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 bread into the oven before it was suitably raised, and that as this is one of the details on which a mistress feels bound to insist, he and his mistress parted. To this the candidate responds cheerfully, showing that whatever his other faults may be, obstinacy does not seem to be one of them. He is told that dogs, loafers, and smoking will not be tolerated in the kitchen; to which he replies that he hates dogs, has never learned to smoke, and being a comparative stranger, has but few friends in the city, and none of them are loafers. After these preliminaries his duties begin, and it is but a few days before it is discovered that this cook is a species of "blood brother" of the last one in the item of imperfectly risen bread, that there is an unaccountable number of persons coming to and departing from the kitchen, many of them accompanied by dogs, and that a not very faint odour of stale tobacco is one of the permanent assets of the establishment. The cook cordially admits that the bread is not quite equal to his best, but is sure that it is not due to imperfect kneading. He is particular on that point. The strangers seen in the kitchen are certain " yard brothers" of the coolie, but none of them had dogs, and they are all gone now and will not return—though they are seen again next day. Not one of the servants ever smokes, and the odour must have come over the wall from the establishment of a man whose servants are dreadful smokers. The cook is the personification of reasonableness, but as there is nothing to change he does not know how to change it.

The same state of things holds with the coolie who is set to cut the grass with a foreign sickle, bright and sharp. He receives it with a smile of approval, and is seen later in the day doing the work with a Chinese reaping-machine, which is a bit of old iron about four inches in length, fitted to a short handle. "The old," he seems to say, "is better." The washerman is provided with a foreign washing-machine, which