will receive shoals of letters in reply, from which you may make a selection. Or, lastly, you can apply to the Servant Registry Offices, where servants arc often in attendance, and make your selection on the spot. In any case, however, it is better not to rely on the written certificates shewn by the servants, but to call on some of the ladies under whom they were previously employed, and so get a correct account of their character and usefulness.
It was sometime before my wife could suit herself to a proper servant, and as luck would have it we applied to more than one Registration office. A description of one will suffice. It was a Registration office on a large scale, and as we entered, we saw about fifty or more damsels waiting in the spacious room! And like Haroun al Rashid of old, walking through the slave markets of Bagdad, we were to make a selection among these fair candidates! The process is a very neat one. You pay your five shillings on entering the office, and tell the proprietor the sort of servant you want, mentioning age and qualifications, and the wages you are willing to offer. You are then taken to a side room, and girls answering to your description are then sent to you from the great hall, one after the other, till you have suited yourself. And in about five minutes' conversation,, you are expected to know whether the servant appearing before you, then for the first time, will suit you or not. If for any reason the servant whom you select does not join, or if her character does not appear satisfactory to you from enquiries you subsequently make, you may come to the office again, and make fresh selections till you are suited. No
