one in receipt of a weekly guinea look with astonishment at a hare which had been sent to her master as a present, and declare that it was ’impossible to make soup out of that thing.’  After a little persuasion she was induced to try to make hare-soup after Mrs. Beeton’s recipe, but the result was such as to try the politeness of her master’s visitors.  This lack of decent cooks is principally due to the lack of establishments large enough to keep kitchenmaids.  Would-be cooks have no opportunity of acquiring their art by training from their superiors; they gain their knowledge by experiments on their employers’ digestions; never staying long in one place, they learn to make some new dishes at each house they go to, and gradually rise in the wages-scale.

Directly you come to incomes below a thousand a year, the number of servants is often reduced to a maid-of-all-work, more or less competent according to her wages, which run from seven to fifteen shillings a week.  At the former price she knows absolutely nothing; at the latter something of everything.  She cooks, washes, sweeps, dusts, makes the beds, clears the baths, and answers the, door.  All is grist that comes to her mill; and if she is Jill-of-all-trades and mistress of none, one must admit that an English-bred servant would not be one quarter so suitable to colonial requirements.  Of course she is independent, often even cheeky, but a mistress learns to put up with occasional tantrums, provided the general behaviour and character are good.  When we were first out here we used to run a-muck with our servants about once a week; but now we find it better to bear the ills we have than fly to others which we know not of.  Our present Lizzie is impertinent to a degree when reproved; but then she can cook decently, and she is the first decent cook we have had since we have been out here.  When you have lived on colonial fare for a few months, a good plain dinner covers a multitude of sins.

Unfortunately, four-fifths of our servants are Irish—­liars and dirty.  These Irish are less impertinent than the colonials; but if you do get hold of a well trained colonial, she is worth her weight in gold on account of her heterogeneity.  Your Irish immigrant at eight and ten shillings a week has as often as not never been inside any other household than her native hovel, and stares in astonishment to find that you don’t keep a pig on your drawing-room sofa.  On entering your house, she gapes in awe of what she considers the grandeur around her, and the whole of her first day’s work consists of ejaculating ‘Lor’ and ‘Goodness!’ We once had a hopeful of this kind who, after she had been given full instructions as to how a rice-pudding was to be made, sat down and wept bitterly for half an hour, till—­her mistress having told her to ’bake’—­the happy thought struck her to put a dish full of rice in the oven, sans milk sans eggs, sans everything.  Another Biddy, engaged by a friend of ours, having to make a yeast-cake, put it under her bed-clothes ‘just to plump it a bit.’  A third, having been given a bill-of-fare for the day, put soup, meat, and pudding all into one pot, and served them up au pot-pourri.