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 ...

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NIGHT OF THE BALL -THE TRAGEDY DEEPENS -
THE HAND OF DEATH -A SORROWFUL RETURN HOME.
The Gay, Dizzy Dances--Launched among the Waltzers - A Presentiment of Approaching Death - A Cry of Dismay - Laura is
Borne to her Room - A Young Physician among the Guests - Mr
Henderson Hastens to his Dying Child - "Must she die?"- She
Exacts from me a Promise-- "Do you think God will make me
Beautiful in Heaven? " - Watching with the Sufferer - Anxious
Hours--The Hand of Death--Passing from Sleep into Eternal
Life - A Stricken Family -Dick's Grief - Return Home with our
Beloved Dead-- A Desolate Home-coming-- Aunt Aggy's Story--
Negro Superstitions - Early Events of Laura's Life - "I allers
knowed dis yer would happen!"--"Ah, Honey, I knowed! I
knowed I"
A LARGE company had assembled when our party
entered the ball-room. A grand march had been
called, and the procession was forming. But the young
Hendersons drew all eyes upon them, as they moved forward with native ease and grace, escorted by the gentlemen
of the Blackstock family, and chaperoned by their mother.
Mary accepted the invitation of her escort, and took her
place in the line; and Dick and Jenny soon followed. Laura
preferred to wait a little, and seated herself between her
mother and me. She was perfectly self-possessed, but I felt
the tumultuous beating of her heart, and noted the ominous
rise and fall of her bosom with every respiration. The
march ended, and the dancing began. First, a contradance, then a quadrille, a basket cotillon, a Virginia reeland no one had asked Laura as a partner. I was displeased.
I had been afraid that she would dance, and now was angry
that she did not.
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