It risks one's immortality. Give me the wicked city for
pasturage--and a friend who will run a farm, at his own risk, and give
me the benefit of it."
CHAPTER XLVIII
MAIDS AND MALLARDS
We have so rarely entered our house with the reader that he knows little
of its domestic machinery. So much depends upon this machinery that one
must always take it into consideration when reckoning the pleasures and
even the comforts of life anywhere, and this is especially true in the
country. We have such a lot of people about that our servants cannot
sing the song of lonesomeness that makes dolor for most suburbanites.
They are "churched" as often as they wish, and we pay city wages; but
still it is not all clear sailing in this quarter of Polly's realm. I
fancy that we get on better than some of our neighbors; but we do not
brag, and I usually feel that I am smoking my pipe in a powder magazine.
There is something essentially wrong in the working-girl world, and I am
glad that I was not born to set it right. We cannot down the spirit of
unrest and improvidence that holds possession of cooks and waitresses,
and we needs must suffer it with such patience as we can.
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