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 ...

402

402 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

every other new department of work had been in the past.
I decided to become my ow-n housekeeper, and, despite the
protests of my husband, my own servant also, at first, especially as there were charwomen in the vicinity, on whom I
could call for assistance in laundry work, scrubbing, and
cleaning-.
It must be confessed that for a few months we had a
trying time. My husband's good nature was unfailing, and,
though he laughed over my "1experiments " in the culinary
art, which were rarely successful, he never complained. He
was, moreover, much better posted in the science and philosophy of domestic business than myself. He was the youngest of a family of nine children, all of whom were born on
their father's farm, in Leicester, Massachusetts, where each
one, in turn, was obliged to assist both the father and
mother in farm, house, and dairy work. The daughters of
the family were married, and settled in homes of their own,
before my husband was,* born. -As he grew into a strong
boyhood he was put to the service of his mother, to whom
he was greatly attached, and who needed him in the large
dairy, and also in the kitchen, where most of the. time there
was a strong and vigorous force of "1farm hands " to be pro.vided for. In this way he had acquired a general knowledge of the fundamental laws which underlie good housekeeping, and knew something of the art of cooking, household sanitation, laundry work, etc.
We had a small brick oven in our hired house, and remembering how easily my mother had managed a larger
one, and how much she had accomplished with it, I resolved
to make use of the more convenient one at my service, and,