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 ...

552

THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

ments, with a slight gesture of disdain. Turning to me
with a bright face and a charming manner, she added,
" American women prefer something better!" I am not
sure but her tactful bit of flattery of the taste of my country-women would have sold the cape if I had not wanted it.
I made a visit to a Girls' Normal School in Paris, and
was politely shown through the various recitation rooms.
The classes in history and geography were occupied with
the study of the geography and history of France, and had
been for a year. I passed into the class in literature, and
found it studying French literature. I ventured to inquire
if the young ladies studied only what concerned their own
country With a courteous bow and smile, the principal
replied to my question by asking another:
" Is not that best, since France leads the world in literature, art, and civilization?"
The French have accomplished very little in the way of
mechanical inventions. Compared with the sewing-machines
of America, those made in France are clumsy and ill-looking.
This is also true of household furniture and conveniences,
carriages, and other similar things. Art and skill, in France,
do not appear to have been applied to the manufacture of
the homely and necessary conveniences of life, as in America.
They have ill-concealed contempt for mechanical invention,
and hide sneers under the compliments they pay to American machinery.
One day while in the American machinery department
of the French Exposition, I overheard the conversation of a
group of French women near me, who were trying to puzzle
out the uses of a complicated machine in front of them.
They were so curious about it, that I should have ventured
to explain it to them, if I had understood it, but it was as
great a mystery to me as to them.