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 ...

436

436 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

They shook hands after the interview and parted,-- my
husband to shape public opinion in favor of the Maine Law,
that it might be incorporated into the code of the state,they to block the wheels of legislation, and to retain on the
statute book a law which is prolific of wrong-doing, and
which tends steadily to pauperism, crime, and moral deterioration. Night after night Mr. Livermore was absent from
home on business connected with the campaign, for he had
agreed to accept invitations to address audiences within
twenty miles of his home. Never before had he shown himself so eloquent an orator, never so consummate a logician,
never had he talked with such power He brought before
his hearers the appalling suffering and vice which were the
fruits of their present license law, and which were within
the knowledge of every one who listened to him; and then,
with a fervor born of youth and hope, he employed argument and persuasion to induce them to choose the new
statute, which was the only effectual remedy for the ills
which weighted them with woe.
The opponents of the Maine Law were unsparing in
their denunciations of him,- a minister who "1dragged the
white ermine of his profession into the dirty pool of politics." They appealed to his parish to repudiate him; they
even threatened him with personal violence, and for the first
time in his life he was the object of foul detraction. I
think I felt 'More keenly the scurrility of these attacks than
my husband did. He was so fired with enthusiasm for the
great cause, was so confident of its ultimate triumph, and so
eager to enlist recruits under its banner, that he was almost
unaware of opposition, and went forward unconscious and