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 ...

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158 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

immense rocking-chairs, a full-length mirror; - a map of
Europe and one of the United States; life-size portraits of
Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and Washigton,
painted by Mrs. Henderson herself; - these made up the
furniture and decorations of this family room.
Large as it was, it had a cosy, home-like appearance.
On the hig-h mantel shelf were candelabra, always lighted
at night; a smart little French clock which never kept
time, and looked very much out of place amid its old-fashioned surroundings; and Mrs. Henderson's stout leather
basket of keys, when it was not suspended from her girdle
or hanging on her arm. Everything needed for the daily
use of all the people on the plantation was kept rigidly
under lock and key, being doled- out, when required, by
Mrs. Henderson, who not only carried the keys of all the
pantries, closets, drawers, and chests inside the mansion, but
of all the store-houses outside. This was necessary, the
negroes were such pilferers; and even with these precautions, thieving was universal among them, and the guilty
perpetrators were rarely discovered.