* * * * *

 Look before you sleep.

* * * * *

 Never put an excursion ticket in the mouth.

* * * * *

 Long hair never made true poets.

* * * * *

 Obesity always carries weight.

* * * * *

 Look after your manners and your friends will look after themselves.

* * * * *

 Cranks of a feather fight together.

* * * * *

 All is not toil that blisters.

* * * * *

 To Sea Anglers: 

 A live catch is no better than a dead fish.

* * * * *

 Better a place in the sun than a plaice on a hook.

 PETER PIPER.

 HEALTHY HOMEMAKING.

 XXI.  HIRED HELP (continued).

What is the homemaker of limited means, who must have some help, to do under present conditions?  Well, meantime, there is only the young “general” for her, either the “daily girl” or one who “lives in.”  Of the two I prefer the “daily girl,” when she can be obtained.  And the younger she can be obtained, other things equal, the better.  She will have fewer bad habits to overcome.  Some housewives object to the daily girl on the score that she may bring dirt or infection from her home, and also because she can seldom arrive early enough to help get breakfast.  But a little management overnight can reduce the labour of breakfast getting to a minimum, and if the “outings” of the girl who lives in are as frequent as they ought to be the risk of her carrying infection, etc., will always apply.

The “daily girl” has definitely fixed hours of work and the same chance of enjoying a measure of home life, of keeping her friends and individual interests, as the typist or factory worker whose lot the domestic servant so often envies; while her employers are not faced with the alternatives of condemning a young fellow-creature to a solitary existence or forcing an unreal companionship which is equally irksome on both sides.  It is true that the wages of the “daily girl” do not equal, in actual money, those of the factory worker, neither does she obtain the Saturday half-holiday or the whole of Sunday free.  But to set against this she receives her entire board and, with a kindly mistress, is not tied down to staying her full time on days when she is “forward” with her work.

The life of the young “daily girl,” if her employer is a conscientious woman, need not be hard nor unpleasant; very little harder and no more unpleasant than the lot of the young “lady” who is paying from L60 to L80 per annum to learn cookery, laundry and housework at a school of domestic economy.  Properly conducted, the relations between