Our enthusiasm for the alleged joys of an alleged New York home was now decidedly on the wane, and we were face to face with the problem that New Yorkers are strenuously trying to solve: how to live in apparent decency without one. We did not dare, just at present, to do more than reflect upon the intricacies of the enigma. We were, however, disillusioned. The old order of things, to which we still clung, had gone out of fashion, and we began to realize it.

Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle (nÉe O'Shaughnessy) and her niece left us next day, with the reluctant aid of the police. Their awakening was not that repentant return to the normal condition that we had confidently expected. Madame's temperament was evidently not addicted to remorse. She was inclined to be violent in the morning, and we were roused by the noise of a hand-to-hand conflict between our hired ladies, in which the finger-nails of each seemed to play leading rÔles. So I was obliged to telephone for a policeman, who (being named Doherty) seemed a trifle uncertain whether he had been called in to remove Letitia and myself or the Irish Gauls. Apparently he thought that we deserved his attention more picturesquely than they did. A sort of masonic sympathy established itself between Mr. Doherty and Mrs. O'Shaughnessy. Letitia and I felt almost de trop—as though we were spoiling sport or playing gooseberry. I managed to intimate to Mr. Doherty, however, that though American, I was still master in my own house. In due course, the policeman and the ladies left. In spite of the distasteful memory of Monsieur Hyacinthe de Lyrolle, I fancy that the chÈre Madame was not utterly disgusted with the sex to which he belonged.

The ensuing week was principally devoted to unexpected payments for unexpected things debited to my account by Madame Hyacinthe. Some philosophic people declare that it is a pleasure to pay for what one has had and enjoyed. That may be true. I will not argue the question. I assert, however, that it is difficult to find pleasure in paying for what one has never had, and that somebody else has enjoyed. An adjacent ice-cream parlor sent me in a large bill for ice-cream sodas that had been served in my apartment, at the rate of two or three times a day, during the sojourn of the French ladies. A drug store plied me with an account for various items, the advantages of which we had never reaped. For ten days I was busy settling up. It was the "joy of surprise" with a vengeance. Madame had thoughtlessly omitted to clothe herself at my expense. A few tailor-made gowns and ruffled silk petticoats would have added to the joyous revelations.

"When I read," said Letitia, "of the silly New York women who don't know what a home means, and who offer prizes to servants who keep their places, my blood boils. Prizes to servants who keep their places! The prizes should go to the poor housekeepers who are able to overcome their sense of repugnance sufficiently to admit these creatures into their houses, and keep them there."

"The women who talk most about the servant question, my dear," I said sententiously, "are the over-dressed, underfed matrons you see at the lobster palaces, who live on one meal a day, which they take at a restaurant, and spend their mornings in curl-papers and wrappers."

"What I can't understand," resumed Letitia reflectively, "is the total disappearance of what we read about as the dignity of labor. Surely, Archie, it has a dignity. Some people must work for the benefit of others. If everybody had to dust, and sweep, and sew, and cook for herself, what would become of all the graces of life, of literature, art, music? I don't see anything so disgraceful in housework. We can't all be equal, can we—except in theory? Why, when you see two people together for just five minutes, you can note the superiority of the one, and the inferiority of the other."

I had no desire to be dragged into an economic discussion. My mind was not in a condition serene enough to grapple with it. I had just paid out nearly eleven dollars to the ice-cream and candy purveyor who had surreptitiously cooled Madame de Lyrolle's "innards."

"I suppose," continued Letitia, "that the reason New York women look so much nicer than they are is that the poor things have no time to do anything for their own mental refinement. They must eat like paupers, live like laborers' wives, and rely for their only pleasure upon clothes and a nocturnal restaurant. Then they slink back to their joyless 'home' and go to a bed that they have, themselves, made."

"Poor souls!" I sighed.

"You can't blame them for lack of conversational power," said Letitia, "or for want of internal resources. They can't even have children in comfort. Mrs. Archer told me that when she was first married she was so busy, and so uncomfortable, and so pressed for room, and always without a cook, that she literally had no time to have children. She wanted a little boy, but put off having him until she got a good cook. And as she never obtained the good cook, she felt that she had no right to make a poor little boy unhappy."

"Mrs. Archer talks nonsense," I remarked rather severely (I felt it my duty to be severe on this occasion).

"I don't see it at all. The comforts of home are even more necessary in case of children. These wretched creatures who masquerade as servants and who detest you simply because you employ them—and for no other reason—are menaces to safety. Imagine children around with the inebriated, incompetent drudges we have had—"

Poor Letitia was talking "race suicide" with a vengeance, and I was not inclined to pursue the subject. Cook as an exterminator of the human species seemed too glittering a novelty. Yet there was much common sense in what my level-headed little wife said.

"Cook is a tragedy, my girl," I admitted. "The world has had servants for centuries, and the world has progressed. Now that the end of the old rÉgime is at hand and the cook has turned, I can't fancy that the world will be routed. Something new will be discovered, and cook can hang herself. The world must fight its own battles. It is up to the world, and you and I are just atoms."

"Call yourself an atom, if you like, Archie," she said, quite hurt, "but leave me out of it. I hate always being looked upon as an atom and I can't endure scientists. Even if we are very petty and unimportant and mere cogs in the wheel, we don't realize it. And if we did realize it, then we should just submit quietly to be ground down and pulverized. I won't be pulverized just yet. And all on account of cook, too!"

But there was no doubt at all about it. Our enthusiasm was waning, and though we still decided to play the farce for a time longer, our effort was half-hearted. We realized the gaunt impossibility of the thing. We studied the life that was lived around us—the bleak, inhospitable holes that apparently refined people called home; nooks with chairs and tables in them, ornate, and decorated, but devoid of the subtile quality known as atmosphere; crannies where the married he and she hid their discomforts, and turned a brave front to the world; cold and dismal recesses where the casual visitor was offered a glass of ice-water, and where old-fashioned hospitality was as dead as a doornail; houses, in which, except on state occasions and amid sickening ceremony, bread was never broken, and conviviality unknown; barren kennels, unkempt cages, stark nests, cheerless dormitories! Home, in New York, had gone to the dogs, impelled thither by cook!

"Last week," said Letitia, "Mrs. Archer gave a reception. She hired two colored girls and one man for the occasion. There was a whole line of carriages in the street. It was a very nice affair. Mrs. Archer received her guests in a lovely blue silk dress. There were sandwiches tied up with ribbons, delicious patÉ de foie gras, bouillon en tasse, ices, champagne, and all the rest of it. There was music and altogether a most pleasing time. We all enjoyed it immensely. Two days later I dropped into Mrs. Archer's in the afternoon. I was dead tired—almost fainting for a cup of tea. I found her in a dirty cotton wrapper, dusting the pictures, and looking odious. I hinted for tea, but it was no good. She had no servant. At last, in desperation, I asked for a sip of water, and she ran and brought it for me—in a teacup!"

"A cup of tea is certainly not too much to expect," I murmured meditatively.

"The poorest artisan's wife, with seventeen children, and three rooms, could afford a cup of tea," declared Letitia, in pained tones; "but a cup of tea suggests home, you know. Hospitality suggests home. People here have lost the knack of it. These bedizened Jezebels of the intelligence offices have smashed the idea to pieces. One has to set a day for the visitor, and prepare for it two weeks beforehand."

"It must be true," I declared. "People don't drop in to dinner nowadays."

"They can't, because the host and the hostess drop out—to dinner."

It seemed impossible to realize that not so very long ago both Letitia and I had scoffed at the mere idea of the existence of such a thing as the servant question. We had disdained to admit it. We had shut our eyes, and cook had knocked us in the face. We were now as gods knowing good and evil, with more of the latter than the former. Our skittish lives were embittered. The beginning of the end had set in, and the prelude was being played.

Yet we frivoled with a cook or two more. Nobody could possibly accuse us of cowardice. Some may say that we were silly (and to these I simply remark: prove it); but cowardly, we were not. We distinctly warded off the time of surrender. We fought to the last finish, until our cook-mangled bodies gave out in sheer inability to cope with the enigma.

We secured the aid of an ancient lady, who had first breathed the breath of life in Ireland—a country, by-the-by, that talks eloquently of home rule, and yet kindly sends all its cooks over here. However, Ireland's bitterest foes could wish it no worse fate than the sort of home rule that its own cook-ladies administer.

Mrs. O'Toole was sixty years old. She had been a cook, she informed us, for thirty-five years. That time she had apparently devoted to the art of learning how to learn nothing. All she could do was to stew prunes. It had taken her thirty-five years to acquire the knack. I could have stewed the universe in less time. She was most amiable, but had never heard of the most ordinary dishes that the most ordinary people affect. Like Mistress Anna Carter, she had infinite belief in the delicatessen curse—in the cooked-up rubbish that unfortunates throw down their luckless throats—in the instinct that prompts savages to eat earth.

We called in Aunt Julia (poor Aunt Julia! I don't hate her nearly as much now!), in the hope that she might be able to teach Mrs. O'Toole a few rudimentary things, and as cook seemed so affable, we reasoned that she would probably be very glad to learn. But, bless your heart, Mrs. O'Toole had a soul above the sordid question of acquiring culinary knowledge. Aunt Julia cooked and Mrs. O'Toole let her cook!

"If you will just watch me, Mrs. O'Toole," said Aunt Julia politely, "I'm sure you will be able to make this dish to-morrow."

The cook-lady laughed in sheer light-heartedness. "Sure, mum," she said, "I've been thirty-five years without knowing how to make it, and I'm still alive. I've buried a husband and seven children, and have had a good time without all them new-fangled notions."

It was hopeless. Mrs. O'Toole hummed The Wearing o' the Green for the sake of her nationality, and took out her knitting. She was most good-tempered and pleasant about it, but she had no yearning to learn how to cook. Yet she must have had a ferociously arduous time in learning how not to cook. She was charmingly familiar with us both—a real good soul with a rooted objection to the kitchen.

"Yet some of these silly Guilds," said Letitia, "announce that they are going to teach women how to cook. How can they teach women who won't learn? My opinion is that the Guilds would have much quicker pupils if they promised to teach them how to loop the loop."

Mrs. O'Toole was so jovial that I could almost see her looping the loop at Coney Island, and hear her emitting shrieks of Hibernian jollity as she hung head downward in that delightful institution. But I could not—and did not—see her cooking a dinner and laying a table.

She went with as much good humor as she came. We kept her in our midst for a month, not because we wanted her for culinary purposes, but because she seemed able to sit in the kitchen, while we went out to dinner. She was both sober and honest, and had probably generally spent an innocuous month in every place. During a service of thirty-five years she must have graced four hundred and twenty places. Admitting, at a low average, three people to each household, she had therefore catered to twelve hundred and sixty appetites! It was an inspiring thought.

Mrs. O'Toole's successor was an English lassie. At another time, our spirits would have risen at the prospect of an Albionite—a disciple of a country where servants still exist to some extent. As it was, we were so thoroughly discouraged that we had no illusions—which was just as well, as it spared us the annoyance of having them shattered. Katie Smith had been in the country but three days, but the rapid pace at which she had Americanized was the subtlest sort of compliment to New York City.

There was very little that was typically English about her, save a picturesque h-lessness. In return for lost h's she had nothing to offer. Of course, the lack of h's would not have bothered us in the least. Miss Smith was very frank. She had gone wrong "at 'ome," and had been shipped here by her relatives. It was assumed that here she would "go right." We had no objections whatever to her past. Little cared we, in our desperation, for such trivialities as a past. We asked no questions, and were not curious as to her crime. Any old crime would suit us—as long as the criminal herself would let us live in peace.

Miss Smith told us—still archly candid—that she had decided to become a cook, because, immediately on landing, she had been told that Americans were in such dire straits for cooks.

"And have you ever been a cook?" asked Letitia kindly.

"Oh, never," she replied indignantly, in a perish-the-thought tone, "I was a factory lady in the pen establishment of Messrs. M. Myers and Son, of Birmingham. Me a cook! Not I. But, of course, in this country, I don't think I shall mind it, as the wages are high."

Months ago, we should have politely indicated the exact location of the door. Now, we were battered and pulpy, and remonstrance seemed absurd. Again we sent for Aunt Julia (on second consideration, I really like Aunt Julia!) and introduced her to the latest specimen of the genus "clean slate."

My heart, at first, "kind of" went out to Katie Smith, because she had made pens, which are so necessary to me. But Letitia remarked, rather brusquely, that pens are not puddings, and that although they were my bread-and-butter, she had no desire to eat them with hers. I am bound to say that Letitia's moods were becoming most variable. They were as unreliable as April weather. I suppose that the constant surprise was rather wearing on the poor girl.

Miss Smith's career was so short that I might almost call it instantaneous. After having cooked us one alleged dinner, which tasted very much as pens au gratin might possibly taste, she asked Letitia if she might go into the garden, to get the air.

Letitia thought that she was joking. The garden! Perhaps, like the wine-cellar, it was under the bed in the spare room. Letitia laughed, but Miss Smith was serious.

"I couldn't stay in no place where there wasn't no garding," she said. "My! Ain't you cramped up for room, with a kitchen like a blooming cubby-'ole, and all the places so 'ot that one can't breathe. And no garding! What do you do to get the air?"

"You can put on your things and go for a walk, Katie," said Letitia good-naturedly. "Some of the girls in the house get the air, as you call it, on the roof. Would you like to go up on the roof?"

Miss Smith was much amused. "Crikey!" she cried, "me on the roof! No, thank you, mum. I should get giddy, and that wouldn't do. I'm sorry, Mrs. Fairfax, but I must 'ave a garding, for the sake of me 'ealth. There must be a place where I can stroll of an evening."

So Albion's little lassie left us, and we wired to poor Aunt Julia to tell her that she need not bother to come as there was nothing to come for. We were not more dejected than usual, for we had lost hope, and had ceased to garner expectations.

"Perhaps if I asked our landlord to knock down a few of his houses and plant a garden, we might induce Katie to stay," I suggested sardonically to Letitia. "He owns three or four houses on this block. A very nice garden could be made. I wonder if she would like an old rose garden or if she would be satisfied with any old garden? He might even put in an orchard for her."

Letitia sighed. "Yes, dear," she said. "I feel I ought to laugh at your humor, but you'll forgive me, Archie, won't you, if I fail to discover its value? Katie was really not a bad sort, and it is annoying to think that just because we hadn't a garden—"

"But she couldn't cook, my girl!"

"Of course she couldn't cook. You expect too much, Archie. If she had known how to cook she wouldn't have applied for the position. But she knew how to open the front door, and yesterday, when I asked her to bring me a glass of water, she was able to draw it for me. That, it seems to me, is quite an accomplishment for a New York domestic."

One other attempt we made to stem the tide. Mrs. Archer, who sympathized sincerely with our plight and had grown accustomed to her own, which was similar, had heard of a nice fat orphan from an orphan asylum, who had taken the notion to "live out." (The expression "taking the notion" belongs exclusively to the New York hired lady. It symbolizes her state of mind as new ideas dawn upon it.) So we let in the nice fat orphan, and put her in the kitchen. She was a simple, unsophisticated thing, who had been rigidly educated in an excellent Roman Catholic institution, in blissful ignorance of the world in which she was expected to earn her living later.

She burst out sobbing when she saw the lonely kitchen, and refused to be comforted. She had always had young girls around her, she said, and had never been separated from orphans. Letitia told her that she was an orphan, and—as an extra inducement—that I was an orphan. The girl looked at her in blank incredulity and with an expression of dismay. Her idea of orphans was a crowd of little girls in uniform, marching around, two by two. She could not do without this. She had never done without it. She cried so bitterly, that Letitia was touched.

"Poor thing!" she said gently, as she told the story to me, "I only wish we knew some nice young orphans, Archie, to sit in the kitchen with her. But, of course, we don't. It really grieves me."

Letitia irritated me. How could she be gentle, and kind, and tender, confronted with all these wretched subterfuges and false pretenses?

"I might go out and kill a few gentlemen and ladies," I suggested savagely; "and ask their orphans to play with this girl. It is the only way out of the difficulty. Really, Letitia, you are getting quite childish. I have no patience—"

"That is quite true, dear. You certainly have no patience. This girl is most respectable. She is too young to drink, too religious to steal, too friendless to roam around—"

"Too idiotic to be useful—"

"In time, she might be useful," Letitia asserted, though with doubt in her voice. "She is an innocent little thing and I feel sorry for her. I can't help it; I do. She is so helpless! She doesn't even know her surname. She calls herself Rachel, pure and simple. She is not sure how old she is. I hate to let her go, Archie."

"You needn't mind it in the least," I said; "she can walk right out of this house and get any position she wants. She can call herself a first-class cook and people will be glad to get her. When she sees that there are no orphans attached to the ordinary kitchen, she will accustom herself to the idea. You need have no scruples, Letitia. It is the poor devils of men who deserve sympathy in New York. If a woman suffers, it is because she is lazy and worthless."

"How hard-hearted you are!"

"No, I'm not. Never will I give a cent in charity to any begging woman. It is the men who have a hard time in this city. They can have any help that I am able to give them. But to the women I say merely: Learn how to do housework. Take a lesson or two in cooking. Study the home, and you can get good, comfortable positions as long as you want them! Any woman, begging in the New York streets, while thousands of unfortunate people clamor to give them good wages, should be arrested as a useless encumbrance. Those are my sentiments."

"I dare say you are right, Archie," said Letitia, evidently impressed by my fiery eloquence, which bubbled forth, almost unpunctuated. "It seems to me that most of these women would sooner roam the streets in rags, and herd together in tenement houses like cattle, than do the work for which they should be fitted. It is wonderful."

"Not wonderful," I said, "but deplorable. It is the spirit of independence gone wrong—turned against itself—pushed in a painful direction, like an ingrowing toe-nail. A system of education that educates in the letter and not in the spirit, is responsible. The mistaken idea of universal equality is the root of the evil. Shakespeare was no better than the man who blacked his boots; Goethe no bit superior to the women who cooked his hash. Delicate truths like this are instilled into the minds of the people. Silly socialistic men and women who have no use for either the comforts or refinements of life, are the criminals. Idle people who want to turn epigrams find this a fertile theme. Why, Letitia, do you remember when we went to see Candida the other night, we noticed that even a man like Bernard Shaw was not averse from making one of his characters inveigh against the crime of keeping servants? It was Morell, I think, who was indignant that the young poet's father kept so many servants. 'Anyhow, when there's anything coarse-grained to be done,' he said, 'you ring the bell, and throw it on to somebody else. That's one of the great facts in your existence.' A man like Shaw, who lives in refinement, with a delightful home, neat-handed servants, a charming wife, and all the rest of it, can not resist the opportunity to hammer at a scheme that he must know is absolutely necessary."

"You will talk yourself hoarse, dear," said Letitia. "Of course, Archie, it is a showy theme. People who use it can always be sure of making a hit with the gallery. Teaching equality is delightful entertainment for those who could never possibly be equal—who are literally born unequal. Why, Archie, some people, through no fault of their own, are born idiots. How could they possibly be equal to those who were not so born?"

"In the meantime," I continued, "those who are born idiots avenge themselves on society by going out as cooks. It is their little scheme for getting even with the world. This has given cooks a bad name. Nobody cares to be in the same class as the idiot."

"I'm only sorry," murmured poor Letitia, "that I learned Latin instead of cooking."

"But my girl," I said soothingly, "I did not intend to marry a cook, and I would not have you changed in one single particular."

She kissed me. "Just the same," she went on, "I'm sorry. It is an art. There are the arts of Cooking, and Higher Cooking, and Scientific Cooking, that are gastronomies worthy of study. I realize that, now it is too late. Willingly would I substitute Brillat-Savarin for Ovid, if I only could! It is unfortunate."

"My dear," I said, and I drew her to my knee to break the news as easily as possible, "we have come to the end of our tether. As the children say when they have finished playing, we must 'bosh up.' We must make the best of a bad job, and, living in New York, do as New Yorkers do. In fact, our housekeeping must end."

"Oh, Archie!" she cried, her eyes filling with tears; "do you—do you really mean it?"

I bowed my head. It was inevitable.