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 ...

102

102 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

new to us, and full of interest and wonder. Feeding the
pigs was our chief amusement, to which we devoted ourselves so assiduously, that one of us fell headlong into the
pen, to the great consternation of the porkers. "1Lucky for
you," said my father, as he fished my forlorn looking sister
from her unsavory companions, "that these pigs are not cannibals, or you would have been eaten. alive! " a left-handed
compliment that we youngsters failed to appreciate. Our
mania for feeding the pigs continued, and we were instructed to pull up all the weeds for them, as pigs were fond of
"Ccgreen things." We obeyed, and only ceased in our work
when the vegetable garden was as bare of growing things
as the middle of the road. Not only vegetables, but domestic herbs which were carefully husbanded every fall, for use
in sickness, - catnip and wormwood, mint and thoroughwort, fennel and caraway, - all went to the capacious maws
of the ravenous swine. The gooseberryr and raspberry
bushes were only saved by the thorns that protected them.
We hunted hens' nests with such persistence that the poor
fowls were obliged to make new nests for themselves, where
we could not find them. We did not allow them the privacy
needed for laying eggs. We dragged the light wagon into
the middle of the road, our cousins helping in the mischief,
and when we found it going down hill too fast for us, we
stood aside and left it to its fate. Needless to add, a visit to
the repair shop was the result. Our relatives mnust have rejoiced as much over our departure as they did on our arrival
at the farm.
Again we took the stage and proceeded to Albany, where
our father made arrangements for continuin go the journey to