[TO TIM EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—I have just
been laughing over your article on "Boy Housemaids" in the Spectator of August 15th. No doubt there is much truth in what you say, but I do not agree with your remarks concerning the capacity for bed-making in- herent in boys. When I was up at Oxford I lived for three years in College and had a scout and a scout's boy. The latter often made my bed and made it as well as any maid- servant, and I certainly never found "a whole hand silhouetted in coal-dust on the sheets." When I went down from Oxford I lived for a year and a half at a theological college, during the whole of which time my bed was always made by a boy. It is true that the bed was small and hard, but these defects cannot be laid to the charge of the "boy housemaid ; " his part was well done. He also cleaned my two rooms, dusted and tidied them, &c.,—in fact he did everything which an ordinary maid-servant would do. Besides this he and his two colleagues even helped the butler" to lay the cloth for dinner"
and waited at meals. I believe that all the cooking was done by women, but they were never seen except on Sunday after- noons when they "walked out" with the three boy house-
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