One of the most trying situations for a maid-of-all-work, is in a house where there are lodgers. She will, very likely, have to take everything at once to everybody at once. She will be having the first floor and the two-pair back clamouring at the same time for the only tea-pot in the house, while the parlour will be calling angrily for his boots, which have been taken by mistake, to the garret, who is writhing in intense agony for his highlows.
THE COOK
For ages it has been believed that a certain wicked person sends cooks; but Johnson has well observed, and so by the by have Smith and Brown, that "if we had no cooks, we should be as bad as cannibals."
Butler.—"Master says you're to have a glass o' this before you go, Mrs. Giles. Now, that's some rare good stuff, that is, an' will do 'ee a world o' good!"
Mrs. Giles.—"Well, it certainly do taste better than the physic I be in the 'abit o' takin'!"
Cooks have always been the subject of sarcasm, and Jones tells us that even in his day the wits loved to give the cooks a good roasting. It is said, moreover, that "too many cooks will spoil the broth," from which we may presume that, as the workhouse broth is the very worst in the world, a great many cooks must have a hand in it. Apicius was the first man who made cookery a science, and he poisoned himself: no doubt with his own cookery. He invented several sauces, and was, in fact, the Roman Harvey. He is believed to have been the first who added the trimmings to legs of mutton, and he took for his motto the line in Virgil:—
"At Regina gravi jamdudum saucia curâ."
because the luxury of gravy, jam, sauce and curry are all shadowed forth in the quotation alluded to.