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 ...

OUR FIRST BEREAVEMENT, 4

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went forth from what had been to me an Eden, laden with
gifts and keepsakes, which the people pressed upon us. The
once pretty and bustling village of Stafford Centre has lost
its importance since these occurrences, forty or more years
ago. Deaths, the migration of the young people to other
localities, business failures, the destruction of the factories
by freshets, and other losses have caused its decline. And
Stafford Springs, two miles down the valley, connected with
the world by railroad, is the leading village of the town today. It abounds in picturesque scenery, and is beautiful in
situation, but in no other respect does it resemble the interesting old village of Stafford Centre.
The six years that immediately followed. the Stafford
pastorate were spent mainly in the Massachusetts towns of
Weymouth and Malden, where we found abundant occupation, kind and hearty co-operators, made friends whose
steadfast affection is, t6 this day, a part of the joy of our
lives, and where we also met sorrow, which, for a time,
seemed to have separated us from happiness forever.
It was in Weymnouth that we met with our first bereavement. Our eldest daughter, a sweet child of five years, full of
promise and with most endearing traits of character, passed
out of life after a brief and agonizing illness. There is no
sorrow more exquisite, nor more difficult to bear, than that
of a mother who gives up a young child to death. She has
always been its refuge, it has depended upon her for constant ministration. Who will be its guide and comforter,
and lead it safely in its wanderings, in the unknown world
whither it has vanished? Who will pillow its precious
head in weariness, and hold its little hands in calm assur