Many teachers have to begin to teach when they still know very little. They learn as they work, and so can housekeeper teachers. If the cook knows more about her work than you do, by all means learn from her and take her advice often, but do not allow her on this account to rule the household, or to decide about family arrangements which are not in her department. Do you know that letter of Saint Paul's written to his friend Philemon on behalf of a runaway slave? It is an irresistible letter. Such a mingling of loving confidence and insistent authority is hardly to be found elsewhere. And also, with a little thinking, a little putting together piece by piece, one gets a whole, vivid dramatic story from this letter. But its importance to us is that it is a letter written about a servant, and has more in it than people have yet been able to put into practice, though they have made a little progress in about nineteen hundred years. XVII MARTHA I BELIEVE that the chief reason that women find the work of housekeeping irksome and sometimes intolerable is a reason seldom given or reckoned with. The objections frequently raised, that women dislike the work because it ties them at home, because it takes all their time, because it tires them so that they can do nothing else, are obviously inadequate. For why should it not do all these things? Lawyers, doctors and teachers give all their time and thought to their work; nurses, companions and secretaries do not have much time to go out; women who stand behind counters, tend looms or sit at switchboards are often too tired even for pleasure when the day's work is done. A woman who earns her part of the family living by making a home cannot expect to be delivered from toil. Is it likely that she can succeed in a difficult profession without giving up pleasures and ease for its sake, without working as hard and as unquestioningly as the men of her family do for their part of the family support? Some people say that we regard the profession of housekeeping unreasonably because women are by nature lazy, frivolous, and not capable of very much intellectually. Now, though I humbly acknowledge that these things may have to do with it, yet I believe, as was at first suggested, that there is a chief reason for the serious distaste we often feel for the profession. This reason is, that a certain reticence and effacement, which every one should exercise in regard to his work, is required of housekeepers in unusual measure. People who can think and talk of nothing but their own work and interests are very difficult people; a housekeeper who has this fault is not only difficult, she is dangerous. For women who make their housekeeping an idol pretty soon begin to offer it human sacrifice.