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 ...

112

112 THE STORY OF MY LIFE,

Notwithstanding the religious teaching I received in mny
own home, which was thorough and continuous, it was M1r,.
McIntosh who first impressed upon me the great truths that
for us to love one another is as necessary to Christian living
as to love God; that habitual self-control is a most important qualification to usefulness, that true religion forbids
selfishness, and that cheerfulness and trust in God must be
cultivated as positive virtues. No brief sketch can portray
this rare and gifted teacher, on whose words I hung with
delight, nor can I ever convey to another the illumination
of soul that I received from conversation with him. Sometimes I sat at his desk after school hours to help him make
the quill pens for the next day's exercise in writing; or, on
rare occasions, I walked beside him, often a long distance
out of my way, to accompany him to his home. Then, wvith
what fatherly tenderness he would indicate wherein I had
erred in some transaction of the day, or commend some
act of helpfulness or self-denial which his observant eye
had noted. Our friendship continued as long as he lived,
and what he was to me, he was to scores of his other
pupils.
It was while under Mr. McIntosh's instruction that I first
saw Ralph Waldo Emerson. Answering the rap at the
schoolroom door one morning when I was on duty, I was
confronted by a tall, thin young man, whose large nose first
attracted my notice, and then the beauty of the smile which
irradiated his face. "I wish to see XMr. McIntosh, if he is
in,"1 was his request. There was something so irresistible in
the smile, the face, and manner, that I was compelled to
more courtesy than was usually bestowed upon chance com