"This is to certify that Katherine Brady has lived in my family for
eleven months as cook. I have found her industrious, sober, neat,
honest and obliging. She also understands her business thoroughly. She
leaves me in consequence of my removal from the city.
(Mrs.) ... No ... West 57th St., New York City."

If the certificate had a fault, it was that the fit was too nearly
perfect. I had heard of references written to order by venal scribes,
and I consulted the city directory. Mr. ...'s office was in Wall
street, his residence No ... West 57th street. I called to see him,
found him in, and found him a gentleman. He had no doubt that all was
right. He believed the name of their latest cook was Katherine. They
called her "Katy." He knew that his wife was sorry to part with her,
and inferred that she was a worthy woman.

We, too, were leaving town, but only for the summer. Katy "liked the
country in hot weather. All the best fam'lies now-a-days had their
country-places."

It is not an easy matter to "change help" during a summer sojourn in a
cottage distant an hour and a half from town. The act involves one or
more railway journeys, much running about in hot streets, and much
hopeless ringing at dumb and dusty doors. This is the explanation of
Katy's six months' stay in my kitchen. In town, she would have been
dismissed at the end of the first week. She was a wretched cook, and a
worse laundress. Within an hour after she entered my door, the decent
black gown was exchanged for a dingy calico which she wore, without a
collar, and minus a majority of the buttons, all day long and every
day. She was "a settled girl"--owning to twenty-eight summers, and
having weathered forty winters. Her hair, streaked with gray, tumbled