She pronounces furthermore, that she “was niver so put upon an’ put about in all her life afore as since into this house she come;” that she “will have the law o’ me for refusing her her rights.”  Finally, and most intemperately, that “the Lord will dale with me for grindin’ the face of a pore, defenceless young cre’tur’ as has had such a pile o’ throuble already.  If her pore, dear brother what was drownded las’ summer was alive, I wouldn’t dare trate her so cruel.”

I stand fast, between breaths, to my resolution.  I relate the true history of the transaction to enforce my appeal to my fellow housekeepers, all over the land, to join hands in a measure which would, I am persuaded, go far toward rectifying a crooked system.

Let each housekeeper, in dismissing a servant, write out without prejudice for or against the late employee, her claims to the confidence of the next employer, and her faults,—­in short, a veritable “character.”  Let her pledge herself to her sister-housekeepers and to her conscience, not to receive into her family one who cannot produce satisfactory testimonials of her fitness for the place she seeks.

In England, a mistress who engages a maid without such credentials is regarded as recreant to her order.  In England, too, the former mistress is held partly responsible for the mischief done, if she turn loose upon other households a woman like Katherine Brady.

The proposed remedy for a crying and a growing evil is so simple that some may doubt its practical efficacy.  Yet the most casual thinker must see the strength as well as the simplicity of a plan which would make skill and fidelity in service the only road to success.  Self-interest, if nothing else, would stimulate our Katies and Bridgets, our Dinahs and our Gretchens, to keep a place, if it were not so wickedly easy to “make a change.”  Our kitchens are overrun and ravaged by Arabs that become, every year, more despotic.

“Who would be free, herself must strike the blow.”  General liberty from this bondage can only be achieved by determined and united effort.  The establishment in every community of a simple organization under the name of The Housekeepers’ Protective Union, that should have but one article in its constitution, and that one be the pledge I have indicated, would cover the whole ground, and effect within a year, permanent reform.  Shall not this appeal be the Alexander to cut the Gordian knot which has, thus far, defied the dexterity and strength of all who have wrestled with the problem?

Who will send me news of the formation of the first Chapter of the H.P.U.?

CHAPTER X.

“ONLY HER NERVES.”

There is a slang expression current among the irreverent youth of the present day, when referring to a man wise in his own conceit, to the effect that “what that fellow does not know is torn out.”  So I, quoting my juniors, begin my talk with the sentence—­for the raciness of which I apologize—­“What American women do not know about nervousness is torn out!”