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 ...

MISPLACED CONFIDENCE.

75

Boston, brought a strong box from home, with a "patent
lock," for the safe keeping of our funds. We locked the box
in the desk when we went home in the afternoon, happy in
the consciousness that it was safe beyond a peradventure,for had it not a "patent lock"! But on the very last morning of the school,-which had increased in numbers to sixtytwo, and might have run up to a hundred, had there been
room enough,-we discovered that some one had stolen
our money in the night, strong box, ' patent lock," and all.
My mother was greatly pleased with our joint manageDISCOVERY OF THE THEFT.
Someone had stolen our money in the night, strong box, 'patent lock,' and all.
ment of the school, and praised us warmly to our faces.
So did our patrons. Both of us loved children, and enjoyed
occupation. And the little lads and lasses, who were of all
sorts, and who would now-a-days be sent to a kindergarten,
were so happy with us, and with one another, that it was
with difficulty we could persuade them to go home when
the school-day was ended. I was supremely happy in the
vacation school. My motherly nature had full play; I was
free and under no espionage, and was "doing something,"
which always lifted me out of the gloom into the sunshine.
And after my mother had won my father over, so that he