that rugged, inflexible, terrible personage
the schoolmaster's wife could originally have
been; or how indeed schoolmasters
themselves find time and opportunity to court
wives. I never knew a young lady who kept
company with a schoolmaster, nor was I ever
at a scholastic wedding. Others may have
been more fortunate.

The schoolmaster's housekeeper would not
mind undertaking the superintendence of a
public establishment, which may mean Somerset
House, an union workhouse, a female
penitentiary, or a set of chambers in the
Adelphi. But she is not to that manor born:
the orthodox public housekeeper is a widely
different functionary. Such public establishments
as chambers, public offices, warehouses,
&c., are peculiarly adapted to Mrs. Tapps,
married, but without incumbrance;
entertaining, indeed, a small niece, but who is so
far from being an incumbrance that she does,
on more or less compulsion, as much work as
a grown-up housemaid. Mrs. Tapps is a
cloudy female, with a great deal of apron,
living chiefly underground, and never without
a bonnet. What her literary attainments (if
any) may be I am unable to say; but for all
catechetical purposes she is profoundly ignorant.
She knows positively nothing upon
any subject holding with the external world:
less (if that were possible) about any of the
lodgers or occupants of the house she dwells
in. " She can't say: "—" she don't know,
she's sure: "—" she's not ' aweer,' " and so
on to the end of the chapter. "She'll ask
the landlord." The landlord is her Alpha
and her Omega. The landlord is the
Grand Thibetian Llama of her creed—
as mysterious and as invisible—the Cæsar
to whom all appeals must be made. The
landlord is all Mrs Tapps knows or seems
to know anything of. Her niece Euphemia
is also naturally reserved; of a timidity
moving her to violent trembling and weeping
when addressed, and affliicted moreover with
an impediment in her speech. All you
ordinarily see of her is a foreshortened
presentment as she is scrubbing the doorsteps
or the stairs—all you hear of her are the
slipshod scuffling of her shoes about the
house, and her stifled moans in the kitchen
when being beaten by her aunt for black-
leading her face instead of the stove. Mr.
Tapps is a postman, or an employé in the
docks, or a railway porter, or engaged in
some avocation which necessitates his coming
home every night very dirty and tired. He
smokes a strong pipe and studies yesterday's
newspaper till he goes to bed; but
how ever Mrs. Tapps, and her niece, and the
gaunt grey cat, and the long lean candle with
the cauliflower wick, pass their time during
the long winter evenings in the silent
kitchen in the empty house is beyond my
comprehension.

There is another public establishment which
boasts a housekeeper —I mean a theatre.
Spruce visitors to the boxes, jovial frequenters
of the pit, noisy denizens of the gallery, little
deem of, or did they would care as little
about the existence of a dingy female, " Mrs.
Smallgrove, the housekeeper," a personage
well known to the stage-doorkeeper and the
manager, and the chief of that sallow,
decayed, mysterious band of women called
"cleaners," who poke about the private boxes
and pit benches with stunted brooms and
guttering candles during rehearsals, who are
dimly visible in dressing-rooms and dark
passages. The people behind the scenes,
actors, musicians, workmen, are conscious of
the existence of these functionaries, but
scarcely more. They are aware of Mrs..
Smallgrove; but they do not know her. It is
a question, even, if they know her name. She
superintends the lowering of the grim brown
holland cloths over the gay decorations
after the performances. Where she lives is a
mystery—somewhere underneath the " grave-trap "
in the mezzanine floor, or high in the
tackled flies, perhaps. No man regardeth her;
but when the last actor is descending from
his dressing room at night; when the last
carpenter has packed up his tools to go home,
the figure of the theatrical housekeeper may
be descried duskily looming in the distance—
covering up the pianoforte in the green-room,
or conferring with the fireman amidst the
coils of the engine hose, or upon the deserted
stage, which, an hour ago, was joyous with
light and life and music. When the Theatre
Royal Hatton Garden has a vacancy for
a housekeeper it is through some occult
influence—some application totally
independent of the three-and-sixpenny publicity
—that Mrs. Smallgrove is inducted into the
situation. She may have been a decayed
keeper of the wardrobe, a prompter's wife
fallen upon evil days, a decrepid ballet
mistress. But what her antecedents have been is
doubtful: likewise the amount of her salary.

AS NURSE, in a Nobleman or Gentleman's
Family, a Person of great experience in the care of
Children. Can be highly recommended by several families
of distinction. Address P., care of Mr. Walkinshaw, Trotman's
Buildings, Legg Street Road, South.

As nurse! For what enormous funds we
can draw on the bank of Memory, on the
mention of that familiar word. With her are
connected our youthful hopes and fears—our
earliest joys, our earliest sorrows. She was
the autocrat of our nonage. Her empire over
us commenced even before memory began.
When Frederick the Great tempted the
soldier on guard to smoke a pipe, adding that he
was the king, what was the reply of the
faithful sentinel? " King," he said, " be
hanged—what would my captain say? " So,
when even the parental authority winked at
our infantine shortcomings, the dread thought,
"What will nurse say? " shot through our
youthful minds; and the parental wink,
though it might be urged in alleviation,
could not purchase impunity.