Bitter days now followed and Fanny Garrison became acquainted with grief and want. She had the mouths of three children to fill — the youngest an infant at her breast. The battle of this brokenhearted woman for their daily bread was as heroic as it was pathetic. She still lived in the little house on School street where Lloyd was born. The owner, Martha Farnham, proved herself a friend indeed to the poor harassed soul. Now 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.
