My second used to do up her hair one day with blue ribbon and the next day with pink, in the old happy days five or six weeks ago when there was nobody in the house, and singing began and ended the day; now the boat boy never comes to turn the ice cream freezer; nobody has time to help her and she wears no more ribbons; she has soured on the work and gets mad if I call her "sec." All hotel hands are working under a heavy pressure now, at the busiest time of all; there is no getting help when every hand is already at work that can be found. At various times it has fallen to me to take charge of a kitchen for a fixed sum and pay all the other hands myself, when the fewer I had to help me the more money I had left. For such times I had a rule formulated that 1 cook and 1 helper are required for 25 people, and 1 more for every 25 additional, and at this late day I find no reason to change the estimate. This has reference only to the work of hotels or houses where regular meals are prepared after the style of these present. There are places where one man will go into the woods and cook for a hundred wood-choppers or saw-mill hands, and carry his water and split his wood besides, but there is little in that for a comparison. It is the commonest possible mistake to suppose that because there are few people there is but little work; it is the number of dishes made and not the number of people that makes the work. It does not take much longer to make 2 gallons of soup than 1. If I have 5 sauces to make it is immaterial in, point of time whether they be 5 cups or 5 quarts. Where the number of people does make a difference is in the duration of meals, breakfast encroaching upon dinner and giving no time to the one cook to begin his preparations at the proper season for the next meal, then another has to take hold of the lagging breakfast orders and give him his opportunity. The time when the paymaster reaps a temporary advantage is when the 25 gradually swell to 40. There is a disinclination to take on another cook or helper, the 2 are in harness and are making the work go on, in part from the force of habit, but it is on a strain and by neglecting the small niceties, by failing to clean up, and by letting things'go with ount the finishing strokes. It will be found a good rule to count by, that 2 skilled cooks and a pan-washer helper are required to cook for 50.