192 MORE POT-POURRI 



that exist of those terrible harpies called Registry 

 OfiBces, the very maintenance of which depends on 

 robbing the poor girls who seek employment just at the 

 moment they can least afford it. I could quote story on 

 story of how six, seven, or eight shillings are taken 

 from a country girl without the smallest return to her- 

 self ; indeed, in some cases they simply retain any 

 written references which she may have given into their 

 charge at their request. I believe an effort is being 

 made to meet this difftculty by an association called 

 'The Guild of Registries,' and it certainly appears to 

 be sadly wanted. 



A new agency has been lately started on rather 

 different lines in Derby street, Mayfair, and conducted 

 by three house -stewards, who have lived many years at 

 the head of large households. Their idea is that they 

 are perhaps better judges of the kind of servants apply- 

 ing for situations than those with less experience can 

 be. Also they mean to get introductions to clergymen 

 and the heads of schools all over the country, so as to 

 help girls from villages who wish to go into service. 

 The experiment seems to me an interesting one. 



Things must still be very wrong when the proportion 

 of people who keep servants is so very small, and that 

 of the poor population so very large, and yet we con- 

 tinually meet with the complaint that servants, espe- 

 cially under -servants, are so difilcult to find. 



As we get older, we, most of us, step into shoes 

 we should have vowed in our youth we never would put 

 on, and each one in his generation sees some progress 

 in civilisation which has ruined servants, and feels that 

 good servants are far more rare and difficult to find than 

 they were twenty, thirty, or (say) fifty years ago. Good 

 servants — by which I mean unselfish, devoted human 

 beings — are never likely to be a great glut in the 



