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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THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

And, as new societies were formed, they also wheeled into
line, and adopted our methods of work, until we had, not
only through the Northwest, but through the entire North,
a compact organization of aid societies, auxiliary to the
Commission.
The work of the next three or four years was severe in
the extreme. Many women broke down under the incessant strain, and some of them died. I resigned all positions
save that on my husband's paper, and subordinated all
demands on my time to those of the Commission. I organized Soldiers' Aid Societies, delivered public addresses, to
stimulate supplies and donations of money in the principal
cities and towns of the Northwest; wrote letters by the
thousand, personally and by amanuenses; answered all that
I received, wrote the circulars, bulletins, and monthly
reports of the Commission; made trips to the front with
sanitary stores, to the distribution of which I gave personal
attention; brought back large numbers of invalid soldiers,
who were discharged that they might die at home, and
accompanied them in person, or by proxy, to their several
destinations; assisted to plan, organize, and conduct colossal
sanitary fairs, the histories of which I wrote at their close;
detailed women nurses for the hospitals by order of Secretary Stanton, and accompanied them to their posts; in
short, the story of women's work during the war has never
been fully told, and can never be understood save by those
connected with it. Whatever of mine was published during
this period, or whatever related to my work during those
stormy times, was carefully preserved by my husband.
It is not necessary for me to give a detailed account of
those memorable years of work in this place; for I have
already given my personal experiences and reminiscences of
those crucial days in a large volume fully illustrated with