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 ...

UNCOMFORTABLE STAGES AND. BLACK JERUS. 4

149

Such clumsy, dirty, ugly, comfortless stages I have never
seen -neither before nor since. They were so entrusted
with. mud that the color of the outside could not be distinguished, and the inside was scarcely less free from dust and
dirt. We were directed to take our seats in these abominable vehicles, but nobody moved a muscle. We waited to
assure ourselves that our individual trunks and boxes were
among the luggage that the negroes were wheeling from the
boat, whooping and yelling as if they were leading a charge.
A lively war of words then ensued, which resulted in a vigorous exchange of coach tickets, each one being determined
not to part company with his baggage. We heard doleful
accounts, on the route, of trunks that had tumbled off the
coaches into the "dsew, " and been left there, the owner not
being aboard to look after them, and we had resolved that
our trunks and ourselves should go in partnership on the
same coach. In spite of the frantic exhortation of the
agents to "1git aboard an' quit foolin' over yer tickets! "
which fell upon ears that heard not, we gave undivided
attention to the proper location of our baggage, until we
had seen it safely bestowed on the right stage, and securely
strapped on, even when placed on top.
At last after a wearisome delay, with noise and confusion
enough for a second Babel, the dubious procession of mudcolored coaches started on its way. Almost immediately
the mules plunged into mud almost to their bellies, floundered, tugged desperately, and stuck fast. The black drivers
encouraged the inelegant but accustomed animals in a dialect utterly unintelligible except to themselves and the
mules. Their wonderfully modub~ted tones indicated some..