The reader may safely follow the directions given in these pages; not
one has been inserted that has not been tested by the writer. To those
who are already conversant with bread-making, churning, etc., they may
appear needlessly minute; but we hope the novice may, with very little
trouble, become mistress of the subjects to which they refer.

Even if a lady does keep a sufficient number of servants to perform
every domestic duty efficiently, still it may prove useful to be able
to give instructions to one who may, from some accidental
circumstance, be called on to undertake a work to which she has been
unaccustomed.

A friend of the writer's, a lady of large fortune, and mistress of a
very handsome establishment, said, when speaking of her dairy, "My
neighborhood has the character of making very bad butter; mine is
invariably good, and I always get a penny a pound more for it at the
'shop' than my neighbors. If I have occasion to change the dairymaid,
and the new one sends me up bad butter, I tell her of it. If it occurs
the second time, I make no more complaints; I go down the next
butter-day, and make it entirely myself, having her at my side the
whole time. I find I never have to complain again. She sees how it is
made, and she is compelled to own it is good. I believe that a servant
who is worth keeping will follow any directions, and take any amount
of trouble, rather than see 'missus' a second time enter the kitchen
or dairy to do her work."

Perhaps the allusion this lady made to the "shop" may puzzle the
London reader, but in country places, where more butter is made in a
gentleman's family than is required for the consumption of the
household, it is sent to--what is frequently--_the_ "shop" of the