Now, if housekeeping was as simple as office-keeping, Mrs. Omicron
would smile in tranquillity at the _contretemps_, and say to herself:
"Never mind, I shall pay the late-posting fee--that will give me an
extra forty minutes." _You_ say that, Mr. Omicron, about your letters,
when you happen to have taken three hours for lunch and your dictation
of correspondence is thereby postponed. Only there is no late-posting
fee in Mrs. Omicron's world. If Mrs. Omicron flung four cents at you
when you came home, and informed you that dinner would be forty
minutes late and that she was paying the fee, what, Mr. Omicron, would
be your state of mind?

And your imagination, now very alert, will carry you even farther than
this, Mr. Omicron, and disclose to you still more fearful difficulties
which Mrs. Omicron has to face in the management of her office or
manufactory. Her staff is uneducated, less educated even than yours.
And her staff is universally characterized by certain peculiarities of
mentality. For example, her staff will never, never, never, come and
say to her: "Please, ma'am, there is only enough coffee left for two
days." No! Her staff will placidly wait forty-eight hours, and then
come at 7 p.m. and say: "Please, ma'am, there isn't enough coffee----"
And worse! You, Mr. Omicron, can say roundly to a clerk: "Look here,
if this occurs again I shall fling you into the street." You are
aware, and he is aware, that a hundred clerks are waiting to take his
place. On the other hand, a hundred mistresses are waiting to take the
place of Mrs. Omicron with regard to her cook. Mrs. Omicron has to do
as best she can. She has to speak softly and to temper discipline,
because the supply of domestic servants is unequal to the demand. And
there is still worse. The worst of all, the supreme disadvantage under
which Mrs. Omicron suffers, is that most of her errors, lapses,