Do you suppose that is a pleasant period, and that we are to criticise you between the ovum and malum, between the soup and the dessert?  I have touched, I think, on this subject before.  I say again, if you want real justice shown you, don’t send your papers to the private residence.  At home, for instance, yesterday, having given strict orders that I was to receive nobody, “except on business,” do you suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, who forced himself into my study, and there announced himself as agent of a Cattle-food Company, was received with pleasure?  There, as I sat in my arm-chair, suppose he had proposed to draw a couple of my teeth, would I have been pleased?  I could have throttled that agent.  I dare say the whole of that day’s work will be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned by my clever young friend’s intrusion.  Cattle-food, indeed!  As if beans, oats, warm mashes, and a ball, are to be pushed down a man’s throat just as he is meditating on the great social problem, or (for I think it was my epic I was going to touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height of the empyrean!

Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my consideration of that little mark on the doorpost, which is scored up as the text of the present little sermon; and which I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor to any of its special uses or abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the like), but to servants.  Surely ours might remove that unseemly little mark.  Suppose it were on my coat, might I not request its removal?  I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon whose forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly recognizable for three weeks after its first appearance.  May I take any notice of this chalk-stain on the forehead of my house?  Whose business is it to wash that forehead? and ought I to fetch a brush and a little hot water, and wash it off myself?

Yes.  But that spot removed, why not come down at six, and wash the doorsteps?  I dare say the early rising and exercise would do me a great deal of good.  The housemaid, in that case, might lie in bed a little later, and have her tea and the morning paper brought to her in bed:  then, of course, Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and knives; cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not; the lady’s-maid would want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her hair, and get her bath ready.  You should have a set of servants for the servants, and these under servants should have slaves to wait on them.  The king commands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord to intimate to the gentleman usher to request the page of the ante-chamber to entreat the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation.  In our little Brentfords