She set her bowl down on the box and came over and stood before her scowling father, and said: 

“Father, if you will not let me, then it must be as you say; but I would that you would think—­then you would see that it is not right to punish one part of him for what the other part has done; for it is that poor stranger’s head that does the evil things, but it is not his head that is hungry, it is his stomach, and it has done no harm to anybody, but is without blame, and innocent, not having any way to do a wrong, even if it was minded to it.  Please let—­”

“What an idea!  It is the most idiotic speech I ever heard.”

But Aubrey, the maire, broke in, he being fond of an argument, and having a pretty gift in that regard, as all acknowledged.  Rising in his place and leaning his knuckles upon the table and looking about him with easy dignity, after the manner of such as be orators, he began, smooth and persuasive: 

“I will differ with you there, gossip, and will undertake to show the company”—­here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a confident way—­“that there is a grain of sense in what the child has said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that it is a man’s head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body.  Is that granted?  Will any deny it?” He glanced around again; everybody indicated assent.  “Very well, then; that being the case, no part of the body is responsible for the result when it carries out an order delivered to it by the head; ergo, the head is alone responsible for crimes done by a man’s hands or feet or stomach—­do you get the idea? am I right thus far?” Everybody said yes, and said it with enthusiasm, and some said, one to another, that the maire was in great form to-night and at his very best—­which pleased the maire exceedingly and made his eyes sparkle with pleasure, for he overheard these things; so he went on in the same fertile and brilliant way.  “Now, then, we will consider what the term responsibility means, and how it affects the case in point.  Responsibility makes a man responsible for only those things for which he is properly responsible”—­and he waved his spoon around in a wide sweep to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, “He is right!—­he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell—­it is wonderful!” After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to gather and grow, he went on:  “Very good.  Let us suppose the case of a pair of tongs that falls upon a man’s foot, causing a cruel hurt.  Will you claim that the tongs are punishable for that?  The question is answered; I see by your faces that you would call such a claim absurd.  Now, why is it absurd?  It is absurd because, there being no reasoning faculty—­that is to say, no faculty of personal command—­in a pair of togs, personal responsibility for the acts