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.

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of men unsuitable for them, would drop back into home
life, or would seek their livelihood in occupations that would
not destroy their feminine nature. The prophecy of two
thousand years ago that there should be "peace on earth
and good-will to men " would begin to be verified. Between
two and three billions of dollars, now wrung annually from
the people by exorbitant taxation, for the support of armies,
and for military purposes, would not then be called for, and
would increase the resources of the masses, and add to their
material comforts. How the certainty that war had ceased
forever would loosen the brakes now held down on the
wheels of the world's progress!
If we should wake on some other morning to find that
every grogshop in the country was closed forever, that all
distilleries and breweries had abandoned the manufacture of
alcoholic liquors for drinking purposes, that men had lost
the appetite for intoxicating beverages, and would henceforth be sober and in their right minds, how that would add
to the gains of the world! The American nation would be
richer at the close of every year than it now is, by nine
hundred million dollars, which is the sum total of its annual
drink bill. With that vast sum saved, how the comfort of
the toiling masses could be increased. Their poverty would
be translated to competence, their homes made hygienic
and comfortable, industrial and scientific schools established
for them, and the immitigable sorrows of their wives and
children would be comforted. The prisons and penitentiaries
of the present time would be relieved of three-fifths, and in
many cases, of four-fifths of their inmates, the insane asylums
would be depleted, and fewer children would come into life
with defective minds and bodies.
If these two reforms were carried,- the peace reform
and the temperance reform, -the world would take a
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