He has learned all the lore of the woods, the ways of "wild critters,"
and the most efficacious means both to woo and kill them. Prim
spinsters eye him acridly, as a man given over to "shif'less" ways, and
wives set him up, like a lurid guidepost, before husbands prone to
lapse from domestic thrift; but the dogs smile at him, and children,
for whom he is ever ready to make kite or dory, though all his hay
should mildew, or to string thimbleberries on a grass spear while
supper cools within, tumble merrily at his heels. Such as he should
never assume domestic relations, to be fettered with requirements of
time and place. Let them rather claim maintenance from a grateful
public, and live, like troubadours of old, ministrant to the general
joy.

Not all the memories of that early day are quite unspotted by remorse.
Although we wore the mask of jocund faces and straightforward glance,
we little people repeatedly proclaimed ourselves the victims of Adam's
fall. Even then we needed to pray for deliverance from those passions
which have since pursued us. There was the little bound girl who lived
with a "selec'man's" wife, a woman with children of her own, but a hard
taskmistress to the stranger within her gates. Poor little Polly! her
clothes, made over from those of her mistress, were of dark, rough
flannel, often in uncouth plaids and appalling stripes. Her petticoats
were dyed of a sickly hue known as cudbar, and she wore heavy woollen
stockings of the same shade. Polly got up early, to milk and drive the
cows; she set the table, washed milkpans, and ran hither and thither on
her sturdy cudbar legs, always willing, sometimes singing, and often
with a mute, questioning look on her little freckled face, as if she
had already begun to wonder why it has pleased God to set so many
boundary lines over which the feeble may not pass. The selec'man's
son--a heavy-faced, greedy boy--was a bully, and Polly became his butt;