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 PEEP INTO AN OLD NEW ENGLAND HOME., 4

45"

These houses have all given way to a large brick block
erected on their sites, handsome when built, but reduced to
the common level of most North End houses by the immigrants, who long ago took possession of that section of the
city. A low fence, built by my father with his owvn hands,
separated our house completely from the others, and gave
my mother ample room for a flower garden, which was
an adjunct to most Boston houses at that time. Here she
reveled in the flowers which embowered the little white
house and filled it with their fragrance, while birds and bees
rioted amongp the blossoms. Vines clambered up the sides
of the house, and wreathed with beauty even the old
woodshed. I regirded my home as the most beautiful spot
on the earth, and when we changed our residence I was
like Eve when driven from Paradise, who must have been
heartbroken. I was homesick for weeks.
The front door opened into a small entry, which, if it
could have been extended, would have bisected the little
house into two equal parts. But the immense brick-work
of the house interfered, for it included a yawning fire-place
of immense proportions, a portentous brick oven, heated
every Saturday afternoon for the baking of white bread,
brown bread, pudding and pies, meat and beans, - the
mighty ash-hole underneath,- and the deep closet overhead for japanned lamps which burned whale oil, flatirons,
skillets, spiders, and other kitchen utensils of iron. What
was left of the middle of the house by this massive chimney
was utilized as an "1entry," only large enough for the
admission of one person at a time, who turned to the right
for the sitting-room and to the left for the kitchen.