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 ...

224

THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

floor at my feet; they hemmed me in on every side, and
reported all at once, in a breath, the happenings of the last
week, which were sufficiently various and numerous to have
filled a month.
Lily informed me of the "six bran-new, cunnin' little
yellow kitties at the stable." Jamie told of some "new
puppies, and the funny way they had of trying to bark."
Jenny said that her father had received something curious
from New York--"little splinters of wood, that you just
scratched on the wall, and they blazed, an' the name of 'em
on the box was 'Lucifer Matches '."
"That's a fact," said Dick; for I looked incredulous.
Up to this time, the tinder-box, with its flint and steel, was
the only means of producing fire.
"You can write all over the wall with 'em," said Dick,
"in letters of fire; we'll try 'em after dark. An' what
do you think Spitfire's caught? The biggest woodchuck
you ever see in all your life! He's ever so fat. I skinned
'im an' nailed up his skin on the back of the schoolhouse.
We couldn't eat 'im, he was so fat; so we gave 'im to
Pete."
Laura had been watching for a chance to speak for some
time. She pulled out a package of books, handsomely
bound, and produced "The Neighbors," and "The H.--
Family," two novels by Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish
author, whose works, translated by Mary Howitt, were just
finding their way across the Atlantic.
"Now," said Mary, rising, " please all of you stop your
noise and I'll tell you the best thing you ever heard of. We
are all invited to the Blackstock's for the last week in June,
and Ma's accepted for all of us. They're going to have a big
dinner-party, and a ball in the evening, in honor of their
cousin, Mr Gordon, who's been elected to the United States