Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-04-26

all the difficulties.
 When she was only dozen years old or so the little woman took upon her self the duties of housekeeper in her aunt's mansion and kept order there in a way that won something like local fame for herself. It was not art or in- tuition or rule that inspired her. It was temperament.
 Absolute cleanliness was to her a re- ligion, and the servant who fell in the remotest way short of that was quick ly made to think of herself as an un- regenerate sinner. Absolute neatness was another requirement. which the budding little woman insisted upon with relentless persistence. Then again it seemed to her that there was no possible excuse for any cooking short of the best.
 A few years later the aunts husband met with misfortune and went west Presently he died, and Barbara's aunt was widowed and impoverished at one and the same time.
 Then it was that Barbara rose in the strength of her practical wisdom and met the emergency with all of the char acter that she had built up. Her aunt was helpless, so Barbara took matters into her own hands. She was nearly twenty years old then, and her capac- ities as housekeeper had ripened through use until she felt modestly confident of herself. Besides" she argued, there is nobody else to do things if don't.''
 She persuaded her aunt to take lit tie house with big sunny dining room, and there she offered to the young bachelors of the town-in her aunt's name-better meals than they could get at the pretentious hotel, and she charged them scarcely more than half the hotel rate.
 One by one the best of the young men in the town were drawn to Barbara's table until the dining room was filled. After that any one who wished to join the circle must put his name upon waiting list and bide his time till there should be a vacancy, for Barbara held that 1t would be unjust to crowd pres ent boarders in order to take new ones, and she hated all injustice. The waiting list was always long, for the fame of Barbara's table was great.
 Really 1t was her own skill that made her table famous. She hired a cook, of course, after her little business be- came prosperous, and sometimes for brief while she trusted to the cooks skill. Then her conscience beset her because the breakfasts and dinners and suppers were not prepared in that perfection which alone could satisfy this conscientious little woman's soul. You see, 1t isn't honest, aunty," she would say in explanation whenever she returned to the kitchen and gave per sonal attention to every detail. "We are charging these young gentlemen for their meals, and 1t seems to me dishonest if we give them less than the best that we can. They come to US because they have heard that we serve the best meals that can be had in Cairo. How mean and wrong it would be for us tv trade upon that reputation and give them meals of an inferior quality! I simply can't get cook who will do things at their best, and so I must do most of the cooking myself, and then I'll know 1t is we'll done"
 She hired meat handed Phyllis" in a cambric gown-which Barbara insist ed must be fresh and clean every day to wait upon the table. She hired a handy negro boy to wash dishes, scrub and prepare vegetables under her own direction. She did all the more impor- tant part of the cooking herself, and the negro boy Bob simply worshiped the girl whom he always addressed as Little Missie."