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 ...

120

120 THE STORY OF MY LIFE*

I began to read
and have followed

by Mr. Callender's system immediately,
it in some fashion ever since. After

L

jf57 -
_ N

MY FIRST BOOKS~.
I hid myself in some dimly-lighted corner where no one would look for me and read on
to the last page of the book.
recently burning a large quantity of synopses and extracts,
scrap-books, and "1Index iRerums," containing the gist of
more than half a century's study and reading, I Possess
a large variety of the samie books awaiting cremation.
They are of little use to me to-day. For we live in an age
of progress, and the books which serve one generation are
but mere waste paper to that which succeeds it. But this
method of reading' did me good service at the time. It
took the place of a diary, as I have always added to my
synopsis of a book the namnes of the author and publisher,