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 ...

592

592 THE STORY OF MY LIFE&

passion. I was not able to appreciate Margaret Fuller in
her day. She was many years my senior. On the two or
three occasions when I was in her society, I was so profoundly impressed by the majesty of her genius that I was dumb
in her presence. I wrote her a note of thankfulness when
she published "1Woman in the Nineteenth Century," which
brought me a characteristic reply that I 'Still carefully
treasure. I esteem myself fortunate in the acquaintance of
the pioneer medical sisters, Doctors Elizabeth and Emily
Blackwell, who trod flinty paths with bleeding feet in their
early struggles for medical education and position, and
made it possible for all competent women to enter the medical profession.
I knew Charlotte Cushman in her youth, when she was
battling against fearful odds. For forty years she walked the
paths of a profession dangerous to woman - its most eminent
tragedienne - and never, by word or deed, brought a blush
to the cheek of the most fastidious. I carry the mnemory of
Maria Mitchell in my heart, as a talisman, to defend me
from unworthy aims. Wearing a gold medal from" the
King of Denmark for telescopic discoveries, commissioned
by the government to make calculations for use in its coastsurvey, and the compilation of its Nautical Almanac, professor of astronomy at Vassar College, and holding a high
position in the scientific world, she was so severely simple,
and so unflinchingly loyal to truth, that pretence and artifice shrank abashed from her presem~e. Never shall I forget the day I spent with Adelaide Phillips in her home in
Marshfield a short time before her death. A prima donna
of the lyric stage, her interest extended beyond the musical