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 ...

628 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS?
natal laws of being, and of the laws of heredity. Her
acquaintance with physiology should not be the superficial
knowledge, given in the ordinary school or college even.
It should be a thorough exposition of the mysteries of her
own physical being, with a clear statement of the hygienic
laws she must obey, if she would grow into healthy, enduring, glorious womanhood. She should be taught the laws
of ventilation and nutrition; what constitutes healthful
food; the care of infancy; the nursing of the sick; and in
what that vigilant and scrupulous cleanliness consists,
which almost prohibits certain forms of disease from passing under one's roof. Intelligence, system, economy,
industry, patience, good nature, firmness, good health, a
fine moral sense, all these are called into action. So is a
knowledge of cooking, laundry work, how to make and
repair clothing, together with the other industries of
domestic life, even when one has means to employ servants
to perform this work; for a woman cannot tell when she is
well served, unless she knows what good work is. It
requires a very high order of woman to be a good wife,
mother, and housekeeper; and she who makes a success in
these-departments possesses such a combination of admirable qualities, both mental and moral, that, with proper
training, she might make a success in almost any department.
We should never forget that moral and religious training underlies and permeates all other training when it is
wisely and judiciously given. The education of the will to
the customs and habits of good society begins long before
the child is old enough to reason on the subject. But its
education to the law of right, its submission to the will of
God, while it must be begun early, cannot be carried on to
perfection until the child's reason is developed and its