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 ...

ON THE WAY TO THE BLACKSTOCKS.

237

floor of the old house was converted into a dancing-room,
with a spring floor, and was connected with the new house
by a covered walk, lighted and decorated, while dressingrooms were arranged above the dance hall.
On Mr. Henderson's return from Richmond with baskets,
boxes, bundles, and trunks, the excitement of the family
burst all bounids. It was even felt at the "quarters," and
many of the field-hands came up to the cabins of the houseservants, at the close of the hard day's work, to get reports
of the finery ordered for the visit to the Blackstocks. Laura
alone showed no interest in the preparations. The summer
seemed to have brought to her an unusual gravity of manner;
and while not really ill, there was a downward tendency in
her physical condition, for which we could not account.
The children tried on their new costumes, which proved
both well-fitting and becoming. But when Laura was
wanted, she was missing and found only after a prolonged
search. Her ball dress of pink proved a great beautifier
We all admired it and praised it warmly. The children
were in raptures over it, and Dick became grandiloquent,
declaring that "Sist' Laura would make all the other girls
look so homely that they'd wish they'd stayed at home."
Laura smiled at her brother's encomiums, but shook her
head gravely, and said, " Ah, Dick, it has not pleased God to
make me beautiful as he has the rest of you."
The long-looked-for morning dawned at last, - perfect
as a June day should be. Laura made a desperate attempt
to excuse herself from the party, assuring her mother, in a
passion of tears, that she "could never show her homely
face among the handsome girls who would be present."
Her father's aid was invoked, and, with his usual tact and
tenderness, he persuaded her into the carriage beside
him, where she wept quietly on his shoulder.