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 ...

THE WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANG E UNION, 8

581

women of the West had exhausted its fanatical fury!I" But
the next summer, as soon as these temperance crusaders
could come together for consultation, they organized the
National Women's Christian Temperance Union, which,
under the splendid leadership of Frances Willard, now numbers a constituency of adult, honorary, and junior members
of over half a million.
While passing through the scenes of the crusade, in my
lecture tour, I wrote letters to some of the Boston papers, to
correct the sensational misrepresentations of the press, relating to this wonderful movement. They were extensively
read and copied. On my return in the spring, I was invited
by Rev. Dr. Neale, my old pastor and friend, to tell the
story of the crusade as I saw it, from the pulpit of his
chur~ch, then located on Somerset Street, Boston, where now
stands the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University.
The church was packed with men and women of all classes
-and sects. So vital an interest was awakened that it led to
the organization of a Women's Temperance Union, of which
I became president, after the first year of its existence.
This office I held for ten years, having associated with me
as secretary, a woman of rare ability, who was my lifelong
friend and early schoolmate, Mrs. L. B. Barrett. Her
death compelled my resignation. I had lost my better half,
and no one could fill her place to me, as adviser, confidant,
lover, and co-worker.
Those ten years of work were full of perplexities, and
my faith and patience were -taxed to the utmost. The
hostility of the liquor traffic, which recognized in the organization a new element of danger to its interests, - the jeal