Page:Family receipt book.pdf/6

6 SERVANTS.

The practice of hiring domestie servants for six months at once has partly given place to engagements of one month. It is better that the term hired for at the first should be short, and if both parties are pleased, a re-engagement can easily be made afterwards. In this manner there is no vexatious obli-gations to keep together, and a separation can always take place amicably. Many servants remain years in a place, thongh hired on the understanding that it is only from month to month, or, what is the same thing, hired for no fixed period, but just so long as both parties agree; and that, in the event of any dissatisfaction, there shall be a weck or a month's warning given to leave. A good mistress generally makes a good servant. She endeavours to seek out and attach a good servant to herself. She effects this attachment and good-will by simply laying before the servant her line of duties, or what is expected of her, and then leaving her to exeeute these duties in a regular methodie manner. No servant likes to be interfered with in her work, or to be called away from one thing to do another; nevertheless, some mistresses are not happy unless they are going in and out of the kitchen, or bustling up and down the house, ordering, and counter-ordering or in some other way worrying the servant out of all patienee. We advise the young housewife to prescribe to her servants, in plain terms,the duties which she expects they will daily and regularly exeeute; and if the servants are unfit to perform them, it is better for both that there should be a separation. Where two or niore servants are engaged, the precise duties of each should be expressly defined, in order to prevent dispntes be-tween them, and that the work of the house may be duly and properly-performed.

WOODEN FLOORS,

If kept in order by daily sweeping and other small attentions, may be effectually cleaned by washing them with warm water and soap; but if spots of grease are to be removed, the spots must be previously taken out by fuller's earth. Ink spots may be discharged with spirits of salt. The floors of bed-rooms should be washed as seldom as possible. It is most dangerous to the health of the person who occupies the bed-room to wash or scour it, unless the weather be fine, to allow the window to be opened for thoroughly drying the room before night. A damp mop may, when necessary, be passed lightly over the floor.