344 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



HOUSEHOLD HELP. 



Of course there are trials to be met ; there is no use in 

 denying it ; for no one with common sense would credit 

 such a denial. But the greatest of these in Florida is 

 servants. 



Every housekeeper, North, South, East, or West, knows 

 full well that her path is not strewn with roses, whether 

 she has servants to do the work (or make more work), or 

 whether to her duties, as wife and mother, must be added 

 those of cook and maid-of-all-work. 



This latter is a position, or rather a combination of posi- 

 tions, held, and held competently too, by hundreds of thou- 

 sands of women in this weary w^orld of ours, and we have 

 yet to see the first man who would have the patience and 

 energy to meet so many varied calls upon his time and 

 temper, nerves and strength, or to master and control so 

 many different branches of duty. 



In no country is the housekeeper's plaoe a sinecure, and 

 we do not claim for Florida an exception to the universal 

 rule, although for obvious reasons the general work of 

 keeping the house clean is certainly less than in the North, 

 where constant winter fires, mud, rain and slush, add heavy 

 items to the sum total of work that was heavy enough 

 before. 



But even in genial Florida, with her sunny, mild win- 

 ters, houses must be kept in order, meals must be cooked, 

 and, worse than all, dishes, pots, and pans must be washed 

 three times every day, twenty-one times every week, ninety 

 times every month — nearly eleven hundred times every 

 year! 



