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 ...

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS? 627
required, when it is made on real estate; what constitutes a
valid title to property; what cautions are to be observed
concerning mortgages; what are the property-rights of
married women in the states of their residence, with other
like information.
We talk much of preparing our daughters to be good
wives, mothers, and home-makers.,iDo we systematically
attempt this? Do we conduct the education of girls with
this object? Do we not trust almost entirely to natural
instinct and aptitude, which, in the woman, is incomparably
strong in the direction of wifehood, motherhood, and the
home? For the mighty reason that the majority of women
will always, while the world stands, be wives, mothers, and
mistresses of homes, they should receive the largest, completest, and most thorough training- It is not possible to
state this too strongly; for these positions are the most
important that woman can occupy. Education, religion,
human affection, and civil law, all should conspire to aid
her in these departments, to do the best work of which she
is capable.
The very highest function of woman is to raise and
train the family; it is the very highest function of man
also. Indeed, civilization has but this end in view,- the
perpetuation and improvement of the race. The establishment of homes, the rearing of families, the founding of
schools and colleges, the planting of institutions, the maintaining of governments, all are but means to this end. As
llumboldt said years ago, "cGovernments, religion, prop