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 ...

THE HENDERSON CHILDREN.

163

on one leg like a teetotum. Jenny wrapped her arms in
her white apron, hugged herself, and shrugged her shoulders in great content.
"Aunt Aggy will go along with the lunch basket," said
Laura, "and I'll take Mrs. Hemans' poems to read when we
stop." Mrs. Hemans was her latest acquisition, and she
was just at the age to be sentimental.
"Oh, g'long with your po'try, sist' Laura," said Dick,
turning from her with a boy's contempt; " don't less have
any o' that stuff; it spoils everything. P'r'aps you can tell
stories;" and he looked at me inquiringly.
" About lions, an' tigers, an' elephants, an' wild horses?"
asked Jamie, with great animation. Young as he was,
his thoughts ran continuously on wild beasts, soldiers,
and battles, and he bore the scars of many an adventure
with dogs, horses, woodchucks and coons, pistols and guns.
He was the most pugnacious little animal on the whole
plantation.
"Do you know how to take sketches from nature?"
inquired Mary. " There are some beautiful bits of landscape
on Pa's grounds."
"There you go agin, sist' Mary!" again protested contemptuous Dick. "I declar! you an' sist' Laura are enough
to make a feller sick, you're all the time makin' such fools
o' yourselves with your po'try an' sketches. I should like
to know if we're gwine to begin school to-morrer? We
ain't, be we? Don't let 'em take books an' things to draw
with!" and he turned to me appealingly. "I hate all
that!" Every feature of his handsome face looked aversion.
"Our new piano is coming from New York in two
weeks," said Jenny, with a radiant face and a desire for
peace. She had a passion for music.