Some years ago - more than I care to count over - I read a lively little book entitled, "The Greatest Plague of Life." I have forgotten who wrote it, if I ever knew. It was in the form of an autobiography; the heroine called herself, with an amusing affectation of disguise, Mrs. S-k-n-s-t-n," and it was illustrated by George Cruikshank. I read it aloud in my home-circle, and many a hearty laugh we had over the poor lady's perplexities and calamities.

Regarding the history as a clever burlesque, I suffered no appreciable draught upon my sympathies until time and experience brought me in contact with so many who echoed her plaint, that I could not but recur, now and then, with a half-sad smile, to her sufferings under the rule of Norah, who chased her up-stairs with a carving-knife; with Mary, who drank up the cherry-brandy, filled the bottle with cold weak tea, and kept her pitying employers up all night to pull her through an epileptic fit; with John, who never answered the parlor bell "unless they perse-wered;" whose stomach could not bear cold meat at dinner, but rallied bravely under a couple of pounds at supper. There was one nursery-maid who whipped Mrs. S-k-n-s-t-n's child, and another who upset the perambulator in the park, and, too much absorbed in the suit of a whiskered Guardsman to note what had happened, went on dragging the carriage upon its side until the baby's cheek was cruelly scarified by the gravel - besides a host of other unworthies set for the distress of Mrs. S-k-n-s-t-n's mind, body, and estate.

"Douglas Jerrold wrote that book," interrupts a friend at my elbow. "And, apropos de bottes, have you seen Punch's recent article, ' Servantgalism ; or, What Shall Be Done With the Missusses ?' "

"The malady in America must bear another name," remarks a lady, gayly. "We have no servants - at least in this region. My cook is forty-seven years old, and my chambermaid a widow, who has buried two children; yet they would be highly affronted were I to speak of them except as ' girls.' It is a generic term that belongs to the class 'who live out,' from sixteen up to sixty. I had a lesson on this head not a month since. My laundress, who has lived with me six years, was thanking me for a service I had done her brother.

"'I'll never forget you for it, mem,' she sobbed. 'I'll bless you for it, on me knees, night and morning.'

"I am glad I have been able to help your friends, Katy," I said. "You have been a faithful servant to me------"

She cut my sentence in the middle by walking out of the room - I supposed, to conceal her emotions. I was undeceived, five minutes later, when her angry tones reached me from the kitchen, the door of which she had left open.

"I'll never believe a person has a good heart, or deserves to be called a Christian, who names an honest, respectable girl, who tries to do her duty, a servant! 'A faithful servant!' says she ; 'as if she was a queen, and meself a beggar!'"

"What did you say to the ungrateful wretch?" asks a listener, indignantly.

"Nothing. I went quietly out of hearing, reminded, for the hundredth time, of Solomon's warning, 'Take no heed unto all words that are spoken, lest thou hear thy servant curse thee.' I recalled, too, the saying of a mightier than the Royal Preacher: - "Whosoever will be greatest among you, let him be your servant'"

"I thought you were one of the favored few who had no trouble with them," says another housekeeper, sighingly. "There is real comfort, - excuse me, my dear Mrs. Sterling - but it is refreshing to a wearied soul to know that you have felt some of our tribulations. It seems to me, at times, that there is no other affliction worthy the name when compared with what we endure from the 'Necessary Evil.' I have tried all sorts - the representatives from every nation under heaven, I verily believe - and they are all alike 1 They will wear me into an untimely grave yet."

"I wouldn't let them, my dear Martha," replies Mrs. Sterling, with her sunny smile. "If evils, they are surely minor afflictions. And, after all, I imagine 'they' are a good deal like the rest of man and womankind - pretty much as you choose to take them. The truth is, there is no justice in wholesale denunciation of any class. You recollect the Western orator's truism, 'Human nature, Mr. President, nine cases out of ten, is human nature.' When I consider the influences under which a majority of our servants have been reared - ignorance, poverty, superstition, often evil example in their homes - my wonder is, not at the worthlessness of some, but that so many are virtuous, honest, and orderly. You will allow that, as a general thing, they are quite as industrious as their mistresses, and control their tempers almost as well. And we make so many mistakes in our dealings with them!"

My old friend does not often lecture, but she has something to say now, and forgets herself in her subject.

"We err so grievously in our management, that a sense of our failures should teach us charity. Do we understand, ourselves, what is the proper place of a hired 'help' in our families ? If it is the disposition of Mrs. Shoddy to trample upon them as soulless machines, Mrs. Kindly makes a sort of elder daughter of her maid ; indulges, consults, and confides in her, and wonders, by-and-by, to find herself under Abigail's thumb - her husband and children subject to the caprices of a pampered menial. I never hear a lady say of a valued domestic, 'I could not get along without her,' without anticipating as a certainty the hour when she shall announce, ' There is such a thing as keeping a servant too long.' The crisis comes, then, to Mrs. Kindly. In a moment of desperation she frees her neck from the yoke. Abigail packs her six trunks, having entered Mrs. Kindly's service, seven years before, with her worldly all done up in a newspaper, shakes the dust off the neat Balmoral boots which have replaced her brogans, 16 against the heartless tyrant who sits crying, in her own room up-stairs, over thoughts of how Abigail has been so clean, quick, and devoted to her interests; how she has nursed her through a long and dangerous illness, and had the charge of Emma and Bobby from their birth. She has prepared a handsome present for her in memory of all this, and is hurt more than by anything else when she learns that the girl has taken her final departure without even kissing the baby.