Chapter X: Part III: My Heritage (8)

_Packing._--Renovations accomplished by amateur effort are more apt to be associated with house cleaning of the first class, than with that of the second. Packing, on the contrary, though it has a small necessary part in the cleaning of a house continuously occupied, is a chief and important performance in closing a house. In fact, this latter process is little more than packing up a whole house.

The suggestions concerning packing which follow are intended to be of use in closing a house but they amply cover the packing away which is done spring and fall in a house which remains open.

Woollen articles and furs should be packed in receptacles which close tightly and should have some substance unpleasant to moths packed with them. It is a wise precaution to line packing boxes or trunks with brown paper which has been wet with turpentine, or with newspaper, for both are disliked by moths.

All articles should be thoroughly brushed and shaken before they are packed. Many people disapprove of hanging them out in the sun beforehand, as they think this gives the moths a splendid chance to lay eggs in comfortable, sun-warmed fur and wool.

Things soiled or half-soiled ought not to be packed away. Dirt injures fabrics and colours and helps to breed creatures. Possessions which are to remain packed for a long time should not be put away starched. Do not wrap white articles in white tissue paper, it turns them yellow. Beware of putting into packing trunks anything which gathers dampness. It may be romantic to find a dried rose laid away with somebody's ball dress, but a brown spot on the front breadth is not romantic. Pieces of camphor should be wrapped in paper and any other substance used to keep out moths must be sprinkled or laid in with discretion. Black clothes are rarely injured by such things, but coloured ones may be.

Curtains, hangings, bed coverings and all textile furnishings, whether woollen or not, should be packed or folded and wrapped when a house is to be closed as they require protection from light and dust. Sofa pillows may be put into old pillow slips and left in their places or packed, whichever is more convenient. Mattresses and bed pillows should be covered with old sheets or dusting sheets.

Some people have their carpets and large rugs taken up, cleaned and stored by the cleaners or brought back to the house and left rolled until needed again. Such rolls should have paper tied over the ends and should be separated from each other. Sometimes carpets are left on the floor and covered with crash while the house is closed; the crash protects them from dust and from being faded. Fabric-covered walls and upholstered furniture should be covered to protect them from the same dangers. It is convenient to have a cover for each piece of furniture, but if several pieces are grouped together they can be covered with one cloth.

Ornaments, pictures, mirrors and light fixtures should be wrapped in cloths or paper to keep them from dust, light and flies. Silver and valuables should be sent away to some reliable place for storage or locked in a safe. Bright objects such as andirons, brass curtain poles and candlesticks and their like are better wrapped in brown paper. Rub the nickel fittings in the bathrooms with the rags which have been used for polishing floors or furniture. This is good for them at any time.

Books which are to be left in a closed house should be carefully dusted and shut in cases, or covered with sheets. A piece of gum camphor, or a few drops of oil of lavender put on the shelves will help to keep away insects, mould and mustiness.

Leather-bound books need special care about once a year whether the house is open or closed. Care which agrees well with them is this: First wipe them thoroughly and affectionately with a flannel cloth; then dip a small piece of flannel into a mixture of equal parts paraffine and castor oil, and with it wipe all the leather parts of the bindings.

In city houses green shades are usually put up in summer and light-coloured ones in winter. Any shade which is taken down should be tightly rolled to keep the spring from loosening.

When closing a house in a place where there is much dust, it is well to lay pieces of paper on the window sills, just far enough over the outer edge to be held by the window when it is shut. These keep the dust which sifts in from lying on and discolouring the sills. If stoves, lengths of pipe and wire screens are put away for a time, it is well to grease them, unless the place where they are put is absolutely dry. Melted lard or drippings are good for this purpose, and also kerosene, though in time this completely evaporates. The nickel parts of stoves keep in better condition if they are wrapped in paper after they are greased.

When a kitchen is to be closed for a season, the room and everything in it must be left clean and dry, otherwise there will be mould, rust and water-bugs to contend with when the house is opened. Some scouring and polishing will be saved if bright tin and brass utensils and fittings are wrapped in paper. The contents of cupboards and drawers should be grouped on tables and covered with paper or cloths, and no food kept except stores which are not injured by keeping.

Inflammable liquids such as alcohol, kerosene and turpentine should not be left in a closed house. Matches should be shut in a tin box or taken away altogether.

The last thing before a house is closed--gas, electricity and water must be turned off. After the water is turned off, empty the tanks of the closets as they may rust if water stands in them several months. Crude glycerine or some liquid which does not evaporate should be poured into all traps. In the course of months the water in traps evaporates and leaves the passageway for gases from the sewer to the house unobstructed.

On account of this evaporation, the water should be run occasionally in rooms and bathrooms which are not in regular use, in order that the traps may be kept full.

Two general rules to be followed in preparing a house to be closed are: mark all articles which are wrapped up in unrecognizable packages, and, as far as it is reasonable, leave things in the rooms in which they belong.

Many people would add to these the rule that household possessions should be repaired before they are put away. I think, however, that this rule does not apply to clothing, furs, hangings, upholstery or any textiles. Such are improved or deteriorated by being packed away, and one cannot tell beforehand which will happen. Likewise, they are freshened by being repaired or altered just before they are again used.

It is true, however, that household appliances, and the house itself should be put in order before the house is closed, for possessions like plumbing, rain-pipes, woodwork, light fixtures, furnaces, stoves and shades grow worse the longer they are left out of repair, and sometimes injure other things.

_Opening a House._--Just before a house is to be opened, light and water should be turned on, all the contrivances connected with them examined and needed repairs made. It is better that this part of the opening should be done a day or two before any one returns to the house to live.

Dust is the first thing to look after when the house is opened. Remove as much of it as possible before anything is uncovered. Then remove covers and put things in their places, beginning with those most necessary for living. After that rearrange and renew those which require it as soon as the time and needed assistance for doing so can be obtained.

Housecleaning of any sort can hardly fail to be a time of turmoil and weariness for the housekeeper. Her help is to remember that if the family have good food and comfortable beds and are not scolded or quarrelled with, they are well enough off to wait several days or even weeks for curtains, clean windows and slippery floors.

XV

EMERGENCIES

THIS does not pretend to be a chapter, though it is called so for convenience. It is merely a list of miscellaneous suggestions drawn from experience, which may be useful to others.

It is in the very nature of emergencies that they cannot be forseen or prepared for. They are things like those encountered by the knight-errant as he rode through the unknown forest--things which are never twice the same and which must be met and dealt with, without forethought or consideration. And they are most successfully dealt with in an adventurous spirit, as things to call out one's courage and address, and put them to the proof.

I know that is a difficult spirit to attain. Mistakes and failures and the remarks which families feel themselves at liberty to make about such things are disheartening and painful. "The funny side" is the best defense always against one's own distress and the thoughtlessness of other people. I have found that a person who sees the funny side of a calamity or of a difficulty gives more help in housekeeping than any one else. Happy the home which contains such a person, thrice happy one in which that person is its mistress.

A woman who is inclined to take household failures and accidents too seriously may comfort herself with the thought that what she fails to do to-day, she will probably succeed in to-morrow; and also with the reflection that an occasional uncomfortable accident is good for her family. A few spoonfuls of scorched soup eaten for courtesy's sake is valuable food. Likewise, household accidents can be used to plant in the family mind that calamities are to be shared by all. It is not merely a reproach to the housekeeper that the _family_ maid does not set the table correctly, or that the _family_ potatoes are burned.

Probably if a husband remarks, "Your gravy is cold," it is just as well for his wife to reply delightedly, "No colder than _your_ beans."

Not awfully clever perhaps, but better than hurt feelings.

1. COOKING EMERGENCIES

Stale bread or cake can be freshened by plunging it into cold water and then setting it in the oven for a few minutes. It must be used at once.

Pieces of stale bread may be thoroughly dried in the oven, then put through the meat chopper and kept in a glass jar for covering croquettes, fried oysters, etc.

Pieces of meat which in appearance and quantity will not be suitable for a meal may often be used by arranging some vegetable on the same dish. The pieces can be warmed in gravy and wreathed with carrots or peas. Or they can be put through the grinder, packed into a mould lined with boiled rice and the whole heated. Or they can be chopped, put into ramakins, covered with potato crust and slightly browned. These are merely samples of the many ways in which vegetables can be made to conceal the fact that there is not meat enough for a main dish.

Left-over breakfast food of any of the cooked varieties can be made into delicate little cakes which will make up for the lack of a vegetable or do for a luncheon dessert. If there are about two cupfuls or less, mix with one egg and a saltspoonful of salt. Fry in very hot grease using about a dessertspoonful of batter for each cake. They will sputter and be hard to turn, but that merely indicates their good qualities.

If thickening remains lumpy instead of stirring smooth, strain it through a fine wire strainer.

Curdled mayonnaise need not be wasted. If a new dressing is begun and stirred until it begins to thicken, the curdled dressing may then be stirred in as if it were oil.

Cream tomato soup can be kept from curdling if a bit of soda not larger than a pea is stirred into the milk. This holds good for any cream soup or for milk which is to be boiled.

A piece of soda not larger than a pea boiled with vegetables will keep them green.

Boil this same quantity of soda with old, tough vegetables and they will soften.

It makes less odour through the house, and makes the vegetables themselves less strong, if cabbage, cauliflower, onions and some kinds of beans are drained two or three times while boiling, and covered again with fresh hot water. It is better not to put a cover over such things.

If potatoes baked in the meat pan will not brown, they can be browned in a frying pan on top of the stove.

When water has boiled off vegetables and they are burning, remove the pot from the stove and turn the contents quickly and lightly into another pot. Let everything which is inclined to stick, stick. Put hot water on the vegetables and return them to the stove if they need more cooking. Put water and a tablespoonful of baking soda into the burnt pot.

Yolks of eggs, also lemons, will keep longer if laid in cold water.

Pieces of charcoal wrapped in bits of cheese cloth and laid with meat or tucked inside poultry help to keep either sweet.

If the cook must be a long while absent from the kitchen while fowls are roasting, strips of bacon pinned across their breasts and legs will baste the fowls for her.

If the fire is too hot for broiling, or if for any reason the broiler may not be used, heat the frying pan hot without greasing it. Lay the meat in the pan first on one side then on the other. The result is much like broiling, some people even prefer this method.

2. SOME SUBSTITUTES FOR ARTICLES CALLED FOR BY RECEIPTS

_For milk._--Water, or milk and water, may be used in either cake or bread when receipts say milk with little variation in result except that bread and cake thus made dry more quickly.

Sour milk may be used in mixtures which require sweet if just enough soda is put into it to make it sweet, and the baking powder is measured grudgingly.

Sweet milk may be used when a receipt calls for sour if lemon juice is stirred into it until the milk thickens.

_For celery in salad._--Use tender cabbage and celery seed. Or use endive.

_For chicken._--Excellent substitutes for chicken croquettes and chicken salad can be made of veal or of young pork.

_For cream._--Use milk and double the quantity of butter.

_For butter._--In cake, use half butter, half lard and a pinch of salt.

In cookies, one may risk using three-quarters lard, if the lard is very good and the available butter very poor. In less delicate cookery lard, sweet drippings or chicken oil may be used. Before using any of these substitutes salt them a little.

3. STAINS AND SPOTS

_Fruit and wine stains._--If fruit juice or wine is spilled at table, cover the spot with salt. The salt lessens the stain, saves the appearance of the table, and diverts attention from the culprit who did the spilling.

Boiling water poured through fruit or wine stains will usually remove them entirely. If it does not, try a weak solution of oxalic acid.

_Coffee and tea._--Pour boiling water through the stains until they disappear.

_Ink and iron rust._--Cover a spot of either ink or iron rust with salt wet with lemon juice and lay it in the sun. Repeat until the spot disappears.

Or, use salts of lemon and sunshine in the same way.

Or, if the material stained is white linen or cotton try chlorinated soda.

Sometimes ripe tomato will remove ink stains.

Sometimes soaking them in milk will take them out.

Often an ink-eradicator such as is sold to remove writing from paper will take ink spots out of white material.

_Paint._--Turpentine will remove paint from fabrics, also from glass or iron.

_Mildew and grass stains._--Try lemon, salt and sun applied as for iron rust.

Try diluted oxalic acid.

If the material stained is white, try boiling it in buttermilk.

Try alcohol for grass stains.

Or rub them with molasses and then thoroughly wash the fabric.

_Grease spots._--If the article may be washed, try washing it with cold water and white soap.

Or, moisten it with a strong solution of household ammonia and water, cover with blotting paper and iron dry.

Or, sponge with a mixture of four parts alcohol to one part salt.

Powdered French chalk will often remove grease spots from silk or woollen materials.

Tar, carriage grease or machine-oil may usually be removed by rubbing the material with lard and then thoroughly washing it with soap and water.

Spots of candle grease will disappear if they are covered with blotting paper or coarse fibred brown paper and ironed with a hot iron.

_Kerosene._--Kerosene spilled on books, rugs or furniture will quickly disappear if they are held near a hot fire or a gas jet. Not nearer than your hand can bear. Sometimes if the article is left in strong sunshine all day, the spots will disappear.

_Blood stains._--Wash first with clear cold water.

If the stain is obstinate wet with kerosene, then wash in warm suds.

_Stained hands._--They are improved by the application of any of the following: vinegar, lemon juice, pumice, ripe tomatoes or dishwater.

_Note._--Colour taken out by an acid can usually be restored with an alkali. Colour taken out with an alkali can usually be restored with an acid.

4. ANNOYING CREATURES

_Ants._--Powdered borax sprinkled on shelves and along baseboards and door sills will keep ants away.

Ants will not walk over broad, thick chalk lines. Such lines drawn round boxes and jars some distance above the shelf or floor on which they stand will protect them from ants.

Ants and other crawling insects may be kept out of a cupboard which stands on legs, if its legs are set in bowls or cans of water.

To wash cupboards and shelves with a strong solution of alum and water (1 lb. to 2 qts.) is a protection against any kind of insect.

_Mice._--An excellent defense against mice is a velvet-footed, self-possessed, Epicurean Philosopher in the shape of a cat.

Traps are good if one may not have a cat.

Seek diligently for holes large enough to admit mice and have them stopped. If you discover one unexpectedly and have nothing else at hand, thrust a piece of yellow soap into the hole. I have not yet found among mice the counterpart of the gentleman who cleaned his teeth with yellow soap for the sake of self-discipline.

Poison is a poor expedient for ridding the house of mice. Whatever may be said in the advertisements, poisoned rats and mice frequently die in the walls or in the cellar and make life miserable in the neighbourhood.

It is with reluctance that I suggest attacks upon mice. I must hasten to finish them, for a little later in the evening a tiny, palpitating, silken, gray ball with bright eyes will come and sit on my desk and eat crumbs. What if he should sit down on this page and see what my housewifely conscience compels me to write, but not always to act upon!

_Moths._--Gum-camphor, tar-camphor, turpentine, pepper, a large collection of patent substances, extreme cold and extreme heat are all objectionable to moths.

Ways of packing articles to protect them from moths have been given in the chapter on house cleaning.

Careful sweeping and dusting, and frequent airing of clothing and hangings are excellent and natural preventatives of moths.

_Water-bugs and cockroaches._--Keep places where they congregate dry and clean. Practically all the well-known roach foods and roach salts effectually prevent these creatures, but none are effectual in places which are allowed to be dirty or damp.

_Bedbugs._--If a housewife has ever had the least trouble with these creatures there is one warning to take to heart and constantly obey: Watch! Complete extermination is extremely difficult. Sometimes after two or three years of absence they appear again. Besides there is always danger that they may be brought into the house from a street car or a laundry or some such place.

If one finds a few of these creatures, apply creosote, or corrosive sublimate, or some patent poison to the bed or cracks where they were found. Apply the poison with a feather or a squirt. Be sure to mark the bottles containing it with the word "_Poison_" and keep them where they will not easily be found by others than the housewife.

If one makes the horrifying discovery that a room is really infested with these creatures, then indeed one must fight hard and unceasingly. Paint and varnish are a great help in such cases. If the room is papered, remove the paper, fill every crack first with poison, then with plaster of Paris. Paint or calcimine the walls instead of papering them again. Fill every crack in the woodwork with putty, have a moulding put over the place where the baseboards meet the floor, and paint or varnish all the woodwork so thick that there are no cracks. Wash the bed and the furniture in the room and varnish all their underneath and unfinished parts. Then, every day when the room is put in order, seek these flat, brown creatures everywhere.

5. BURNS AND STINGS

Keep in the kitchen a few soft, old white rags for wrapping burns, cuts, bruises and other injuries. Keep also for these hurts a bottle containing two teaspoonfuls of borax dissolved in one quart of water; or two ounces boracic acid dissolved in one quart of water. Either of these mixtures is healing, soothing and antiseptic. Always wrap burns; air aggravates them. Keep them wet with one of these solutions and the pain will soon be allayed. Wrap burned fingers separately, or they will stick together.

An excellent remedy for scalds is always at hand in the kitchen--the flour dredger. Cover the scalded place thick with flour and keep it covered.

Stings and bites of insects should be kept wet with ammonia for ten or fifteen minutes, or covered with baking soda wet with water. Clean mud from a garden bed or a flowerpot is also excellent for them.

6. SERVING OF MEALS FOR THE SICK

Meals for people who are in bed are an emergency of housekeeping. In their preparation, economy should not be exercised unless it is grievously necessary. Sick people are easily annoyed and often have no appetite; sometimes they have even a disgust for food. The necessity then is that their food should be the best, the freshest, the most inviting and the most carefully cooked.

It is also important that food should be really hot or really cold when it is intended to be. Coffee or tea served in a little pot or in a covered pitcher rather than in a cup will be hotter and not spilled over into the saucer. Plates and cups which are to contain hot food should be heated very hot, they will be cool enough for use by the time they have been carried upstairs. If the tray must be carried any distance cover hot food with heated plates and bowls. For butter or ice cream or any food which must be cold to look or taste agreeable, chill the plate on which it is to be served and cover it with a chilled bowl or plate. In hot weather put the butter on a little lettuce leaf, or lay a tiny piece of ice beside it.

The appearance of an invalid's tray is often the cause of appetite or of the lack of it. The linen should always be perfectly fresh, the food in small quantities and daintily arranged. The dishes may well be the daintiest and prettiest in the house, and should be small enough for easy use. A flower or a geranium leaf is a pleasant addition to the tray.

Before bringing a meal to an invalid, go and see that she is comfortable. If one has not an invalid's table, it is well to put a pile of books or boxes on each side of the sick person on which the ends of the tray can rest. It takes strength and nerve to balance something on one's lap when half lying down.

7. GUESTS

Including guests in the chapter on emergencies is not intended as a discourtesy. They owe the classification to the fact that they are sometimes unexpected and always need a little special thought and care, however simply they are received.

It does not seem to me that the people who make no preparations whatever for guests are any more in the right than those who make themselves sick-in-bed getting ready for them.

It is not necessary to sweep the whole house, clean the attic and whitewash the cellar in preparation for a guest, but it does seem that a room should be carefully made ready for them and that more space should be cleared for their possessions than two hooks in the closet and perhaps a bureau drawer.

Certain things which it is pleasant to have in a guest room are in the following list:

An empty closet and empty drawers.

Drinking water, at night, because a guest cannot wander round at night seeking what he needs.

A candle and matches close to the bed, because something may happen to the lighting arrangements, or the guest may forget where they are.

A wash cloth, a piece of soap, a brush and comb, pins and a whisk broom, because these things are easily and frequently forgotten by a traveller.

A wrapper, a pair of bedroom slippers, and a Bible. These three are especially for transient guests as they are apt to be heavy and large to carry in a travelling bag.

If the guest-room bed is very daintily covered, it is well to have a place, other than the bed, where a guest may lie down.

The bed should be opened at night because a stranger often feels a helpless ignorance of the intricacies of shams and counterpanes and unaccustomed methods of bed making.

The degree of preparation made for meals offered to guests should be governed by the occasion. When people are formally invited into your home for a meal, it is natural that special preparations should be made for them, and quite right, provided the repast does do not exceed what you can afford or serve without evident anxiety. Unexpected guests and guests who stay a few days or more ought to be taken into the regular life of the family, with only such departures from the usual order as the use of finer linen, or flowers on the table, or the preparation of some dish which the guest is known to care for.

There are several small reasons why it is not wise to make a sudden change in the family ways for the sake of impressing a guest. One is that some candid member of the family is sure to speak of the change or betray it by awkwardness; another is that the guest is sure to find out the alteration by this means or some other; and another is that "company manners" and "company menus" produce an awful restraint which even a cordial family and a genial guest cannot break through.

Then there are two large reasons for not trying to impress a guest; it is artificial and untrue, and it kills natural, simple hospitality. If entertaining is made a great trouble and expense, many people cannot do it. And this is a real misfortune because the reception of guests is a necessary part of family life. It is a pleasure, it brings new knowledge and new experience, it is an opportunity for kindliness, it diverts people's minds from themselves and besides, it is a sacred duty.

A good many times I have seen trouble in a family or in a school completely done away by the coming of an interesting guest. Probably every one knows instances when a guest has brought a great happiness or a great blessing. For there is much truth as well as loveliness in those old tales of angels entertained unawares, of the weary stranger sheltered who proves to be the king, and of travellers lodged for a night who departing leave exhaustless gifts.

XVI

SERVANTS

WHATEVER is said within the next few years of the situation known as "the servant question" must be in the form of a theory or of an opinion. For the question is still unanswered, the problem unsolved.

There are two things which each woman can do toward solving this problem; one is to find out all she can about it in general, and the other is to deal as wisely and calmly as she may with the particular servant or servants in her care.

One of the most obvious things about the situation is that there is something very much the matter. Listen for only a few minutes to a group of women talking about their servants and you will hear a most disheartening list of complaints. Discount this list somewhat on the grounds that people are inclined to magnify their troubles, and then consider how it compares with the complaints made of the "hands" in a factory or in a mill. There will be many points of likeness and identity, but in such a comparison one serious difference between the problem of domestic service and other labour problems cannot fail to become apparent. This difference is that each domestic servant comes into individual and personal relation with her employer and lives in her employer's home, distinctly affecting with her disposition and behaviour the family life.

One can vividly realize the peculiar troubles which can arise from this situation by picturing the anxieties and annoyances that the superintendent of a mill or a factory would suffer if he were suddenly required to become the head of a lodging house for his employees.

Our situation is not quite so serious in regard to numbers as his would be, but, none the less, we have constantly to take into our homes women who differ from ourselves in nationality, class, education, personal habits, tastes, standards--in fact, in so many things that a daily and unavoidable relationship is most difficult and irksome.

Nor are the trials of this relationship entirely borne by the mistress. Is it not a fact to be considered deeply, not to say humbly, that girls prefer to work in factories and stores for poor wages and to live in wretched lodging houses, rather than to receive good wages and live in our homes? What is there in this relationship of domestic service which the workers on their side so much dislike?

Also, a maid feels the incongruity we have mentioned between the family in which she lives and herself. A maid-of-all-work, especially, can hardly fail to be very lonely. The lack of fixed work hours in this service deprives the maid of personal liberty and of any protection from unreasonable demands. From morning till night and from night till morning she is at the mercy of the whims and temper of another woman. She knows that in this occupation she will be ranked lower socially than her acquaintances who do not "live out." She knows, also, how little respect her work commands even from those who are benefited by it. Even the kindest of us sometimes say, "She looks like a _cook_" or, "I feel as if I were dressed for the intelligence office." If we speak like that of an occupation, is it surprising that women wish to avoid it?

It is not hard to deduce from the complaints made on both sides that the problem of domestic service is a problem of personal relationship. Its solution then depends upon the discovery of a possible and wise relation between mistress and maid, which it will become the general purpose to establish and preserve.

At least two alternatives lie already before those who would discover this relationship. One is to recognize and endeavour to perfect the system of domestic service which has been for centuries in use; the other is to develop and establish a new system which lies as a possibility in the minds of many people and has been sporadically tried. For convenience, I shall name these two and call the first, the patriarchal system, the second, the business system.

The patriarchal system of domestic service has been in use some time. It probably began when the first woman brought the first man his food for love's sake. Then one day she was ill or the baby needed her and she asked some other woman to take it to him for the sake of neighbourliness. Then perhaps in a time of dearth it occured to an impoverished woman to serve another for the sake of food and clothes--and so it all began.

Up to a very recent time servants were often permanent members of the household. The phrase "a family servant" and a very few representatives of the class are still with us. The relation between such servants and their masters and mistresses was a personal and moral one. At its best, the servant gave time, work, strength, loyalty and love, for life; the master and mistress gave food, clothes, shelter, protection, nursing, affection and a home, for life.

One cannot say how widely this ideal prevailed, but certainly it once existed in thought and fact as it does not now. Times have changed, have they not? And changed so quickly that we hardly know just where we are in regard to servants. Servants on the one side, masters and mistresses on the other side, have dropped the responsibility out of their relationship and yet they fondly expect other things to remain unchanged. One woman complains that her servants are "disrespectful," another that they are "ungrateful," another that "they do not care anything about her." Suppose a servant should suddenly turn and ask us, "Do you care anything about me? Do you know about my childhood? Do you know how many brothers and sisters I have, and whether my father and mother are yet alive? Do you know what things make me glad or gay, what interests or hopes I have? If I am faithful to you, will you teach me and help me in my ignorance and my sins, and at last protect my helpless old age?"

If your cook should suddenly turn on you with these questions--on you, who own to having fifteen cooks in two months, or even on you who grieve because servants are not respectful, would not either of you discharge her at once and say you were "never so insulted in your life?"

And yet if the patriarchal system of domestic service is to work, we must be able to answer earnestly, "yes," to these questions, and the servant on her side must make the family life and interests her chief concern. She must be like "Black Lize" who lies buried at the feet of her mistress in a northern cemetery, and who told some of her people that _she_ did not leave "the family" after the war as they had done, she "stayed, and put up with things."

Or she must be like two Irish saints whom I know, devout women each consecrated to the service of a family. One hears their feet on the stairs at five in the morning going out to Church, and again going up to bed late at night after the last young mistress is undressed and comfortably at rest. They live here or there as others choose; they go out or stay in, sleep or stay awake, wait long or hurry madly as other people wish; they are the chosen companions of the ill, the sad and the difficult members of the family; they have given up their own family ties to share the fate of another family; they have no end in life except to serve.

This patriarchal system asks a good deal of mere human creatures, does it not? And one cannot say positively what the business system will ask because it has not been tried, but it seems probable that it would ask as much only in different ways.

It is time, though, to consider what the requirements of the business system might be, because many people think that domestic service will before long undergo some such change as has come over the professions of teaching and nursing in the last half-century. Any one who will read the novels of Miss Bronté and of Miss Austen, of Thackeray and of Dickens with special attention to the governesses and nurses they contain, is likely to feel surprise, however well he may know the histories of these professions.

Particularly consider "Shirley" for governesses and "Martin Chuzzlewit" for nurses and then picture the teachers and nurses of to-day, and it will not be hard to believe that in fifty years the profession of domestic service may also be so changed in status that no woman will feel it a social descent to employ herself therein.

What will the relation between worker and employer be then, and what will be required of each?

The relation would doubtless be that of a business contract such as one has with a teacher, a typewriter or a nurse. The employer could not ask for respect, but for business courtesy; she could not expect gratitude, but rather skilled service for value received. Her responsibility for her employee would consist in paying her wages, in providing her with "sanitary surroundings," in requiring only a definite number of hours of work from her, and in regarding her with the same sort of human consideration which is used toward other wage earners. In all probability these things would be required of the housekeeper by law, as they are in greater or less degree required now of employers of labour. Women would have to know more about housekeeping than many do now, to be able to direct professional workers. They would have to give up using the word servant and the manner and feeling which sometimes go with it, or their employee would probably seek another position.

The employee would not be a member of the household; she would usually sleep out of the house and come in for work hours, she would not take her meals with the family any more than she does now but it would be for the same reason that your husband's superintendent or secretary does not go out to lunch with him. She would expect the wages which were customary for her training and work hours. She would not be expected to have any especial attachment for her employers other than that arising from the fact that they fulfilled their business contracts and treated her courteously. She could not expect to have incompetency ignored, nor to learn her business from those who were paying her the wages of a skilled worker.

Would you like these requirements any better than those of the patriarchal system?

These are just two sketches of the possibilities of an old system and of the probabilities of a new one.

The problem, as you must personally meet it, unsolved, unclassified, little understood and a good deal discouraging is even now perhaps getting dinner in the kitchen. Probably the best plan for dealing with her at present is to use a little of both systems. It is wise to be very business-like about some things. "Days out," for instance, ought not to be interfered with except in case of family calamity. If the maid chooses to spend them at home, they should be as much hers as if she had gone out. Sanitary surroundings are another thing. I hope that if I looked into your maids' room I should not see that there was no light, no heat, a double bed for two maids who are strangers to each other and the most meagre washing conveniences. It is useless to say that it is better than their homes, it is not their homes, it is _your home_. When an inspector goes to see about factory conditions, he does not say, "It's well enough, it's as good as their homes." Another thing about which we should be business-like is the matter of hours. We should be as particular that our maids do not work sixteen hours as if we had a Trades' Union compelling us to be. A business-like point-of-view would also preserve us from despising a necessary and useful occupation. I have mentioned the careless way we speak of it sometimes, but what I think really matters more, is that some women would rather put up with lying, stealing, and immorality in a maid than take the risk of having to do her work. On the maid's "day out," likewise, some of us do as little of her work and do it as slightingly as we can, and she knows it.

But we shall need the patriarchal method in dealing with maids personally. They are of many nationalities; they are untrained, untaught; they have different customs, different manners, often different feelings from ourselves. We shall need much knowledge and human sympathy to understand them; much patience and quietness to teach them. We shall have to explain things which are new to them a great many times and very simply. We shall have to tell them definitely a few things which we require, and we must keep them and ourselves faithfully to these requirements. We must not lose our tempers with them because this lessens our authority, and besides, it is inexcusable to lose one's temper with a subordinate. We must not expect sympathy from them in the trouble they give us. We shall not get it any more than we would get such sympathy from children in school.

It is sometimes a help over a puzzling place to remember that this work has a resemblance to the work of teaching. There is required of us the same willingness to wait long for results, the same patience with ignorance and clumsiness and defectiveness, the same quiet firmness toward carelessness and insolence.

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.

I remember hearing, as a child, a woman say of another who was an immaculate housekeeper: "She swept her sons to the Devil." A puzzling saying to me then, a terrible one to me now, for it was true. Those sons were never allowed in the house till they had taken off their shoes; they were not allowed in the yard because they made a litter. Naturally, they went to those places which opened to them most easily--the street, the saloon, the state's prison.

This is an extreme case, but there are countless others, grading from those as serious as this to those in which homes just miss being comfortable on account of tiny, gnat-like annoyances. They are cases of failure in the woman's profession, and, trivial or great, they arise from the same cause, from the neglect of that thing we don't like about housekeeping--its unique characteristic--its _effacement_. Our work as housekeepers is only notable when it is not noticed. It must be done, delighted in and loved but seldom talked about and always held subservient to other ends. Housekeeping is the servant, silent and effaced, of peace, and home-likeness and health and joy, and of all that we call spiritual in those who form our households.

And therefore, the housekeeper's life is full of little secrets; secrets of suffering and weariness, secrets of amusement and joy. But they are secrets which spoil her work if they are told. If one is a martyr, one must not tell about it. The saints who wore hair shirts did not cut a hole in the front of their clothes to show them. The woman who is always telling how much she has to do and how much she "has to put up with," has not stopped at cutting a hole in her clothes, she wears her hair shirt on the outside to scratch other people with. Do you remember Mr. Pip's sister, in "Great Expectations," who constantly reminded the family that she never took her apron off?

It is natural in this connection to say a word about the care of the housewife's own health and cheerfulness. Better even than to conceal weariness and depression is to have none to conceal. Some women are for years driven and spurred beyond reason by what we please ourselves with calling conscientiousness or energy, but find at last that it was undisciplined ambition, or a stupid lack of system, or that we were blinded to the comfort and pleasure of other people by a determination to sacrifice ourselves.

A woman who does her housework without assistance should expend some of her conscientiousness upon getting a rest. Fourteen hours is too long a work-day for any one. She must get it out of her mind that to rest is to acknowledge defeat and weakness; far from it--it is such a difficult thing to do that she will probably have to learn how. Some people find that it rests them most to lie down and read a pleasant book; others can, or can teach themselves, to sleep. Others, yet, find that to do nothing is like slipping the belt off the fly-wheel of an engine, their minds run the faster for having no work to hold them back. A remedy for this is just to say one's prayers--not prayers of asking, but prayers of realization, of companionship.

There is also relief which should be accepted or secured for oneself as the work is being done. To change one's broom from side to side; to carry a pail first in one hand then in the other; to straighten one's body and fill one's lungs now and again when washing or ironing or sewing; to spare one's hands and feet; to occupy the time spent in long tasks with pleasant thoughts--all these are things which help us to be well and glad and to keep the secret that we are sometimes tired and troubled.

To return now to the other type of housekeeping secrets; it is less unsafe to share pleasant secrets than painful ones, but often even these are better kept. Unusual expedients, surprising shifts, the plan which pops into your head at dinner for using a left-over to-morrow are all better kept to oneself, or at least kept until the thing is so far past that only the funny side of it remains. The girl in Miss Austen's "A Nameless Nobleman," who basted her grandmother's bed-curtains and valance into a wedding dress and refused to tell where it had come from had woman wisdom. Her husband appreciated the joke much more when, a few months later, he saw the same embroidery adorning his bed.

We need to realize the dignity and usefulness of housekeeping; we must recognize that it is an active, clever employment in which there is much to learn, much to be found out; we may well regard it as a profession deserving our strength and time for life--and yet----

We must never be so absorbed in its importance or occupied with its affairs, that we cannot be quiet, and listen. For it may be that across many, many years we shall hear a voice saying lovingly and yet reprovingly: "Martha, Martha----" Perhaps we may need to lie awake and question ourselves, as I think that other Martha must have done in the still night at Bethany. Why should earnest, careful service be unacceptable? Why does a weary guest, who often has hardly the time to eat bread, care little for a feast? Is there something more required of a woman than keeping her household warmed and fed, and something less required than notable success in her own work?

Doubtless that other Martha sobbed herself quiet at last over her failure and reproof, and then in the quietness remembered that in the guest chamber her Guest lay at rest.

XVIII

THE INSPIRATION

INSPIRATION cannot be explained or described. I cannot tell you nor can you tell me what makes the long tasks of housework bearable and its service sweet. But I can tell you some things which come to me when I am weary and disheartened.

* * * * *

There is a picture by Murillo, called "The Angels' Kitchen," of angels with wide wings folded, and star-eyes bent on the daily tasks of housewives.

* * * * *

There is also Brother Lawrence, who had "a great aversion" to the work of the kitchen, but "accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God," and so found "everything easy during fifteen years."

* * * * *

When Lacordaire was asked why he thought it important to keep his tiny secluded room in spotless order, he replied, "The Holy Angels always see it."

* * * * *

The words have been in the ears of the world for centuries, that He took upon Himself the form of a servant. Has it entered into our understandings yet, that to be a waitress or a butler or a cook or a nursemaid or to do the work of them all as a housewife is to take upon ourselves a divine office and companionship.

* * * * *

But it is just of three women that I oftenest think. One is that beggar-maid whom King Cophetua made his queen; another is Griselda whom Lord Walter chose from rags and penury and grievous toil to be his wife; and the last, the outcast, beheld by the Prophet Ezekiel, of marred beauty and defiled garments, yet chosen for love's sake to be a bride adorned and honoured.

Their stories are our stories. We are each one of us both servant and queen; we are each one of us somewhat unlovely, somewhat unable and yet exalted. And in the servant's heart is always the radiant secret, "I am the queen"; and in the queen's heart is always the remembrance, "These lowly tasks belong to me by right."

Doubtless at last when the tasks are done, comes the fulfilment of that vision with which this book began, when the Potter's work will be finished, earth's wheel still, and the clay cup moulded and filled to refresh the lips of the Master who made it.

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Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained.

Page 163, "necesssary" changed to "necessary" (All necessary shaking)