she kept the wolf from the door by going out as a monthly nurse--"Aunt
Farnham" looking after the little ones in her absence. She was put to
all her possibles during those anxious years of struggle and want. Even
Lloyd, wee bit of a boy, was pressed into the service. She would make
molasses candies and send him upon the streets to sell them. But with
all her industry and resource what could she do with three children
weighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence, rendered tenfold
fiercer after the industrial crisis preceding and following the War of
1812. Then it was that she was forced to supplement her scant earnings
with refuse food from the table of "a certain mansion on State street."
It was Lloyd who went for this food, and it was he who had to run the
gauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children whom he met and who
longed for a peep into his tin pail. But the future apostle of
non-resistance was intensely resistant, we may be sure, on such
occasions. For, as his children have said in the story of his life:
"Lloyd was a thorough boy, fond of games and of all boyish sport.
Barefooted, he trundled his hoop all over Newburyport; he swam in the
Merrimac in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was good at sculling
a boat; he played at bat and ball and snowball, and sometimes led the
'Southend boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflicts
between the youngsters of the two sections; he was expert with marbles.
Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a
distance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against the
tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking through
the ice on the river and reached the shore only after a desperate
struggle, the ice yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon its
surface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that day to swim from
one wharf to another adjacent, where vessels from the West Indies
discharged their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in stolen
sweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted through the bung-hole.