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 ...

PREFACE.Di

ix

many matters of wide interest du~ring my life that my
decease would inevitably be the signal for the appearance
of unauthorized, unreliable, and shabby biographies. And
he urged that it would be much the wiser way for me to
take time by the forelock, and write my story myself. It
wvould be more satisfactory to my family and friends, and
would secure a larger number of readers. Before his visit
was ended, the whole matter was put on a business basis,
and I had contracted to place my manuscript in his hands
at a specified date.
As if to confirm his predictions, a lady called upon me, a
few days later, as I was convalescing from a sharp attack of
illness, bringing with her a prodigious bundle of manuscript,
which she begged me to examine. I declined, for it was a
formidable task, and I was ill. Then she besought me to
give her information, which "I alone could furnish." And
little by little it came out that she knew I had passed the
"11dead line " of three score years and ten, declared by the
Psalmist to be the duration of human life, and hearing that
I had been very ill, she had decided "1to take time by the
forelock," as my publisher had advised me to do. She had
been "1working on a sketch of my life," but lacked information concerning my early history, and if I would "fill out
the gaps in her narrative," she should be able to place her
work in the hands of a publisher, whenever "anything
happened " to me.
I was a little startled, and much amused. It seemed as
if sentence of death was to be executed upon me immediately, so coolly and clearly did my unknown visitant
inform me of my approaching demise. And the p~erfect