deserted unfortunate. It would not have been an isolated instance of a human being not knowing when he is well off. * * * * *