That there was trouble with servants in those old days, even as in these present, is amply attested by the records; but it was possible to resort to more drastic measures than are now feasible. We read that at Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publiquely corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary." This was in the early times, and many matrons of later days, even as many now, must have longed for the return of the laws which enabled them to keep their servants in order. Mary Dudley has set forth her experience in this matter in a letter to her mother, Madame Winthrop, whom she had asked to send her "a goode girle, a strong lusty servant, used to all kind of work who would refuse none." Her letter of complaint is worth quoting at large, as showing the conditions of the New England housekeeper of that day in relation to her "help:" "A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming to me she carried herselfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietness I was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you." There is more of it; but enough has been quoted to show the tone, which is strikingly prophetic of many things of the present day; even a piece of our reprehensible slang seems foreshadowed in that phrase, "she hath got such a head." In another letter, this time written by a man, John Winthrop, we hear that the "Irish creature" whom he and his wife have for servant is a very plague. She is "lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent.... She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dress herselfe and away without leave among her companions." So that the servant question was just as difficult of solution among our great-great-grandmothers as for ourselves.