for services rendered in various irregular ways.
I can fancy the bill the hatter would receive, for
instance, containing some such items as these:
— To a drop of tallow on master's last new hat,
one shilling; to brushing same wrong way, and
several times knocking it down from its peg in
the hall, two and five. Or imagine the claim
made on the glass and china-man:— To one
dozen wine-glasses, best quality, broken at
different times during past year, one and ninepence;
to mutilating, as by you suggested,
the china tea-service which cannot be matched,
thereby rendering necessary the purchase of a
new set, entire, five shillings; to tumbling
upstairs with the best dinner-service, including
hurt to own wrist, seven and six. The bootmaker,
again, may receive a reminder: — To
rasping master's "uppers " against the stones
for ten minutes every morning, and then
blacking it over so as not to show. Or the dressmaker:
— To burning a hole in missuses new
dinner-dress, and saying that it must have
been done when she dined out, for I noticed it
the very next morning.

Seriously, it is much to be wished that some
repentant tradesman would come forward, and,
turning Queen's evidence, reveal to us what is
the exact nature of the understanding between
servants and tradespeople, how far the last are at
the mercy of the first, how much the cook
expects— besides flattery and grovelling— as the
price of her favour. Unless some such revolution
be made, how are we to get at the truth?
Except those two letters spoken of above—
which, by-the-by, are of incalculable value— and
an anecdote to be immediately related, we have
no direct evidence, though much that is presumptive.
Without direct evidence we never can
hope to get redress. As things are at present,
we are helpless.

A certain gentleman, weary of being cheated,
and determined to break through all the etiquette
of kitchen-life, determined to try the experiment
of hiring a foreign cook. So he took into his
service a Belgian woman of good abilities,
economical in her views, ignorant of the Anglo-Saxon
tongue, unacquainted with the manners and
customs of the British tradesman. This honest
woman used to go forth in the morning, with a
basket on her arm, and used to purchase what
was wanted for the day, paying money down for
what she carried away. It was a grand plan,
there were no mysterious books, no more
accumulating bills, the woman, a good judge, had
the whole of the tradesman's stock to choose
from, and it was not left to him to send
anything he liked, good, bad, or indifferent. But
the whole neighbourhood in which this blessed
Belgian resided, rose up in arms against her,
the servants in the house, the servants of
adjacent houses, and the TRADESPEOPLE. The
revolt was so terrific, the discord so frightful,
that the master of that blessed Belgian was
obliged to give in— as the higher authority
always is obliged to give in to the lower— and
that good honourable woman was discharged!

The foreign tribes who live on the other side
of the Channel, get very much more out of their
money than we do. Perhaps there is not so
much of the commodity in question among them,
and so they appreciate its value more. Perhaps
there is more esprit de corps among foreign
servants: the master whose bread they eat,
being a personage in whose well-being they
really sometimes take some sort of interest.
Perhaps, too, the prevalence of that basket
practice adhered to by the Belgian cook, may
have a tendency to check dishonesty, and possibly
the same object may be in some sort
effected by that plan of living in flats which
enables the master or mistress to keep a watchful
eye over the family retainers. The machinations
to which area-gates and underground floors lend
themselves, are impossible when the kitchen is
on the same floor with the living rooms. Of
course this system has its disadvantages, one of
which is the perpetual smell of cookery which
pervades your dwelling— but, after all, that is
more tolerable than being robbed, and made
a fool of at the same moment.

It would be a great improvement in our
social system if there were more markets — good
markets— in different parts of London, and if it
might become the fashion for ladies to visit
them every day, accompanied by a servant, and
that great and glorious institution— a basket.
A market is a pretty thing. The scene presented
is cheerful, bustling, appetising, delightful. I
pity no one who has to go marketing. How
seductive the butter looks spread out on the
green leaves, and eke the little cream cheeses that
look so innocent and are so desperately indigestible.
And then the eggs, which the old woman
brings out from a secret place behind the stall,
and which are kept for her especial friends and
patrons. What a choice of poultry there is, too,
to select from, and as to the vegetables and the
fruit, ranged on the stall by an artist with a
good knowledge of contrast and an eye for
colour, what combinations of lettuce and beetroot,
of apples and cauliflowers, are possible.
And then the flowers! What an attractive
corner of the market that is where they are
set out, and what an additional zest their
perfume lends to the other fascinations of the
scene.

What consternation will my present words
spread in the circles to which they more especially
apply. What long muttered conversations will
be held by the British tradesman and the British
tradeswoman as they discourse over their business
affairs. When cook comes to pay the
weekly book, how they will all moan together
over these disclosures. "This is a pretty piece
of business," the venerable impostor will begin
— "this is a pretty piece of work, ma'am, for a
parcel of mean-spirited hupstarts as know nothing
about nothing, to go doing all they can to cut
one's profits— as one may say— from under one.
If all the little arrangements by which honest
people work into each other's hands, and help to
profit each other, as all good Christians should
— if, ma'am, all our little hamicable understandings
with each other are to be broken up, and