To begin with—beware of discouragement during the early trial-days of the new maid. Be slow to say, even to yourself: “She will never suit me!” The first days and weeks of a strange “place” are a crucial test for her as for you, and she has not your sense of proportion, your discipline of emotion and your philosophical spirit to help her to endure the discomforts of new machinery.
Looking back upon my housewifely experiences, I am moved to the conclusion that the domestics who stayed with me longest and served me best were those who did not promise great things in their novitiate.
One—“a greenhorn, but six weeks in the country”—frankly owned that she knew nothing of American houses and ways. She was “willing to learn,” and—with a childish tremble of the chin—“didn’t mind how hard she worked if people were kind to her.” I think the quivering chin and the clouding of the “Irish blue” eyes moved me to give her a trial. She did not know a silver fork from a pepper cruet, or a tea-strainer from a colander, and distinguished the sideboard from the buffet by calling the one the “big,” the other the “little dresser.” She had been with me a month when I trusted her to prepare some melons for dessert, giving her careful and minute directions how to halve the nutmeg melons, take out the seeds and fill the cavities with cracked ice, while the watermelon—royal in proportions and the first fruits of our own vines—was to be washed, wiped, and kept in the ice-chest until it was wanted.
At dinner the “nutmegs” appeared whole; the watermelon had been cut across the middle and eviscerated—scraped down to the white lining of the rind—then filled with pounded ice. The succulent sweetness, the rosy lusciousness of the heart, had gone into the garbage can.
Nevertheless, I kept blue-eyed Margaret for eight years. She stands out in my grateful memory as the one and only maid I have ever had who washed dishes “in my way.” Never having learned any other, she mastered and maintained the proper method.
The best nursery-maid I ever knew, and who blessed my household for eleven years, objected diffidently at our first interview to giving a list of her qualifications for the situation. She “would rather a lady would find out for herself by a fair trial whether she would fit the place or not.” I engaged her because the quaint phrase took my fancy. She proved such a perfect fit that she continued to fill the place until she went to a snug home of her own.
What may be called the New Broom of Commerce has no misgivings as to her ability to fill any place, however important. Upon inquiry of the would-be employer as to the latter’s qualifications for that high position, the N. B. of C. may decline to accept her offer of an office which promises more work than “privileges.” But she could fill it—full—if she were willing to “take service” with the applicant.
One of the oddest incongruities of the new-broom problem is that we are always disposed to take it at its own valuation. With each fresh experiment we are confident that—at last!—we have what we have been looking for lo! these many years. She is a shrewd house-mother who reserves judgment until the first awkward week or the crucial first month has brought out the staying power or proved the lack of it.
Officious activity in unusual directions is a bad omen in the New Broom of Commerce. In sporting parlance, I at once “saw the finish” of one whom I found upon the second day of service with me washing a window in the cellar. She “couldn’t abide dirt nowhere,” she informed me, scrubbing vehemently at the dim panes. I had just passed through the kitchen where a grateful of fiery coals was heating the range plates to an angry glow. All the drafts were open; the boiler over the sink was at a bubbling roar; upon the tables was a litter of dirty plates and dishes; pots, pans and kettles filled the sink.
It is well to have a care of the corners, but the weightier matters of the law of cleanliness are usually in full sight.