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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never talk of them publicly; never lecture in courses that
are run by women; allow us always to make your engagements and fix the compensation, and in twenty years you
shall be a rich woman." I will not deny that I took time
to consider his proposition, for I had known the want of
money in the past. My decision was soon reached, for freedom is a necessity to me, and I have bought it with so large
a price that I can never relinquish it. I have delivered temperance lectures whenever invited, attended Woman Suffrage conventions in all parts of the country, and have
never declined to lecture in a "1Woman's Course," if I was
free from other engagements.
I cannot understand how one who makes lecturing a profession can fail of becoming optimistic. It is true one learns
much more than is desirable concerning the evils of society,
when itinerating through the country But to offset this,
in no other way can one so well understand the heavenly
side of humanity, or comprehend the nobleness of our common nature. If a tender philanthropy has* blossomed into
an organization that is doing noble work; - if a free school
has been formed for the incapable children of recently arrived emigrants, who cannot speak our language; -if a
childless mother has adopted into her abundant home the
desolate orphans whom death has kindly bereft of worthless
parents; - or a generous man endowed a town with a public library and reading-room, which will prove a liberal education to children yet unborn, the lecturer is sure to be informed of the divine deed, and is likely also to be brought
into personal contact with it.
A woman lecturer is more generally entertaied in pri