quibble on interpretations. They become abominably shrewd in a
degrading, casuistical strict-constructionism. In spite of everything,
the little, cunning, irresponsible, non-moral beings will be
successfully appealing to the letter of the law against the spirit, and
warping and drying up all their tenderness of conscience, all their
capability of broad and generous applications of right and noble
principle.

I disliked fat meat and fat people. I used to like to be with the hired
girls in the kitchen. I was entirely untouched by the often-repeated
expositions made to me of the vulgarity of such habits, and of the low
esteem in which I should be held in consequence. What is vulgarity to a
child? Spontaneity, unconscious existence, has no vulgarities. Vulgarity
comes of restraints and distortions; and a child's life is commonly for
a time untouched by the girdling and compression of forms and
conventionalities. Besides, to a child of positive traits, those
persuasions are utterly forceless which, instead of being addressed to
the prominent faculties, are directed to those comparatively deficient.
It is no matter how well such considerations are suited to the character
of the persuader, to a conventional human nature, to the _a priori_
child. Thus, in the matter of kitchen-haunting, the appeal was made to
my regard for the opinions of others. As I was naturally disregardful of
the opinions of others, the appeal did not affect me.

Besides, we used to have hired girls as superior to the Biddies of
to-day as a patriarch is to a _laquais de place_. Possibly hereditary
friendly relations with a few individuals may have made us more
fortunate than some other families. From whatever cause, we enjoyed
through most of my childhood the ministrations of two or three women of
American race, of intelligence, character, and self-respect. It is
scarcely possible that the vulgarity which my parents apprehended was
anything worse than colloquial New England provincialism. It is possible
that they may have feared lest in time the kitchen-door should introduce
me to that Devil's school for boys, the city street.

These domestics were themselves competent housekeepers, and could have
maintained good repute and creditable hospitality, had they possessed
the means, even among the far-renowned "old-fashioned H----
housekeepers." My remembrances of them are scanty. There were Lois and
Hannah, tall, thin, angular Yankee women, grave, trustworth