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 ...

271

274 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

They longed "1to shovel Boston out into the Atlantic."9
They threatened dire vengeance on any Yankee that crossed
their path, and through it all made the air suiphurous with
profane speech.%
My amusement gave wa.y to amazement, as I listened,
and, as they continued to heap opprobrium on my countrywomen, indignation succeeded to amazement. Never before
had I been in such society, - never had I received such discourtesy Forgetting- that I was under the protection of
Mr Henderson, who sat beside me cool and unmnoved, I
astonished himn by springing to my feet, and, in a blaze of*
wrath that fully matched theirs, I addressed the incensed
company:
"11Gentlemen, I am a Massachusetts woman, and was born
in Boston, as were also my mother and grandmother. These
women whom you would hang to a lamp-post are my
country-women, my kinswomen, my friends, and the noblest
women on the earth. I will not be accessory to this abuse
of them by sitting any longer at table with their calumnniators, and so, I bid you good afternoon." I swept out of
the room in a white heat of anger, with something of the
dignity, I suspect, of "1Christy's Minstrels" playing at tragedy, only halting when within my own apartment.
I never knew what followed after my departure, except
that Mr. Henderson took my part and justified my action,
declaring that I should have been craven had I done otherwise. I was still smarting under the sting of the discourtesy
I had received, when the dinner party broke up, and one
after another the guests took their departure. Then Mr.
and Mrs. Henderson came to my room. They took the