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.
Despite the rigors of Hepsey in the kitchen, and the careful supervision of Temperance, there was little systematic housekeeping.
Mother had severe turns of planning, and making rules, falling upon us in whirlwinds of reform, shortly allowing the band of habit to snap back, and we resumed our former condition.

She had no assistance from father in her ideas of change.