There should always be inside bars and shutters to any basement or ground-floor windows, and nothing should be kept downstairs which can possibly or in any way tempt the prowling burglar. All silver should be taken upstairs to the master’s room, and there should be a small dog loose downstairs; a dog frightens a thief dreadfully, as he is quite as much afraid of his bark as ever he is of his bite.
The basement in a London house is often a dreadful possession, as there are so many places where a thief could conceal himself in the daytime. No doors, then, should ever be left unbolted; and the master should, furthermore, make a practice of going round the very last thing at night to see that all is safe, or else there can be no security at all. Sometimes the servants may descend again and hold unholy revels; sometimes an open or unguarded door leaves access to the place; and an unexpected visit from a tramp may alarm us as much as would a professional visit from a burglar. We cannot impress this on our servants too often, and we impress it on them a thousand times more forcibly than we otherwise should when they see our nightly patrol, and know we have supplemented their bolts with a visit of inspection. Then the door at the top of the stairs should be bolted, barred, and locked, and the key removed. This should be given into the care of the butler if there be one, or into the safe keeping of the cook; and we may retire to rest feeling safe that even if the tramp comes, or the thief is in hiding below, he will remain in the lower regions, and can do nothing worse than have a feast in the larder or break a few panes of glass in his efforts to escape.
It will seem to my readers that one has to take endless trouble, to see perpetually about endless trifles, as long as we are householders, and have the management of a family on our hands. Yet once started on good lines, and matters are not so difficult as they appear; still, of course, no life of great responsibility--indeed, no life at all--can ever be entirely happy and entirely easy. Those who have least to do become bored and tired by mere inactivity; those who have most, wearing out instead of rusting out.
All comes to an end some day; there is no doubt about that. Strive as we may, death waits for us all, and our carefully trained household falls apart and drifts away; our furniture wears out, our carefully amassed hoards are turned over and parted among our successors; some one else takes our house, and obliterates with his personality the last traces of ours; and if we have refused to do our work, or let things slide, we shall speedily be forgotten; but if we have honestly done our work, what of it? Our maids carry on our good lessons elsewhere; our hoards make someone else happy, and the example we have set bears fruit a hundredfold, and someone is always happier, some household better for the work we have done. No matter, then, if we have fallen out of the ranks, tired out; we have done our work, and so can retire gracefully, being quite sure that none of our trouble is wasted, and that not one of us has toiled in vain.