The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

LASTING IMPRESSIONS MADE BY COUSIN ABIGAIL.

95

intent on the tragedy we were enacting to think of consequences, or to care for the opinions of our elders. The
flames enwrapped the devoted doll, as they did the figure of
Cranmer in the picture. The legs burned off, and the head
dropped into the fiery mass below, while the smoke blinded
and choked us, and tears streamed down our sooty faces.
Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, my mother's maiden cousin,
Abigail, who lived with us when some other relative did not
need and claim
her services, burst
in upon us. With
one vigorous
thrust of the
shovel she sent the
burning, smoul- - /
dering mass far
into the fire-place!
Turning to my
cousins, she ordered them home
instanter, and
ignominiously r
thrust them out SEEING STARS.
the back door, in She set me down in a kitchen chair with an emphasis that
caused me to see stars.
hot haste. Regarding me as the chief offender, Cousin Abigail shook me
as if she were a whirlwind, set me down in a kitchen chair
with an emphasis that caused me to see stars, and to bite
my tongue nearly in twain, and after an exhortation that
sounded like an anathema, ordered me, supperless, to bed.
I "stayed not on the order of my going, but went at
once," glad to get away from her infuriated presence.
As I entered my darkened and lonely chamber, I was