The Celebrity at Home by Violet Hunt — Read

You don't get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a servant best through its stomach, and don't give them beer, or beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) is worth, and I value my right of free entry.

Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, and sees germs in everything. It doesn't make her any happier. But as for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the wrong place, chivied here and there, with no resting-place for the sole of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don't believe any servant was ever ashamed in her life. 'Tisn't in their natures. They just grin and bear with it -- with the dust, and the scolding too.