"You are in want of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article as an "efficient person" ever since I had taken charge of my father's ménage; and after undergoing almost martyrdom with slip-shod, thriftless, good-for-nothing "help," as we Americans, with such delicate consideration, term our serving maids, I had come to the conclusion that indifferent "help" was an unavoidable evil, and that the best must be made of the poor, miserable instruments of assistance vouchsafed unto the race of tried, vexed housekeepers.
"I have just thought," continued my aunt, "of a very excellent person that will suit you in every way. Lizzie Hall, the one I was thinking of, has never been accustomed to living out. Her father is a farmer in our place, but having made a second marriage, and with a young family coming up around him, Lizzie very properly wishes to do something for herself. I remember having heard her express such a desire; and I have no doubt I could persuade her to come to you. She is not very young—about eight-and-twenty, or thereabouts."
I listened to my Aunt Lina's talk with, it must be confessed, indifference, mingled with a little sullenness, and quieted my impatience by inward ejaculations—a vast deal of good do those inward conversations produce, such mollifiers of the temper are they. "So, so," said I to myself, "my Aunt Lina's paragon is a 'lady-help.' Of all kinds 'of help' the very one I have endeavored most to avoid; it is such a nondescript kind of creature that lady-help;" and as I soliloquized, recollections of specimens of the kind I had been afflicted with, came in sad array before my memory—maids with slip-shod French kid slippers, that had never been large enough for their feet—love-locks on either side of their cheeks, twirled up during the day in brown curl-papers—faded lawn dresses, with dangling flounces and tattered edging; then such sentimental entreaties that I should not make them answer the door-bell if Ike, the black boy, might happen to be away on some errand, or expose them to the rude gaze of the multitude in the market-house; and I groaned in spirit as I thought what a troublesome creature the "lady-help" was to manage. During this sympathizing colloquy with myself, my aunt went on expatiating most eloquently on the merits of her protégé, Lizzie Hall. Some pause occurring—for want of breath, I really believe, on my aunt's side—good-breeding seemed to require a remark from me, and I faltered out some objection as to the accommodations a city household afforded for a person of Lizzie Hall's condition.
"Of course," said my aunt, "she will not wish to sit at the same table with the black servants you may happen to have; but Lizzie will not cause you any trouble on the score of accommodations, I'll answer for it, Enna; she is too sensible a person not to fully understand the difference between town and country habits—and if you say so, I will engage her for you when I return to Rockland."
My father, who had been dozing over his paper, gradually aroused himself as this conversation progressed, and as my aunt made the last proposition, he entered into it most cordially, and begged she would endeavor to procure the young woman, and send her by the earliest opportunity. I remained quiet—for I could not say any thing heartily, seeing nothing but vexation and annoyance in the whole affair for me. The young woman was evidently a favorite with my Aunt Lina; and should she not prove a very useful or agreeable maid to me, I would receive but little sympathy from my immediate family. My father is as ignorant as a child of what we poor housekeepers require in a domestic; and my Aunt Lina, though kind-hearted and well-wishing, is in equally as blissful a state. A very indifferent servant, who happened to please her fancy, she would magnify into a very excellent one; then, being rather opinionative and "set," as maiden ladies are apt to be when they pass the fatal threshold of forty, I despaired of ever convincing her to the contrary. "However," said I to myself, "I will not anticipate trouble."
I had just recovered from a dangerous fit of illness, through which my kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking around my chamber; but, alas! the kitchen told a different story when I was well enough to make my appearance there. Biddy, a raw, bewildered-looking Irish girl, with huge red arms and stamping feet, had quite lost her confused, stupid expression of countenance, and was most eloquent in telling me, with all the volubility of our sex, of the "quare ways of the ould maid."
"Sure, and if the ould sowl could only have had a husband and a parcel of childthers to mind, she wouldn't have been half so stiff and concated," exclaimed Biddy.
Even poor little roguish Ike, with mischief enough in his composition to derange a dozen well-ordered houses, looked wise and quiet when my prim, demure aunt came in sight. Complaints met me on all sides, however, for my Aunt Lina was quite as dissatisfied as the rest.
"I found them all wrong, my dear," she said, "no order, no regulation, every thing at sixes and sevens; and as for the woman Biddy, she is quite, quite incorrigible. I showed her a new way of preparing her clothes for the wash, by which she could save a deal of labor; but all in vain, she persisted most obstinately to follow the old troublesome way. Then she confuses her work altogether in such a manner that I never can tell at which stage of labor she has arrived; and when I put them all en traine, and leave them a few instants, I find on my return every thing as tangled as ever. Method is the soul of housekeeping, Enna. You will never succeed without order. I fear you are too easy and indulgent; although I have never kept a house, I know exactly how it should be done. A place for every thing—every thing in its place, as your grandpapa used to say. If you insist upon your servants doing every thing at a certain hour, and in a certain way, your affairs will go on like clock-work."