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 ...

x PREFACE.

off this mortal coil," was most amusing. I informed her
that a story of my life would probably be published in
advance of hers, and perhaps while I yet lived, and that her
manuscript must be suppressed. For now I examined it in
part, and found it very inaccurate and unreliable. But it
required a long and very plain discussion of the whole
matter before I succeeded in convincing her that my publisher, my family, and myself had rights which she would
infringe if she persisted in publishing her incorrect, badly
written, and unauthorized manuscript.
If I should pass out of life before this book is published,
I wish it distinctly understood that this is the only biography of myself that I have authorized, and the only one that
is reliable. No other that may appear has received any
sanction from me, or from any member of my family.
I have given more space to the story of my three years
life in Virginia than I had intended. But after re-reading,
I have decided not to abridge the narrative. It is a story of
plantation life at the South, fifty-five years ago, and presents a phase of society and civilization that has passed
away forever, and, as such, may prove of value and interest
to young readers. It was written from a journal carefully
kept at the time, from my copious weekly letters home to
my parents, and from my correspondence with the family
on my return North.
In those days letters were letters, written with care,
packed with details, highly prized, and carefully preserved.
Every one of my letters home contained two sheets of foolscap, closely written on both sides, and each one cost my
father twenty-five or thirty-seven and a half cents postage.