All of us—children of his sixties, with abolitionist consciences—knew that. The limits of his malice extended to flies, and to people who hit children or mistreated the helpless anywhere. His pocket was always to be picked by any applicant, and no matter how many times my mother, much more of a grenadier, pointed out where they did him in, he remained the softest touch in the world. His manners were persistently tender to everyone, and perhaps because he looked and dressed somewhat like Mark Twain and shared a small, redeeming slice of Twain’s humor, nobody ever seemed to find this saccharine. He was, for instance, the only person I ever knew who could chuck a carriage baby under its chin and goo at it—“Coo-chee-coo!”—without making anybody gag at the sight, or doubt for one minute that it was done out of pure spontaneity and love. Yes, he was the kindest man in the world. Yet, when the time came, it was my father who was purely unkind to our colored maid Mary—May-ry. May-ry, who must have been about thirty at the time I speak of, was no old family retainer; she had come to work for us, her first job in New York, through an ad in the Times ten years back, when I was very little.
