Emile, a much older boy, at his dinner party, received a hint from his mentor, and for the rest of the meal “philosophised all alone in his corner” about luxury, superior all to the grown-up guests. The little Harry, merely unhappy at having to hold his knife and fork “just so” and say so many “my lords and my ladies”, very naturally cries, “I wish I was with my mammy in the kitchen.” Neither then nor at any other time does he seem conscious of superior wisdom; but Theory hangs upon the foolishness of his mother. An uncle, whimsical rather than didactic, but none the less a moralist, fills the place of Rousseau’s tutor, and later, when the boy appears in clothes “trimmed like those of your beau insects vulgarly called butterflies,” this humorist so impresses him with the comparison of that “good and clever boy called Hercules” who was given a poisoned coat to wear, that Harry rips and rends the lacings of his suit and runs down to obey a summons “with half the trimmings hanging in fritters and tatters about him.”