FEBRUARY 191 



can scarcely hope for the qualities we may expect to find 

 in age and ugliness. In considering the merits of a 

 situation, the more educated mind should not fail to 

 look at it from the point of view of the servant. 



After leaving school, village as well as town girls, in 

 a great number of cases, are kept at home for a few 

 years by their mothers. This gives them a love of 

 freedom and amusement which singularly unfits them 

 for the discipline of domestic service. It might be a 

 possible bridging of the difficulty if it became usual for 

 each family, according to its position, to keep fewer 

 permanent servants and give, as a matter of course, 

 more outside help, each of a specialised kind, to be got 

 from girls who have lately left school, and whose 

 mothers would probably not at all object to their earn- 

 ing a little money and doing outside work — let us say, 

 up to two o'clock. A girl who was a good needlewoman 

 at school might be used once a week to repair linen, or 

 to do any other casual mending. I heard lately of a 

 young housekeeper, tired of boys who did their work 

 badly, having obtained excellent assistance from a 

 schoolgirl of sixteen, whom she trained to clean boots, 

 knives, and lamps every morning. A beginning of this 

 kind might, I think, greatly increase the much-needed 

 supply, and, above all, create a means of direct com- 

 munication between the poor and rich, which is still one 

 of the great wants of the day, in spite of all the 

 charitable ladies. Some people would suggest that it 

 might bring infection into the house ; but I really think 

 that the risk is no greater than with everything else in 

 London. There is always a proportion of risk — in the 

 street, the 'Underground,' the omnibus, the Zoological 

 Gardens, the bread, the meat, and, above all, the mUk. 



A proof of the exceeding difficulty that many have in 

 getting employment is to be seen in the large numbers 



