The result was
by no means appalling, seven being the total. But granting that seven
was a fair estimate of the whole week's output, and that the stream
flowed on Sundays only, and not steadily through the other six days, the
annual output, on a basis of fifty weeks--giving the cook's generosity a
two weeks' vacation--three hundred and fifty pounds of something were
diverted from his pantry into channels for which they were not
originally designed, and on a valuation of twenty-five cents apiece his
minimum contribution to his cook's dependents became thereby very
nearly one hundred dollars. Add to this the probable gifts to similarly
fortunate relatives of a competent local waitress, of an equally
generously disposed laundress with cousins, not to mention the genial,
open-handed generosity of a hired man in the matter of kindling-wood and
edibles, and living becomes expensive with local talent to help.
It is in recognition of this seemingly cast-iron rule that local service
is too expensive for persons of modest income, that the modern
economical house-wife prefers to fill her _menage_ with maids from the
metropolis, even though it happen that she must take those who for one
reason or another have failed to please her city sisters. It may be,
too, that this is one of the reasons for the constant changes in most
suburban houses, for it is equally axiomatic that once an alien becomes
acclimated she takes on a _clientele_ of adopted relatives, who in the
course of time become as much of a drain upon the treasury of the
household as the Simon-Pure article.
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