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 ...

" WHAR YOU READIN', MAS'R DICK?"

195

did. She passed the book to Mary, who had taken from
her pocket a bit of fancy work, and was crotcheting some
coarse cotton lace. Car'line took the book and held it before
Mary's eyes, saying, "Lem' me hol' dis yere book an' you
read." Mary accepted the suggestion, and, leaning toward
Car'line, who held the book awkwardly and with unsteady
hands, read blunderingly and without expression.
Black Peter then took the book and held it for Dick to
read, who sat with both hands in his pockets, his chair
tipped back against the
desk, with his feet resting on the rung.
"You've got that
"book upside do w n
Pete!" was his first
c)mment; "turn it
t'other way, - there
that way! so! Now 7
hold it still!" and he
read the page assigned
to him in a rapid, abominable manner, p r o- A LAZY PUPIL.
nouncing almost every Sol Now hold it stll
word, and making perfect jargon of the text.
"What hodge-podge you do make of reading!" said
Mary. He had read almost as well as she had. " You can't
read any better now than when you were six years old."
"Did anybody ask for your opinion, young lady? " inquired Dick with mock politeness.
"Whar you readin', Mas'r Dick? " asked Pete, holding
the book sideways and leaning over him. " Lem'me see de
place!" to which his young master replied by a back-handed
slap, that Peter dodged.