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 ...

LITTLE PEOPLE OF SIXTY YEARS AGO.

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the dates of publication and of my reading, my own impression of its worth or worthlessness, with the mention of
any noteworthy occurrence that took place at the time.
It has certainly helped me to retain and assimilate what
otherwise I should have forgotten.
Sixty years ago there was little attention paid to the
physical training of either boys or girls. Perhaps there
was less need of it then than now To be sure, children
had to run the gauntlet of homes and schoolhouses warmed
by huge open fires which roasted them on one side, while
the other froze, for stoves, furnaces, steam-heaters, and anthracite coal were unknown. So were many other modern
appliances for physical comfort. But the little people of
those days were generally sure of full rations of plain, nourishing food, plenty of sleep, and compulsory stents of daily
labor that could not be shirked, and which insured them
exercise as well as the sense of being useful. Under such
a regime children throve and grew into a strong and vigorous maturity. If ill or delicate by nature, they were nursed,
as now, by tender-hearted mothers, and were bled, blistered,
and salivated under the heroic treatment of doctors, and
survived or succumbed as they were able.
The dress of women and girls was not more hygienic
than it is to-day. Every woman, young or old, was encased
in barbarous, home-made "stays," from which the modern
corset has been evolved. These stays were tightly laced
at the back, and were held in place in front by a two-inch
wide wooden " busk," as it was called, bent to fit the curves
of the figure, and which compelled the wearer to sit and
stand as stiff and straight as if she had swallowed a ramrod. Low-necked and short-sleeved dresses were worn universally in summer, and occasionally in winter, with, perhaps, the additional protection of a cape or light shawl.