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 ...

MY VISIT TO THE NEGRO QUARTERS.29

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Mr. Henderson made no farther reply, but taking his hat,
he stalked out of the house, and, with long and energetic
strides, walked rapidly in the direction of Bryson's house.
At the same moment, Aunt Aggy came in for a conference
with her mistressI when I took advantage of the diversion
to escape to my room,- not sorry that I had been an earwitness to this colloquy, for, from that moment, I felt safe
with Mr. Henderson, and mentally took refuge in him. He
never knew how closely I clung to him in my thought, in
all, the after-experiences of the household.
That evening, after lunch,- all the time after noon was
"4Cevening" on the plantation,- I accepted a clamorous invitation from the children to visit the black pickaninnies at
the "1negro quarters." There were between fifty and sixty
of them, of all ages, from three weeks to eight or ten years.
They were all herded together in "1 Ole Betty's yard," which
enclosed her log cabin, and three or four huts of the rudest
sort. Horace Greeley used to criticise the excessive care bestowed by- American mothers on their children, in- his time,
always contendig that they would thrive much better if
treated "1with judicious neglect." He would have been
very strongly fortified in his opinion by a visit to Ole Betty's,
for never were children, black or white, more neglected or
illy cared for than were these little negro children, and
never was there a lustier-looking brood.
The mothers of the black children on the plantation
were excused from their work for two or three weeks after
the birth of their babies, and allowed to remain in their
cabins to recuperate, and to make, in their rude fashion,
a very few garments for the new-comers. Then the babies