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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THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

Over fifteen hundred people paid their respects to Mr. and Mrs. Liver.
more during the afternoon, and nearly eight hundred more remembered
them in letters, notes, cards, cablegrams, telegrams, and gifts. It was an
exceedingly pleasant and notable occasion.
When Tufts College was founded by the Universalist
denomination, nearly fifty years ago, there was a very general expectation that it would, on the start, admit both sexes
to its educational opportunities. Although public sentiment
was opposed to the college education of women at that time,
many Universalist clergymen and laymen desired it, and
advocated it. But a new college has a struggle for existence, and cannot immediately execute all its purposes. It
lacked money, prestige, and powerful friends, and had to
contend with bigoted prejudice, because of the broad faith
of its founders. These and other hindrances delayed the
admission of women to Tufts College until 1892. Then its
doors were opened widely, and women were admitted to all
its departments,--its College of Liberal Arts, its Theological and Medical Schools.
It graduated its first class of women June 17, 1896, at its
annual commencement. At the same time the college conferred upon me the honorary degree of LL.D. It was a
great surprise, and entirely unsolicited. It was complimentary, a gracious recognition of the college authorities, and
an honor conferred by them, and was gratefully received.
My story is ended. I have passed " the three-score years
and ten," which the Psalmist regarded as the limit of earthly
life, and am still blessed with health, a love of work, and an
interest in all that concerns humanity. Only two of my
early friends remain- Mrs. S. G. Shipley of Brookline, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Henrietta A. S. White of Syracuse, New
York. With them I have enjoyed an uninterrupted friendship of sixty-five years. Of my father's family, only two