you to sell, and you could not get a chapman till nine at night: you were taking leave of a dear cousin who is to be hanged next Saturday: you wrenched your foot against a stone, and were forced to stay three hours in a shop before you could stir a step some nastiness was thrown on you out of a garret-window, and you were ashamed to come home before you were cleaned, and the smell went off: you were pressed for the sea-service, and carried before a justice of peace, who kept you three hours before he examined you, and you got off with much ado a bailiff, by mistake, seized you for a debtor, and kept you the whole evening in a spunging house you were told your master had gone to a tavern, and came to some mischance, and your grief was so great, that you inquired for his honour in a hundred taverns between Pall-Mall and Temple-bar.

Take all tradesmen's parts against your master, and when you are sent to buy anything, never offer to cheapen it, but generously pay the full demand. This is highly to your master's honour, and may be some shillings in your pocket; and you are to consider, if your master has paid too much, he can better afford the loss than a poor tradesman.

Never submit to stir a finger in any business, but that for which you are particularly hired. For example, if the groom be drunk, or absent, and the butler be ordered to shut the stable door, the answer is ready,—An please your honour, I don't understand horses if a corner of the hanging wants a single nail to fasten it, and the footman be directed to tack it up, he may say, he does not understand that sort of work, but his honour may send for the upholsterer.

Masters and ladies are usually quarrelling with the servants for not shutting the doors after them:

but neither masters nor ladies consider, that those doors must be open before they can be shut, and that the labour is double to open and shut the doors; therefore, the best, and shortest, and easiest way, is to do neither. But if you are so often teased to shut the door, that you cannot easily forget it, then give the door such a clap as you go out, as will shake the whole room, and make everything rattle in it, to put your master and lady in mind that you observe their directions.

If you find yourself to grow into favour with your master or lady, take some opportunity in a very mild way, to give them warning; and when they ask the reason, and seem loth to part with you, answer, that you would rather live with them than anybody else, but a poor servant is not to be blamed if he strives to better himself; that service is no inheritance; that your work is great, and your wages very small. Upon which, if your master has any generosity, he will add five or ten shillings a-quarter, rather than let you go: but if you are baulked, and have no mind to go off, get some fellow-servant to tell your master that he has prevailed upon you to stay.

Whatever good bits you can pilfer in the day, save them, to junket with your fellow-servants at night; and take in the butler, provided he will give you drink.

Write your own name and your sweetheart's with the smoke of a candle on the roof of the kitchen, or the servants' hall, to shew your learning.

If you are a young sightly fellow, whenever you whisper your mistress at the table, run your nose full in her cheek; or if your breath be good, breathe full in her face: this I have known to have had very good consequences in some families.

Never come till you have been called three or

four times; for none but dogs will come at the first whistle and when the master calls "Who's there?" no servant is bound to come; for Who's there is nobody's name.

When you have broken all your earthen drinkingvessels below stairs (which is usually done in a week) the copper pot will do as well; it can boil milk, heat porridge, hold small beer, or, in case of necessity, serve for a jordan; therefore apply it indifferently to all these uses; but never wash or scour it, for fear of taking off the tin.

Although you are allowed knives for the servants' hall at meals, yet you ought to spare them, and make use of your master's.

Let it be a constant rule, that no chair, stool, or table, in the servants' hall, or the kitchen, shall have above three legs, which has been the ancient and constant practice in all the families I ever knew, and it is said to be founded upon two reasons: first, to shew that servants are ever in a tottering condition; secondly, it was thought a point of humility, that the servants' chairs and tables should have at least one leg fewer than those of their masters. I grant there has been an exception to this rule, with regard to the cook, who, by old custom, was allowed an easy chair to sleep in after dinner; and yet I have seldom seen them with above three legs. Now this epidemical lameness of servants' chairs, is, by philosophers, imputed to two causes, which are observed to make the greatest revolutions in states and empires; I mean love and war. A stool, a chair, or a table, is the first weapon taken up in a general romping or skirmish; and after a peace, the chairs, if they be not very strong, are apt to suffer in the conduct of an amour, the cook being usually fat and heavy, and the butler a little in drink.

I could never endure to see maid-servants so

ungenteel as to walk the streets with their petticoats pinned up; it is a foolish excuse to allege their petticoats will be dirty, when they have so easy a remedy as to walk three or four times down a clean pair of stairs after they come home.

When you stop to tattle with some crony servant in the same street, leave your own street-door open, that you may get in without knocking when you come back; otherwise your mistress may know you are gone out, and you must be chidden.

I do most earnestly exhort you all to unanimity and concord: but mistake me not: you may quarrel with each other as much as you please, only always bear in mind, that you have a common enemy, which is your master and lady, and you have a common cause to defend. Believe an old practitioner; whoever, out of malice to a fellow-servant, carries a tale to his master, shall be ruined by a general confederacy against him.

The general place of rendezvous for all the servants, both in winter and summer, is the kitchen; there the grand affairs of the family ought to be consulted, whether they concern the stable, the dairy, the pantry, the laundry, the cellar, the nursery, the dining-room, or my lady's chamber: there, as in your own proper element, you can laugh, and squall, and romp, in full security.

When any servant comes home drunk, and cannot appear, you must all join in telling your master that he is gone to bed very sick; upon which your lady will be so very good-natured, as to order some comfortable thing for the poor man or maid.

When your master and lady go abroad together, to dinner, or on a visit for the evening, you need leave only one servant in the house, unless you have a blackguard boy to answer at the door, and attend the children, if there be any. Who is to

stay at home, is to be determined by short and long cuts, and the stayer at home may be comforted by a visit from a sweetheart, without danger of being caught together. These opportunities must never be missed, because they come but sometimes ; and all is safe enough while there is a servant in the house.

When your master or lady comes home, and wants a servant who happens to be abroad, your answer must be, that he had but just that minute stept out, being sent for by a cousin who was dying.

If your master calls you by name, and you happen to answer at the fourth call, you need not hurry yourself; and if you be chidden for staying, you may lawfully say, you came no sooner, because you did not know what you were called for.

When you are chidden for a fault, as you go out of the room, and down stairs, mutter loud enough to be plainly heard; this will make him believe you are innocent.

Whoever comes to visit your master or lady when they are abroad, never burden your memory with the person's name, for indeed you have too many other things to remember. Besides, it is a porter's business, and your master's fault he does not keep one; and who can remember names? and you will certainly mistake them, and you can neither

write nor read.

If it be possible, never tell a lie to your master or lady, unless you have some hopes that they cannot find it out in less than half an hour. When a servant is turned off, all his faults must be told, although most of them were never known by his master or lady; and all mischiefs done by others charged to him. And when they ask any of you why you never acquainted them before? the answer is, "Sir, or madam, really I was afraid it would make you