From Memory's Shrine by Carmen Sylva — Read

Of these there are so many -- kind honest hearts, whose worth I learnt to recognise in bygone days, and whom it would be impossible for me to leave unnoticed here. I cannot name them all, but all are in my thoughts, as I select just a few from their number to inscribe among my Penates.

The one I would mention first, the truly excellent women who when Weizchen retired undertook the management of our household, was with us through those especially trying years in which my parents' ill-health and poor Otto's constant sufferings made the interior of our house more resemble that of a hospital than of an ordinary home. Frau Baring was a gentle-voiced, mild-eyed woman past middleage, who had herself experienced much sorrow, and this very fact made her more fitted for the surroundings than a younger, livelier person would have proved. Not that there was anything morose or depressing about our new housekeeper, of whom I happened to see a good deal, it being my mother's wish now that my more serious studies were finished, that I should gain some practical knowledge of the matters under her control. So I was duly initiated into some of the mysteries of her domain, watching her at her work of superintending, and giving orders, learning the art of book-keeping and even making an occasional inspection with her of larders, pantry and linen-closet. As for the results achieved, I cannot look back on these with very great satisfaction, as all such commonplace details of daily life seemed to me scarcely worth the time and trouble bestowed on them, and I by no means relished being called upon to waste any thought on such dry and prosaic matters. Entering the daily or weekly expenditure in an account-book appeared to me the most cruel trial of human patience that could possibly have been devised, but the very horror with which the sight of these dreary ledgers inspired me, did but increase my admiration and respect for all those whose duty compels them to pass their days in the contemplation of dull columns of meaningless figures! In my personal distaste for all the petty details pertaining to the direction of a household, I was therefore but the more disposed to feel sympathy for good Frau Baring, and indeed for all her myrmidons, having often had occasion to observe the conscientious zeal with which all of these, every maid-servant and laundress down to the meanest scullion, performed the duties laid on them. So many instances have I known of these humblest functions patiently and punctiliously discharged, that I for one can never join in the complaints too often raised against the servant-class. Every service rendered us seemed always to be a labour of love, and this experience can surely not have been confined to ourselves alone.