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 ...

A THOROUGHLY DESPISED CLASS.

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those boys had that furious quarrel over so small an affair
as that! Don't they know that Northern people call themselves Yankees, and that they do not regard it as a term of
reproach, but are rather proud of it? I must explain it to
them."
"No, no, no!" said Mr. Henderson. "I beg your pardon, but you must do nothing of the sort. Bryson, my
overseer, and nearly every overseer and slave trader in the
South, is regarded as a Yankee; and most of them are from
the free states. They are more thoroughly despised than
any other class in this section of the country, and even you
will admit they are not noble types of manhood. To our
boys it was a heinous offense in Bob Blackstock, their host,
to call you, their teacher and friend, and a member of their
family, a Yankee, with a profane prefix. Even Bob's father
admits that his son deserved a thrashing for so forgetting
his manners to his guests."
"Now that I understand the situation," I replied, "you
must allow me to talk it over with the children."
"No, I can't trust you," said Mr. Henderson, laughing.
"Your code of morals is so unlike that of the South that I
am afraid you will only confuse the children. Leave it to
me, my friend; that is best. 1 will settle it."
I never knew how he settled it, but we had no farther
discussion of the matter, and saw no more of Bob Blackstock during our visit.
SDuring the early morning hours the gentlemen mounted
their horses and rode through the woods to the river, where
the Blackstock mills were located. The heat forbade a
repetition of this exercise later in the day, and cards and
billiards were then resorted to, with smoking, feasting,
drinking, and sleeping to beguile the time. Their conversation turned mostly on politics of an inflammable type, for the