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 ...

CHAPTER V.

MY FATHER HAS " WESTERN FEVER"--WE JOURNEY WEST
BY STAGE AND CANAL-TWO YEARS OF FARM-LIFE
AND EXPERIENCES - TURNING OUR FACES HOMEWARD.
"Westward Ho!" - Farewell to Old Friends - The Night of our
Departure - Journeying by Stage to Albany - To Rochester by the
Erie Canal - The most Delightful Journey of my Life - We Settle
on a Desolate Farm - "A Log House, with Windows of Glass and
Oiled Paper " - A Chimney Made of Sticks and Mud - A Homesick
and Dissatisfied Family - Sale of the Farm - We Turn Our Faces
Homeward - Defending Ourselves with Umbrellas from the Sparks
and Cinders of the Locomotive - My First Ride on a Railroad Train
- I Reenter Hancock School - A Remarkable Teacher - A Test in
English Composition - An Unjust Accusation - Ralph Waldo Emerson's Senior Deacon- " Grog" at Eleven, and "Curfew" at NineThe Smile on Mr. Emerson's Face--"The Violins Played the Dickens
with my Feet "- Dancing "with Grace and Precision " - "Father
Thinks it is Wicked to Dance!"- Home, Love, and Welcome.
I HAVE not attempted to write with chronological
exactness, and cannot remember at what time my
father decided to leave Boston for a residence in Western New York. I was between ten and twelve years of
age at that time, and it was at the very beginning of the
epidemic known as " western fever." Many New England people, eager to increase their limited fortunes, were
bestirring themselves to find their way to the West, of
which they knew very little, for the "West" in those days
was almost terra incognita. Western New York was
regarded by many as "the land of promise," "a land
flowing with milk and honey," whose soil only needed
" to be tickled with a hoe, and it would laugh with a harv(98)