Almost daily now, she brought up for my consideration some domestic problem which clearly called for the exercise of feminine judgment, and then, after watching me with a kind of pity as I wrestled with it, she would retire, with a hint, more or less gentle, as to the ease with which such reefs and shallows were passed around or over, when a mistress held the domestic helm. I was called upon for an opinion as to the advisability of using kerosene upon the dining-table; I was expected to give a verdict in favour of one or another of a dozen washing preparations; I had to sit in judgment upon the respective merits of tar-paper and camphor as a preservative of winter clothes; I was asked to determine whether or not the washerwoman had employed an acid on my shirts, whether chamois-skin or cheese-cloth was best for the piano, whether an egg-shell improved the coffee, and a host of similar whethers-or-not, which might as readily have been rebuses in
