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 ...

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slow coming. If Dr. Singleton was young and inexperienced, he was intelligent, fertile in resources, solicitous, and
very tender. After breakfast, both he and Mrs. Henderson
retired for rest, and I gladly assumed the care of my pupil
while they slept.
I sat down beside the poor girl with a heavy heart. Her
face was pinched and pallid, her eyes sunken and encircled
by dark rings. Her breathing was labored, short, and fitful.
The shadow had indeed fallen over her, and I feared that
the eternal morning alone would remove it. How noisily
sang the birds in the trees around the house! How gairishly
shone the sun through the blinds! Nature takes no heed
of human sorrow. How far off in the distance seemed last
night's ball, whose music still reverberated mockingly
through my brain! How pitiful the pink garniture, resting
on the chair where it had been thrown at her disrobing, and
in which I had so proudly assisted to array her! Only ten
days ago I had congratulated myself on this visit to the
Blackstocks, anticipating the pleasant reports of it which
I should send home to my friends. What a travesty it had
been on human expectations!
Laura had had premonitions of this impending calamity,
and had wished to talk them over with me; but I had foolishly held her aloof, believing that I could eradicate her
fears by not allowing her to express them. Must she die?
Dr. Singleton had not suggested such a termination of her
illness - had not even expressed fears of a fatal result. Ah!
I could judge for myself! Had not my young sister, near
Laura's age, p~assed out swiftly from our midst in a mysterious and torturing illness? How it all came back to me