The establishment was put on a larger footing.  Mrs. Hepsey Curtis was installed mistress of the kitchen.  Temperance declared that she could not stand it; that she wasn’t a nigger; that she must go, but she had no home, and no friends—­nothing but a wood lot, which was left her by her father the miller.  As the trees thereon grew, promising to make timber, its value increased; at present her income was limited to the profit from the annual sale of a cord or two of wood.  So she staid on, in spite of Hepsey.  There were also two men for the garden and stable.  A boy was always attached to the house; not the same boy, but a Boy dynasty, for as soon as one went another came, who ate a great deal—­a crime in Hepsey’s eyes—­and whose general duty was to carry armfuls of wood, pails of milk, or swill, and to shut doors.

We had many visitors.  Though father had no time to devote to guests, he was continually inviting people for us to entertain, and his invitations were taken as a matter of course, and finally for granted.  A rich Morgeson was a new feature in the family annals, and distant relations improved the advantage offered them by coming to spend the summer with us, because their own houses were too hot, or the winter, because they were too cold!  Infirm old ladies, who were not related to us, but who had nowhere else to visit, came.  As his business extended, our visiting list extended.  The captains of his ships whose homes were elsewhere brought their wives to be inconsolable with us after their departure on their voyages.  We had ministers often, who always quarter at the best houses, and chance visitors to dinner and supper, who made our house a way-station.  There was but small opportunity to cultivate family affinities; they were forever disturbed.  Somebody was always sitting in the laps of our Lares and Penates.  Another class of visitors deserving notice were those who preferred to occupy the kitchen and back chambers, humbly proud and bashfully arrogant people, who kept their hats and bonnets by them, and small bundles, to delude themselves and us with the idea that they “had not come to stay, and had no occasion for any attention.”  These people criticised us with insinuating severity, and proposed amendments with unrelenting affability.  To this class Veronica was most attracted—­it repelled me; consequently she was petted, and I was amiably sneered at.

This period of our family life has left small impression of dramatic interest.  There was no development of the sentiments, no betrayal of the fluctuations of the passions which must have existed.  There was no accident to reveal, no coincidence to surprise us.  Hidden among the Powers That Be, which rule New England, lurks the Deity of the Illicit.  This Deity never obtained sovereignty in the atmosphere where the Morgesons lived.  Instead of the impression which my after-experience suggests to me to seek, I recall arrivals and departures, an eternal smell of cookery, a perpetual changing of beds, and the small talk of vacant minds.