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, x

xi

paid for by weight, as at present. And on occasions, when
some unusual event had tempted me to send home soine half
dozen or more sheets of gossip, my father has paid fifty
cents postage on the letter, and there were times when that
sum was exceeded.
I cannot but hope that the story of my life may prove
interesting to my friends and acquaintances, and to others
into whose hands it may fall. It has been interesting to
me while I have been living it, although entirely different
from what I had planned and hoped. Eventful, and full of
variety, I have never found it dull, and have never suffered
from ennui. I have had little cause for complaint, although
my life has been a long struggle. There has always been
some good thing to strive for and to win, or some evil to be
suppressed and rooted out. And I have felt so kindly an
interest in the men and women among whom my lot has
been cast that I have carried on my shoulders and in myV
heart many of their burdens and sorrows, and been gladdened by their happiness. Generally I have won that which
I have sought, and have most highly valued.
No woman has been more blessed than I in my home,
my family, and with my many, many friends. The bitterness
of death will be tasted in parting company with them. And
but for the certainty that we shall "1join hands in the halls
of immortality " after a brief separation, it would be sad to
die. The world which I shall soon leave is very different
from that into which I was horn, and is a much better world
to live in. I congratulate women that their long struggle
for freedom, knowledge, opportunity, and the rights of
human nature is nearly ended, and that the day is close at