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 ...

556

556 THE STORY OF MY LIFE,

at England, and criticise her at times most severely, at heart
they are proud of their "1mother country."
One finds it difficult, while in England, to realize how
small is her territory, it is so crowded with cities, towns,
cathedrals, palaces, villas, country seats, museums, churches,
hospitals, and - people. The United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland has a population of between thirty and
forty millions. Yet England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales
together are little larger in territory than the' states of
North and South Carolina and Georgia. It is the boast of
England that she holds truth and facts in higher estimation
than any other nation, but her regard for these is surpassed
by the homage she pays to wealth. In no country -is wealth
more worshiped than in England. And yet one never sees
the vulgar display of wealth, nor the wasteful extravagance
Of it, which is so common in America. Every household
practices a careful economy, and when people cannot pay
for luxuries, as a rule, they do not buy them. You will
always find American travelers in the first-class railway
carriages, while wealthy Englishmen travel in those which
are second-class.
The grandeur of London, with its gay and courtly life,
its points of historical interest which one touches at every
step; its inexhaustible stores of museums, picture galleries,
libraries, churches, abbeys, and towers, is beyond descriptiont. It was a great city of over one hundred and forty
thousand inhabitants in the days of Queen Elizabeth; but
to-day it has a population of between five and six millions.
Walk the streets of London when you may, they are always
crowded to overflowing, and the rush of its commerce and