meal of horrid scraps measured out with eager care to the due starvation limit; the tasteless, dreadful “tea” once more at six o’clock, and the bread and water for supper!  And the incessant scold, scold, scold, the cunning inquiries after missing morsels of meat or potatoes, the exasperating orders!  It is too depressing; and, when I see some of the virtuous letters from ill-used mistresses, I smile a little sardonically, and wish that the servants could air their eloquence in the columns of great newspapers.  Some time ago there was a case in which a perfectly rich shrew went away from home from Saturday morning till Monday night, leaving one shilling to provide all food for two young women.  This person of course needed fresh servants every month, and was no doubt surprised at the ingratitude of the starvelings who perpetually left her.  I call up memories of homes, refuges, emigration-agencies, and so forth, and do most sternly and bitterly blame the mean shrew for mischief which well-nigh passes credence.  There is nothing more delightful than to watch the dexterous, healthy, cheerful maids in well-ordered households where the mistress is the mother; but there is very little of the mother about the mean shrew—­she is rather more like the slave-driver.  “Stinted means,” observes some tender apologist.  What ineffable rubbish!  If a woman is married to a man of limited means, does that give her any right to starve and bully a fellow-creature?  How many brave women have done all necessary housework and despised ignoble “gentility”!  No, I cannot quite accept the “stinted means” excuse; the fact is that the mean shrew is hard on her dependants solely because her nature is not good; and we need not beat about the bush any longer for reasons.  A domestic servant under a wise, dignified, and kind mistress or housekeeper may live a healthy and happy life; the servant of the mean shrew does not live at all in any true sense of the word.  No rational man can blame girls for preferring the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of domestic service.  If we consider only the case of well-managed houses, then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet eye and bitter tongue!  What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred years ago?  There is a problem.  That girl’s letters to her mistress are simply throbbing with passionate love and gratitude; and the phrases “My beloved mistress,” “My dear, dear mistress,” recur like sobs.  Margaret would have become a fiend under the mean shrew; but the holy influence of a good lady made a noble woman of her, and she became a pattern of goodness long after one rash but blameless freak was forgotten.  All Margaret’s race now rise up and call her blessed, and her spirit must have rejoiced when she saw her brilliant descendant appearing in England two years ago as representative of a mighty colony.