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 ...

HAS THE NIGHT OF DEATH NO MORNING?

717

ization would have very nearly succeeded. When the
mummy pits were opened by European investigators, and
the cerements were removed in which the mummies had
been enwrapped, they found a cross marked on the last covering that enfolded the breast. What did it signify? It
could have no reference to the Christian religion, for this
was thousands of years before the advent of Christ. When
the hieroglyphic, or picture language of Egypt was mastered, they found that this cross was simply a defiance to
death. Its interpretation was an assurance to surviving
friends that the soul had not departed,- for the cross on
the breast was the declaration, "I still live!"
Sometimes the mummified bodies were deposited in
tombs hewn out of the solid rock. In many instances the
walls of the interior were decorated with pictures representing the passage of the soul through various stages of being,
in the life beyond. In that dry and rainless climate, these
pictures have been preserved intact, and we learn from
them that the Egyptians, who were the highly civilized
people of their day, believed in an active life beyond the
grave.
How is it with savage people, who are outside the pale
of a high civilization? Some years ago when visiting Minnesota, I was a guest at the same hotel with the officers of
a company of soldiers, who had assisted in the removal of a
tribe of Indians to a new reservation. As the Indians were
unwilling to leave their own settlement for another less
desirable, it became necessary for a company of infantry to
escort them to their new home. Having accomplished their
work, the soldiers were now on their return. I became
much interested in the stories of the officers concermning
these red aborigines, who had been compelled like others of
their race to "move on," and were " made willing " only by