where she keeps bandages, linen, clothes, food in large quantities, to
be shipped wherever wanted. It is surely no vine-clad cottage; it is a
veritable store-house of food for the needy, a ware-house of clothes for
the suffering,—anywhere in the world. Clara Barton called it her ‘House
of Rough Hemlock Boards’—the boards were from the wreckage of the
Johnstown flood.”
Hourly in the presence of such environments as to suggest war and flood
and famine, and at times delirious, it is not strange that two nights
before her death, on April 10, 1912, in her dreams there flitted before
her the tragic past; that she dreamt that she was again in battle; that
she saw “her boys” with legs and arms gone; that she gave crackers and
gruel to the sick and bound up the wounds of the soldiers; that again
she felt the twitching at her dress and heard “You saved my life;” that
again she caught the last words of the dying to be sent to the mothers
and sisters and sweethearts, and heard from the lips of her dying
soldier-brother, “Oh! God, save my country!”
XXXV
Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, was the greatest feminine mind of the
ancient deities concerned in human welfare. THE AUTHOR.
Bring the feminine mind to bear upon all that concerns the welfare of
mankind. JULIA WARD HOWE.
Judge—You voted as a woman, did you not?
Miss Anthony—No, sir, I voted as a citizen of the United States.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
(In 1872, she then being under arrest for voting
for President of the United States.)
Let us “push things” so that every state in the union shall speedily
surrender to the advocates of women’s equality and elevation.
MARY A. LIVERMORE—Jan. 8, 1870.
American women and students of American history have long deplored the
meagre credit which has been given to women for the part they have
taken in the progress and achievement of America, as a nation. MRS.
JOHN A. LOGAN.
In “Part Taken by Women in American History.”
I know nothing remarkable I have done. The hum-drum of my every day
life seems to me quite without incident. CLARA BARTON.
Speaking of myself, and my own doings, is a thing very distasteful to
me. CLARA BARTON.
[Illustration:
THE RED CROSS HOME OF CLARA BARTON, GLEN ECHO, MARYLAND
“Clara Barton to the end kept open house at her Glen Echo home, for
the soldier boys.”
“The Red Cross House at Glen Echo was a flag museum of historical
achievements.”
Historical ground carries its own sentiment: Mount Vernon, American
Liberty; Monticello, American Democracy; Glen Echo, World Humanity.
]
FOUR FAMOUS WOMEN
A famous artist called at Miss Barton’s home and explained to her that
he had been sent out to secure the portraits of the four most famous
women in America. She asked him, “Whom have you been to see?” And he
replied, “I have come to you first.” “And whom will you go to next?”
Miss Barton inquired. “To Julia Ward Howe, of Boston,” he replied. “And
whom for the third?” Miss Barton asked. “I do not know,” he answered.
“You tell me, Miss Barton.” “Well,” replied Miss Barton, “why not go to
Mrs. General John A. Logan?” “I will, Miss Barton,” he said. “And whom
will I go to next?” asked the artist. Miss Barton replied, “I cannot
tell you, but if Susan B. Anthony were living, or Mary Livermore, I
could tell you.”
Susan B. Anthony wrote to Clara Barton: “I know, in a general way, my
dear Clara, that you have done some wonderful things in the world, but I
would like to have a list of just what you have done, to present to my
audiences. So please prepare a brief story of your achievements for my
use.” In due time came the reply, enclosing a very brief chronological
list of Miss Barton’s achievements. Miss Anthony wrote back at once and
said: “Dear Clara: I cannot present this skeleton to the public. Please
put some clothes on it.”
XXXVI
Clara Barton—a wonderful majesty in the simplicity of her character.
Sacramento (Cal.) _Record-Union_.
Like the stories from fairy lore are the accounts, modestly written
and simply given, of the tremendous, almost super-human, work done by
this little woman. Oakland (Cal.) _Tribune_.
Clara Barton loved everything that lived. Roanoke (Va.) _News_.
Bugs and other insects, as well as squirrels and other animals, gave
her hourly enjoyment. Clara used to say, “these are my friends, they
have as good a right to live as I have.”
“SISTER HARRIETTE” L. REED.
Her love for the farmyard and its animals never left her.
PERCY H. EPLER.
It was her heroic soul and deep woman sympathy that made Clara Barton
strong and brave. WILLIAM E. BARTON.
Nothing endures but personal qualities. WALT WHITMAN.
Sir John Franklin,—who never turned his back upon a danger, yet of
that tenderness that he would not brush away a mosquito.
WILLIAM MATTHEWS.
I too have a kitty and he is pretty much master of the house. He
doesn’t speak German, although I have no doubt he understands it.
CLARA BARTON.
A harmless necessary cat. MERCHANT OF VENICE.
A cat may look on a king. HAYWOOD’S PROVERBS.
In the night all cats are grey. CERVANTES.
When the cat’s away the mice will play. OLD PROVERBS.
As vigilant as a cat to steal cream. SHAKESPEARE.
It has been the providence of nature to give this creature nine lives,
instead of one. PILPAY.
Hang sorrow! Care will kill a cat,
And therefore let’s be merry. GEORGE WITHER.
Confound the cats! All cats—alway—
Cats of all colors, black, white, gray;
By night a nuisance and by day—
Confound the cats! DOBBIN.
Even poverty has its compensation. CLARA BARTON.
There is neither teacher nor preacher like necessity.
CLARA BARTON.
No work can retain its vitality without constant action.
CLARA BARTON.
Though to bed at daylight, or at best midnight, Clara Barton never
slept late in the morning. J. B. HUBBELL.
Let us each make haste to do the work set before us, in the Providence
of God, unostentatiously, thoroughly and well.
CLARA BARTON.
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the
bread of idleness. PROVERBS.
In October, 1911 (at the age of 90), while she was propped up in bed
and seriously ill, I asked “why, Miss Barton, you haven’t a gray hair
in your head, have you?” Quick was the response, “I don’t know, I
haven’t had time to look.” THE AUTHOR.
Oftener than I could wish my heart sinks heavily, oppressed with fear
that I am falling short of the fulfillment of life’s duties.
CLARA BARTON.
Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
Of Providence that hast survived the Fall. COWPER _Task_.
SIMPLICITY OF CHILDHOOD—PET WASPS PET CATS—LOVED LIFE-DOMESTIC
The simplicity of childhood continued with Clara Barton through to her
latest years. Because requested by children in letters to do so, at
eighty-six years she commenced to write “The Story of My Childhood.” She
did not reach second childhood; she was in her first childhood at
ninety. On a certain occasion, having declined to address an audience,
she reconsidered and said: “Oh, yes, I will talk to the children.”
Pets, as in childhood, continued; she had them wherever she happened to
be,—pets of the chickens, pets of the birds, pets of the squirrels, pets
of the domestic animals. She saw Divinity in nature; loved as does the
believer in pantheism, as does the believer in the “transmigration of
souls.” To the science of entomology she was not a stranger. Among her
swarms of bees she continued the student of those who work for man and
do not “bruise their Master’s flower;” loved even that household “pest,”
the wasp.
A wasp met a bee that was just buzzing by
And she said, “Little Cousin, Can you tell me why
You are loved so much better by people than I?”
But in the existence of a wasp Miss Barton did not think there was
wholly of “mischief to do.” Genius philosophizes. To serve its uses, the
wasp is perfect in its organs, and in its symmetry. The male wasp does
not sting at all; and, while the “female of the species is deadlier than
the male,” the female does not sting except in defence, in obeying the
first law of nature,—the law which is the saving principle in the
universe.
The wasp renders service, service to the fruit-grower by destroying the
caterpillar, especially of the green fly and black fly, and of other
harmful insects. The wasp is not too aristocratic to act as scavenger,
stripping the bones of small dead animals of skin and flesh—for its
grubs—thus precluding carrion from becoming offensive and, through
pollution of the atmosphere, unhealthful. The social wasp is strategic,
is accredited with amazing cleverness, with courage never-failing, with
intelligence higher than instinct,—having a system of living that should
shame its human enemy. He who, in his ignorance, comes to the wasp to
scoff goes away to admire. If only the wasp would toil for man,
appeasing man’s appetite for sweets, that winged “pest” would be _loved_
as is the honey bee.
At the Glen Echo Red Cross house, on the window-ledges, in the slats for
window-catches, where the walls and ceilings join, in every nook and
corner, the welcomed wasps had their little mud cells. While at the
dining table, or at her writing desk, Miss Barton would cut an apple and
sometimes around it would gather a swarm of these “pests.” Of the wasps,
that nobody likes, she was wont to say “these are my little friends;
they keep me company;”—as they hovered over and around her she seemed to
get inspiration from them in her literary work.
In her early years Clara Barton’s special pets were the dog and the
horse; in later years, the cat. She accredited her black and white cat
at Dansville with human personality. Her Maltese cat at Glen Echo she
accredited with _reasoning_ powers, with a _logical_ mind. Of Maltese
Tommie she tells this story. Tommie saw another cat in the mirror. He
stared at it; moved his head in rapid succession to one side of the
mirror, then to the other side. The other cat did likewise. He dashed
like mad to the back of the mirror, but found no cat. Returning to the
front of the mirror, he put his left paw on the glass; the right paw of
the other cat responded. He put his right paw on the glass; the left paw
of the other cat met his. He again put his left paw on the glass, this
time being close to the edge of the mirror and, continuing to hold it
there he reached around to the back of the mirror with his right paw to
grab the insolent intruder. Not seeing the other cat, as he quickly
glanced around the edge of the mirror, and not having found it with his
right paw, “he wiser grew” and walked away philosophizing;—in this vain
world—
Things are not what they seem—but then,
A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.
The picture of Maltese Tommie, painted by Antoinette Margot, is still
one of the historic art-treasures on the walls of the Clara Barton Glen
Echo home.
Those who think of Clara Barton only as the “war woman” within the
battle smoke, or on the rostrum addressing literary audiences, or on
state occasions as the cynosure of all eyes, or as the guest of honor
among the crowned heads of Europe—as masculine and not feminine—have not
seen the daily life-picture of Clara Barton. Clara Barton was most
womanly when most childlike, queenliest when lowliest and, like the
Roman Matron, most aristocratic when most domestic.
As Divinity lives in all life, as God the first garden made and work was
the best religion Clara Barton had, her applied religion was in the yard
as she cared for the domestic animals; in the garden as she cared for
the shrubs, the flowers, the vegetables, her special pride being in
raising fine strawberries. Frequently was Miss Barton called from the
yard or garden, to meet guests in her “House of Rough Hemlock
Boards,”—there where was welcome ever royal and farewell went out loyal;
there where—
Honest offered courtesy
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds
With smoky rafters than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named
And yet is most pretended.
XXXVII
Of the women writers that lived at the time of the Civil War the mind
of Harriet Beecher Stowe was the most imaginative; “the vehicle of
thought” used by Clara Barton, the best equipped, the most powerful.
In war-literature Mrs. Stowe will live through the genius of her great
novel; Clara Barton, through her descriptive powers, forceful diction,
and patriotic sayings. THE AUTHOR.
Learn to be good readers. CARLYLE.
God be thanked for books. CHANNING.
Mankind are creatures of books, as well of other circumstances.
LEIGH HUNT.
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
HERO AND HERO WORSHIPPERS.
Reading to the mind is what exercise is to the body. ADDISON.
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but
half-a-dozen in a thousand. THOREAU.
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. FULLER.
Read much, but not many books. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.
When a new book appears, read an old one.
ENGLISH APHORISM.
Old wood to burn, old wine to drink.
Old friends to trust, old books to read.
ALONZO of Arragon.
Miss Barton would not rewrite a public address; on looking it over,
not a sentence, not a word, could be improved by changing.
J. B. HUBBELL, Assistant to Clara Barton.
She who desires information can sit down, read, and obtain it.
CLARA BARTON.
Persons who use their brains, tongues and pens for the improvement of
their kind, are those of whom biographies may profitably be written.
CLARA BARTON.
Miss Barton is in the front rank of American lecturers—excelled by
none. AURORA BEACON.
The Secretary to President McKinley used to say that in his
correspondence at the White House the letters of Clara Barton excelled
all others in literary merit. THE AUTHOR.
Clara Barton’s lecture is beautifully written. JOHN B. GOUGH.
CLARA BARTON IN THE LITERARY FIELD
The treasure-house of the world is of books. Books are one’s chosen
friends, and friends are of souls with like aspirations. From the
contents of books character is made. The legacy in books is what youth
bequeaths to maturity. In youth Clara Barton entered the “true
university,” that of books. She read not only books from the shelf but
found “books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in
everything.” Her favorite authors were Shakespeare, Longfellow, Milton,
Keats, Schiller, Bunyan, Tennyson, Scott and Browning.
Had she followed the promptings of her head, and not her heart, Clara
Barton might have been a Mrs. Sigourney. One of her admirers says that,
had she been an author, “her gracefulness of expression, her buoyancy of
thought, and brilliancy of imagery” would have placed her in a class
with Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë. But Clara
Barton is now in a class—in a class by herself—and throughout the future
the student of humanity will study Clara Barton.
Clara Barton’s descriptions of battle, and other, scenes are surpassing
in vividness—unequalled. In her diaries, which she kept for more than
half-a-century, are nuggets of human wisdom. Her wise sayings, as those
of Benjamin Franklin, would fill a volume. Such Clara Barton Red Cross
maxims, and other wise sayings as appear in these pages, are but the
flotsam and jetsam of a cargo of writings, the cargo partly wrecked and
no part of it available by the author.
Clara Barton was a nurse, but only as Lincoln was a rail-splitter. As an
executive, Clara Barton is accredited as the greatest _man_ in America,
by one of America’s greatest statesmen; as the greatest woman in the
world, by one of America’s greatest generals; as having done more for
humanity than any other woman since the time of Mary of Galilee, by a
great State Executive. By a great writer, it is said that through
reading everything is within one’s reach. Clara Barton’s mental reach
into national and world problems at least widens and heightens the
possibilities of womankind.
Her Red Cross lectures are not “Caudle Lectures to Ladies”; they,
including official reports, are high-class state papers which would do
credit to the White House—literary, argumentative, statesmanlike. For
twenty-three years in America Clara Barton was the Red Cross
encyclopedia, the Red Cross dictionary. She was also the Red Cross
legislature, the Red Cross Supreme Court, the Commander-in-Chief of our
Red Cross battalions, at home and abroad. Although one of the
“remonstrants,” in the press, referred to the Red Cross as “Clara
Barton’s Bread and Butter Brigade” the Achilles in that brigade had won
for humanity the greatest battle on American soil.
Her address, “History of the Red Cross; Its Origin and Progress,” is all
comprehensive, showing research, scholarship, logic. Her “Address to the
President, Congress and People of the United States” on “The Red Cross—A
History of This Remarkable Movement in the Interest of Humanity” is as
overwhelmingly convincing, as to the necessity of adhesion by this
Government to the Treaty of Geneva, as was Webster’s historic reply to
Hayne, in advocacy of the perpetuity of the Union. Her address on “What
is the Significance of the Red Cross in its Relation to Philanthropy” is
hardly less meritorious. Her address at Saratoga on “International and
National Relief in War” is more than a literary gem; it is a compendium
of humanitarian history—of Red Cross philosophy. No similar humanitarian
address even approximates it, in wisdom and argument.
Through seven years, in the field of letters and politics, there raged a
war against woe, a war led by a Master Spirit. Humanity won—won through
that Master Spirit. That Master Literary Spirit, says another great
woman, has “won the hearts of the women of the world.” She not only
“walked like a benediction of her God amid the desolate, the stricken,
the hungry and despairing,” but she walked and talked and lived “in
pulses stirred to generosity.” Her pathos of sentiment and elegance of
diction won the hearts of the American people, won Congress, won the
President, won the Red Cross for America. And “the Red Cross in its
great and human principles, its far-reaching philanthropy, its
innovations upon long established and accepted customs and rules of
barbaric cruelty, its wise practical charity, stands forever next to the
immortal proclamation of freedom to the slaves that crowns the name of
Abraham Lincoln.”
[Illustration:
IDA M. TARBELL
Clara Barton got the preliminary experience which led to the
foundation of the Red Cross work, on the battlefields of the Civil
War. I have a high regard for her devotion, her organization
ability.—IDA M. TARBELL.
]
[Illustration:
LUCY LARCROM
Even a casual observer can not fail to see in Clara Barton’s work a
unity peculiar to itself—a work which has grown out of a character,
and which no one but herself could have done.—LUCY LARCROM.
]
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LITERARY WORLD
[Illustration:
ELBERT HUBBARD
Clara Barton has given us a constant lesson in thrift; a worker from
infancy, taking neither vacation nor recreation.
]
[Illustration:
ALICE HUBBARD
The greatest woman of all times. The people of the United States
admire, revere and devotedly love Clara Barton.
]
_The Fra_—Elbert and Alice Hubbard.
XXXVIII
Clara Barton’s dress was so simple that no one tried to follow her
fashion. ALICE HUBBARD.
For personal adornment Clara Barton cared little, choosing green
dresses in her youth; and ornaments of bright red, for cheer, in her
older years. CORRA BACON-FOSTER, Author.
Dress changes manners. VOLTAIRE.
Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others. FRANKLIN.
Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance, and adopted by folly.
SMOLLETT.
To live to dress well indicates a fool. DR. A. E. WINSHIP.
The plainer the dress with greater luster does beauty appear.
LORD FAIRFAX.
Beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes plainest.
STERNE.
Those who think that, in order to dress well, it is necessary to dress
extravagantly, make a great mistake. Nothing so well becomes feminine
beauty as simplicity. GEORGE D. PRENTICE.
A plain, genteel dress is more admired and obtains more credit than
lace and embroidery, in the eyes of the judicious and sensible.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Elizabeth, who died the happy owner of 3,000 dresses, issued a solemn
proclamation against extravagance in dress.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
loveliness
Needs not foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorned, adorned most.
THOMSON—_Autumn_.
We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress
drains our cellar dry and keeps our larder lean. COWPER.
The dress that shows taste and sentiment is elevating to the home, and
is one of the most feminine means of beautifying the world.
MISS OAKEY.
A lady of genius will give a genteel air to her whole dress by a well
fancied suit of knots, as a judicious writer gives to a whole sentence
by a single expression. GAY.
A rich dress is not worth a straw to one who has a poor mind.
AZ ZUBAIDI.
’Tis the mind that makes the body rich. SHAKESPEARE.
I wear what I want to. CLARA BARTON.
THE ART OF DRESSING—CLARA BARTON’S INDIVIDUALITY
Dress is a sentiment, sentiment of an occasion. Dress is an expression
of the attitude of the mind as to propriety, necessary to accomplish
results. Like smiles, dress is an expression of the intelligence of the
wearer. Dress is an art, one of the highest of the arts. Dress has to do
with the form divine and, whether dress be for good or ill, depends on
the mind that fashions it. Court dress, then the want of _dress_, Clara
Barton disliked and on one occasion would not conform. She thereby
missed the honor of being a guest on a state occasion—proffered her by
the world’s greatest queen.
There is an individuality of dress, as of conduct. Clara Barton had
individuality. There has been no one else like her, and a famous
American woman says we shall never again produce her like. In religion
she adhered to no creed; in social life, to no rules; in wearing
apparel, to no fashion. In service to the world she wished for something
to do that no one else would do—something that no one else thought of
doing. “Clara Barton was Clara Barton,” individual even in her wearing
apparel. The first straw bonnet she ever had she made herself. She cut
the green rye; she scalded it; she bleached it in the sun; she cut it
into lengths; with her teeth she split the straws into strands,
flattening them. She braided the bonnet by the use of eleven strands;
she fashioned it to suit herself; she wore it; it was Clara’s individual
bonnet, and at 86 years of age she regarded it the great achievement of
her life.
When advised by a clerk in a store that a woman of her age should wear
lavenders and violets, Clara Barton turned to her shopping companion and
said, “I guess she doesn’t know I wear what I want to.” While on the
lecture platform, to a limited extent, she conformed to custom and wore
trains. On a certain occasion, looking her over from head to feet, an
obtrusive flatterer said to her “How stunning!” Floating on a breeze
several degrees below zero came from Miss Barton’s lips “_What did you
say!_” Nor would she gossip about the dress of others. Says Goethe: The
“highest fortune of earth’s children is personality.” Characteristic of
her observations on personality rather than of dress, on an occasion
when she was a special guest of honor, she thus writes of her hostess:
“I want you to know what a beautiful, bright lady I think Mrs. President
Hayes to be. She is brilliant and beautiful, brunette with abundant jet
black hair, put back over her ears;—she is entirely different from the
Grand Duchess of Baden, and still _bright_ and _full of life_, like
her.”
Every human being dresses for effect, as does the actress before the
footlights—the greater the intelligence the greater the discrimination.
Clara Barton was the designer of her own fashions, the mistress of her
own stitches. In the use of one of her stitches, she taught the women of
Corsica to do more work in one hour than previously they had done in
five hours. She found forty thousand people in despair, ill clothed. In
her “dress-making shop,” she taught large classes of girls to sew.
Daily, with these poor girls,
Plying her needle and thread,—
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
she left those people the best clothed people in Europe.