Respectfully,

MRS. JOHN.

P.S.  No. 2.—­Unnecessarily appended by John.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT:  If we’ve got to go through the whole establishment on transcendental principles, I shall send in my resignation straight.

Sister Jane’s a regular trump; Penelope and queen of Sheba rolled into one.  But when the women-folks begin to preach, I always find it best to keep still and consider my sins.  I haven’t had a chance to say much lately, but I’ve kept up a tremendous thinking, and when I do get the floor look out for me.  How do you happen to know so much about the millennium?

Yours patiently,

JOHN.

LETTER XXXI.

From the Architect.

DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM.

Dear Miss Jane:  Your very kind letter was received and gratefully appreciated.  As the world grows less ignorant and wicked, we should naturally expect missionaries and reformers to find their occupation going, if not quite gone; that modern reforms would be mere play compared with the stern and mighty movements that in former times have blessed mankind and balked the Evil One.  But somehow the need for missionary work seems greater every year.  We are not even permitted to go to the heathen.  They come to us without waiting for an invitation; if not as pupils in the lessons of civilization, they come as teachers.  Sometimes they are aliens, sometimes our own kith and kin.  To keep what we have won and gain the next height requires new zeal, and ever greater efforts,—­requires the very work you are doing; for a well-ordered home, though it consist of but two members, is a tremendous missionary society.  The light streaming from its windows is an ever-burning beacon of safety to our most cherished social institutions.

First and chiefly, this essential home work needs to be taken from the hands of indifferent, careless servants and confided to those who realize the nobleness of the responsibility, and will strive to meet it faithfully.  Ultimately, the ignorant, careless ones must be taught, but that will never be till culture is a manifest necessity and finds a fit reward.  When a man undertakes the charge of a new business, he learns, not only its general principles, but as far as possible, its minutest details, otherwise he fails inevitably, and the place is given to his well-qualified competitor.  If our prospective housekeepers were amenable to similar rules, the competent mistresses of this most useful art would find plenty of apprentices glad to serve them long and well for their tuition, and if those who have now the care of households will patiently instruct their help, they will find abundant recompense in a more faithful and efficient service.