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 BATTLE OF LIFE.67

687

There is anotjiier factor that enters into the- battle of life.
No matter how large or small the community in which we
live,- a city, a town, a village, or a hamlet, there are public
questions always coming to the front, which challenge our
interest. It mnay be a small evil that is likely to grow to a
nuisance, and must be nipped in the bud. Or it may be a
matter of town sanitation, a question of drainage and sewerage, the problem of a sure water supply, -town lighting, or
good roads, or the duty of providing for public school educa-.
tion, with all the weighty considerations connected with this
question. If we have any public spirit in us, - and we are
comparatively valueless if we are indifferent to the public
welfare,- we are compelled to throw our influence on the
right side of the discussions that decide the action of the
community. If it be a question of public morals, and the
town is threatened with the establishment of legalized
liquor saloons, gambling resorts, or other public places of
immorality, there is a peremptory call to all who stand for
a higher civilization to enter the lists against these moral
pest-houses. No fiercer battle rages in the world, than that
now in progress between the friends and foes of a loftier
standard of municipal and national life.
There are few of us whose inmost souls are not the arena
of a life-long conflict, known only to ourselves and God.
Passion and appetite, which should be the driving-wheels of
the human creature, struggle for mastery of him. Selfishness, that asks all for itself; anger, that leaps like a tiger
from the jungles, with words of fury and deeds of savagery;
envy and hate, that burn out the soul and poison the life;
revenge, that, like a sleuth-hound, follows the track of those