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 ...

MEMORIES OF MY YOUTHFUL DAYS.

to creep under. "How shall we get over this fence?" I
inquired of a laborer, after vainly seeking an entrance to
the Common by a gateway, which was out of repair. I
was in charge of my younger sisters, whom I had been permitted to take out for a walk. "The best way to get over
is to crawl under!" was his reply, which we did, to the utter
demoralization of our long-sleeved and high-necked white
aprons and white pantalettes.
Copp's Hill and the burial ground located on its summit, some fifty or sixty feet above the sea, was the favorite
play-ground of North End children. In 1775, at the battle
of Bunker Hill, the British planted a battery of heavy
guns on this hill, which did effective work for their side,
and the children never failed to dig for battle relics in the
earth as zealously as if no relic-hunters of previous generations had preceded them. Copp's Hill was formerly known
as Snow Hill, and for good reasons. After a heavy snow
storm the hill would swarm with children, enjoying madder
revels than were always safe for girls, who were thrown
down and run over by the reckless games of the boys. But
the girls "held the fort" in summer, the play-ground not
being then suited to the wants of the boys. And in my
memory of those early days there was no prettier sight
than Copp's Hill on a summer Saturday afternoon. Then
it was gay and vocal with little girls, attired in sunbonnets
and aprons, "keeping house," and "playing school," "hide
and seek" and "playing tag," and sometimes, it must be
confessed, making "mud pies." It was Saturday afternoon,
and the maternal injunction, "Keep your clothes clean!"
was not in force on that half holiday, for the clean clothes
for the next week were to be donned on Sunday morning.
I have always congratulated myself that I was born in
this little seaport town. For life then and there was sim
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