England's servant problem is already so hoary that one might suppose there was nothing new to say on the subject. To dwellers in the Far East, spoiled by the unquestioning ministration of Chinese, it must often have seemed that people at Home put up with many inconveni iences of which they hardly appeared conscious, apart altogether from those of which they complained. But the war has added new uncer-fainties to the harassed housekeeper's tremulous hold on her servants. Nowadays, it la not so much whether they are good or bad, as whether you have any at all.' Be thankful for small mercies, and, to vary Polonius a little—Those maids thou hast and their adhesion tried Grapple them to thy board with hoops of Bold.
Even so, the odds are that Government, with whose extravagant ideas of wages no private employer can hope to compete, will outbid you. a The parlour maid in whom you trusted announces one morning that he is going into a munitions factory thirty-five shillings a week, and she please leave as soon as convenient? Seeing that her departure is not likely to be less discomfortable a month hence tha to-day, that the chances of finding another parlour maid are as good this afternoon as they will be this day fortnight, you let her go with the best grace you can muster, with every Prospect of having to clean your own silver and make your own bed "for the duration of the war or longer." And in China one may sack a whole staff in the morning and get another set as good before nightfall!
But the servant problem extend: much farther than the realm of parlourmaids and bootboys. Some odd job has to be done about the house, window glazed or a banister rail mended, for which a man from out- i! side is required. And as one lady put it: "Formerly one sent & postcard and told him to come in; now it must be a letter of entreaty, with explanations that the work will not take long, and that, if he can spare time to look in and see to it, you will be most grateful.""
In shopping, one very soon realizes that the easy days of parcels delivery are over. Messenger boys are almost unobtainable; and they have so clear an idea of their own value that their transit from shop to house en slower and more erratic than it used to be. Everybody totes his or her own parcel now. The highest in the land, who once would no more have thought of carrying even a packet of pins than
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.