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.

seeming to my childish imagination to be forever standing
with one foot on the sea and the other on dry land, like
the angel of the Apocalypse.
My mother was of medium height and size, much
smaller than my father physically, and in delicate health
until middle life. She possessed a most expressive and winning face, which was illumined by large brown eyes of
singular beauty. Only one of her six children resembled
her in face, figure, or character. Gentleness draped her like
a garment, and in speech as in manner she was uniformly
kind, tolerant, and gracious. She could be very decided
when it was necessary, and when she had once 'taken a
stand we all knew that there was no receding from it. My
father and mother supplemented each other perfectly, and
yet I doubt if they ever knew it. My father was positive,
and regarded himself as the head of his house and the master of his family, and was never backward in declaring this
as his divinely appointed position. My mother never disputed it, nor even discussed it, and yet no man was ever
more completely under the control of another than was he
under that of my mother. Her word, and even her wishes,
if he could ascertain them, were a law to him. And I have
heard him say that he always consulted her in every
important matter that came before him. "Bless the united
heads of this family!" was the unchanged formula he
uttered at family prayers, which were never omitted night
or morning My father and mother were alternately subjects and rulers in their home, and, as in many other instances, they never knew it.
My father accepted the Calvinistic faith in its entirety
and severity as it was taught and believed a hundred years
ago. He expounded it in his family with voluminous speech
and tremendous power, until I was steeped in it. Before I