We know it is the fashion to speak of servants as “necessary evils,” and to decry them as “a bad set.” Surely, if there is any truth in old proverbs, there must be faults in the mistresses as well as the domestics, for we have heard that “good mistresses make good servants:” how comes it, then, that there are so many bad ones? Firstly, from the defective education of that class whence female servants are generally taken. Born in those miserable localities where poverty is compelled to dwell; reared among scenes of vice, often in the midst dirt, misery, and temptation; taught to read at some Sunday-school, the moral lessons of which were but a feather in the balance against the worldly lessons of the other six days; fed afterwards on that pernicious cheap literature which puts all sorts of idle and vain follies, desires, and passions, into the head, the girl is at fourteen hired for some trifling sum to nurse a baby, and idles about the streets with others of her own age, gossiping; or is errand girl to a dressmaker, and thus pursues her studies of human life; or is engaged to help the mistress of some small lodging-house, and generally works hard, and fares hard too, and gets plenty of hard words. None of these people in general regard her as a fellow-creature having, like their own children, need of teaching, of guidance, of patience, and kindness; if she does pretty well, why, it is her duty! if she does badly, she is discharged! Many a girl would have become a valuable servant, a respectable and reasonable individual, if in her first service she had found a mistress who knew what the duties of a Christian woman at the head of a house were. Of course, there are characters which no treatment, however judicious, can permanently benefit; but still we ought to try what we can do ere we despair; and the influence of a steady pursuance of duty is always, more or less, felt by all within its power. In hiring servants be particular in inquiring as to their characters, and, if possible, learn something of the people with whom they have lived; let all stipulations as to wages, extras, holidays, and such matters, be clearly specified and rightly understood.