Discipline and economy had transformed the prison. Instead of
insubordination, there was obedience; instead of wastage, there was
frugality. The Governor and his Council paid the institution an official
visit. In a public address delivered shortly after this at Springfield,
the Governor said: “I’ll tell you that the _Prison Is In a Thorough
Condition_, and there has been inaugurated there a system of economy
that will save $10,000 within a year of her administration.”
XCIII
America’s foremost woman. Houghton (Mich.) _Gazette_.
Clara Barton’s, a career which has no parallel in American history.
Cleveland (Ohio) _Plain Dealer_.
Clara Barton—in citizenship, the memory of her career must remain a
rich heritage to the people of this country.
Portland (Ore.) _Telegram_.
Clara Barton’s Red Cross achievements are monumental, and because of
the corner-stone she laid the present superstructure will endure. Her
name is the synonym for the American Red Cross as it was, and as it
is. B. F. TILLINGHAST, Delegate to the International Red Cross
Conference at St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1902.
Destiny is the decree of God. A. CUNNINGHAM.
Destiny cannot be avoided. G. COWPAY.
Destiny bears us to our lot. DISRAELI.
Who can turn the stream of destiny? SPENCER.
In your own bosom are your destiny’s stars. COLERIDGE.
How circumscribed is woman’s destiny. GOETHE.
Let a woman steer straight onward to the fulfillment of her own
destiny. MRS. EMMA R. COLE.
Clara Barton—one of the immortals. _Brooklyn Citizen._
Quaff immortality. JOHN MILTON.
Born of immortality. WORDSWORTH.
This longing after immortality. ADDISON.
I have an immortal longing in me. SHAKESPEARE.
Immortality! We bow before the very term, Immortality!
GEORGE DOUGLAS.
’Tis immortality to die aspiring. CHAPMAN.
No one could meet death for his country without the hope of
immortality. CICERO.
Clara Barton—she earned immortality.
Boston (Mass.) _Herald_.
She passes through the portals of immortality.
Joplin (Mo.) _Globe_.
Rest thee among the immortal names that were not born to die.
Rutland (Vermont) _Herald_.
He is truly great that is great in charity.
THOMAS À KEMPIS.
The most useful is the greatest. THEODORE PARKER.
Great names stand not alone for great deeds. HENRY GILES.
He who does the most good is the greatest. BISHOP JARTIN.
He only is great at heart who floods the world with a great affection.
ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK.
As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of
their country; yea, of the whole earth. HEINE.
Greatness is nothing unless it is lasting. NAPOLEON.
On eagle’s wings immortal scandals fly. STEPHEN HARVEY.
To reproach is a concomitant to greatness, as satire and invectives
were an essential part of a Roman triumph.
JOSEPH ADDISON.
Such is the destiny of great men that their superior genius always
exposes them to the butt of the envenomed darts of calumny and envy.
VOLTAIRE.
America has her Washingtons, Jeffersons, Lees, and others whose names
are written down in the hearts of all Americans, but Clara Barton
accomplished a work compared with which the career of generals fade in
the distance as a shadow.
Pensacola (Fla.) _Journal_.
GREATNESS—AN IMMORTAL AMERICAN DESTINY—IMMORTALITY
From a speech by Honorable Henry Breckenridge, Acting Secretary of
War, representing the United States Government, at the laying of the
corner-stone of the American Red Cross Building, at Washington, D. C,
March 27, 1915.
To every soldier who fought in the Union Army, and survived the war, the
name of Clara Barton was known. And as long as the American Red Cross
endures or its name is remembered the memory of Clara Barton will be
cherished. Her sympathies were universal, her zeal unflagging. She
nursed the wounded of two wars on the continents, in our Civil War and
in the Franco-Prussian War. She directed the work of her association to
the calamities of peace, as well as the stricken fields of war. She was
in Cuba before the Spanish War—was on the “Maine” the day before it was
blown up, and tended the wounded survivors in the hospital ashore.
Wherever humanity called for help—in the Balkans or in Strasburg—in Cuba
or in Galveston—in Paris or on the American battlefields of the
sixties—there came the ministering hand of Clara Barton.
To take an historical perspective, disfavor with a temporary and passing
administration means nothing in the end to a name as great and a career
as long as Clara Barton’s, as this estimate shows. For a while it may
mean on both sides much misconstruction and suffering, but in the end
this is forgotten and the fame remains undimmed.
Florence Nightingale, at the Crimea, England’s great introducer into the
world of the system of women hospital nurses, was actually so ignored by
a subsequent English ministry that, though a poor invalid, she was
ousted from her minor position in a Governmental office. It caused her
intense pain, and although a chronic sufferer from her many labors, she
saw herself ignominiously thrown out by new political leaders who, great
as they were, could not understand her. But when she became an
octogenarian, all this became a buried incident, and all England a few
years ago bent to do her homage, when the Lord Mayor of London granted
her the freedom of the city, and the Golden Casket, England’s highest of
honors. Now, since her death, a monument is being erected and nothing is
considered too good to let Great Britain make her memory green in the
British Isles.
Thus will perish the temporary unhappy misunderstanding and
misconstruction of 1902–1904, through which Clara Barton suffered. In
the atoning stream that swallows time’s ticking seconds of little
troubles, its unessentials will be dissolved. Indeed, as demonstrated in
nearly 3000 American newspapers in 1912, they have already been
dissolved, leaving her character and career eternally crystallized at
the base of an enduring national foundation and an immortal American
destiny—the greatest an American woman has yet produced.
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
HENRY BRECKENRIDGE
So long as the American Red Cross endures, and its name is remembered,
the memory of Clara Barton will be cherished.—HENRY BRECKENRIDGE, of
Kentucky. Orator of the Day, Assistant Secretary of War,
representing the U. S. Government at the laying of the corner stone
of the Red Cross Building at Washington, D. C., March 17, 1915;
Lieutenant-Colonel World War.
See page 368.
]
XCIV
Clara Barton has built an imperishable monument for herself in the
hearts of the people of all creeds. Dallas (Texas) _Herald_.
Clara Barton—her deeds lend honor to her country’s fame.
_The Outlook._
Clara Barton—the embodiment of one vital principle of all creeds, the
love of humanity. _Detroit Free Press._
Before her gentle assault the steel walls of religious prejudice and
race hatred melted like a mist. Leadville (Colo.) _Herald_.
Put your Creed in your Deed. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Souls in Heaven are placed by their deeds. ROBERT GREENE.
Things of today? Deeds which are honest, for eternity.
EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
Truly does the Hindoo say, with averted face: “God only is great.”
CLARA BARTON.
Without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God.
A. LINCOLN.
Each of the great religions of the world seems to have some good in
it. BISHOP W. F. MCDOWELL.
God bless all the Churches. A. LINCOLN.
I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. A. LINCOLN.
There are few people who have memories of harder Church work and
better Church love than I. CLARA BARTON.
In regard to the Great Book, I have only to say that it is the best
gift that God has given to man. A. LINCOLN.
What sensations can possess the mind but wonder and adoration for the
power of Almighty God, and a humble gratitude that no words can speak.
CLARA BARTON.
You believe that God is a Divine Immanence; you believe that God is
now communicating himself to humanity and that his loving Presence is
here now as ever. Why, then, can’t you call up a direct relationship,
rather than going around to the uncertain allusions of Theodore
Parker? CLARA BARTON.
In the Universalist Church at Oxford, where Clara Barton attended
Church, there is carefully preserved the pulpit in which the famous
Reverend Hosea Ballou was ordained in 1794.
THE AUTHOR.
Reverend Father Tyler, a memorable Universalist minister, who
officiated at the funerals of Father and Mother Barton, on the
occasion of her funeral pronounced also at the grave a memorial
tribute to Clara. Among her religious friends also were Hosea Ballou,
Phillips Brooks, Mary Baker Eddy, Archbishops Gibbons and Ireland. THE
AUTHOR.
I firmly believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Jesus of
Nazareth, in His life and death, His suffering to save the world from
sin, so far as in His power to do so. But it would be difficult for me
to stop there, and believe that this spirit of divinity was accorded
to none others of God’s creation who, like the Master, took on the
living form and, like Him, lived the human life.
CLARA BARTON.
Miss Barton does not wait and “wish to be an angel.” She goes right
about it. A visible, substantial, present angel she is—a “ministering
spirit.” W. H. ARMSTRONG.
Over all, spreading its Aegis like a benediction is the great mantle
of Christianity, wrapping all in its beneficent folds.
CLARA BARTON.
WHAT WAS HER RELIGION?
Was Clara Barton a Church woman? Of herself she says: “There are few
people who have memories of harder Church work and better Church love
than I; I have never lost my love for the old Church of my Fathers, my
family and my childhood.”
Was she a Mormon? A friend of the Mormons, and one of the biggest
receptions ever tendered to her was in the tabernacle at Salt Lake City,
by the Mormons of Utah. Was she a Mohammedan? She was most cordially
received by the Mohammedans, and decorated by the Sultan of Turkey. Was
she a Spiritualist? She attended spiritualistic meetings, studied the
cult, consulted mediums, and mingled with spiritualists. Commenting on
the fact, claimed, that spiritual communications occur between those of
this world and those of the other world, she said: “I am more and more
filled with wonder how these things can be” but—“I hope so.”
Was she a Catholic? She frequently attended the Catholic Church, and
counted among her friends Sisters of Mercy, Priests, Bishops, and
Archbishops. Was she a Congregationalist? She attended that Church at
times. Several Congregational ministers officiated at the funeral, and a
beautiful Clara Barton window is preserved in the Congregational Church
at Oxford. Was she a Methodist? She attended the Methodist Church, and
the Methodists now use Clara Barton leaflets, and other Clara Barton
literature, in their Sunday Schools throughout the country.
Was she a Christian Scientist? She said: “I do not know enough to be
one, nor to understand it,” but she also said: “I cannot see why
Universalists should not become Christian Scientists.” She attended the
Christian Science Church for three years, but a leading scientist editor
said: “We do not claim her, nor do I think any other Church can claim
her.” Was she a Universalist? She was reared a Universalist, and in her
youth attended the Universalist Church where the famous divine, Hosea
Ballou, was pastor and she also requested a Universalist pastor to
assist in officiating at her funeral.
She attended other Churches, and ministers of several denominations
officiated at her funeral. Clara Barton says: “I am not what the world
denominates a Church woman; I was born to liberal views, and have lived
a liberal creed.”
But really what was her religion? “Perplexed in faith but pure in
deeds,” Clara Barton, to the annoying question so often asked by the
curious, answered: “I am a well disposed pagan.”
XCV
I never had a mission and I don’t know what I should do with one, if I
had it. CLARA BARTON.
We all tumble over opportunities for being brave and good, at every
step we take. Life is just made up of such opportunities.
CLARA BARTON.
Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.
A. LINCOLN.
There are other altars than that of Venus on which to light your
fires—work, incessant, hard, earnest work. SIR WILLIAM OSLER.
How much of the sweets of life one loses in the rush of it.
CLARA BARTON.
I lost two months entire, but the time went on and spun its web each
day. CLARA BARTON.
The gray haired military chieftain, whom all would recognize were I to
name him, was correct when he once said to me: “Strange as it may
seem, the days of ‘rest’ at the field are the hardest days.”
CLARA BARTON.
I always had a passion for service. CLARA BARTON.
Honest labor bears a lovely face. THOMAS DECKER.
Labor: All labor is noble and holy. FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.
Work ye, and God will work. JOAN OF ARC.
Life is a great bundle of little things. O. W. HOLMES.
Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little
things. SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
Nothing is of greater value than a single day. GOETHE.
Life is but a day at most. BURNS.
Life is a short day, but it is a working day. HANNAH MOORE.
Living is doing. CLARA BARTON.
“Even while we say there is nothing we can do, we stumble over
opportunities for service that we are passing by in our tear-blinded,
self-pity.” CLARA BARTON.
I have had more work than I could do lying _around my feet_, and try
to get it out of my way so I can go on to the next.
CLARA BARTON.
There is but one method, and that is hard labor.
SIDNEY SMITH.
If God works, Madam, you can afford to work also.
JULIA WARD HOWE.
Clara Barton was a worker from infancy. She gave to the world nearly a
century of work, taking neither vacation nor recreation.
ALICE HUBBARD.
Women, always—as a rule—have worked harder than men.
CLARA BARTON.
I do hope I may live long enough to get the story of my life and my
life’s work in shape for publication. I am doing this ill in bed (at
90 years of age), sometimes working until two or three o’clock in the
morning. CLARA BARTON.
ONE DAY WITH CLARA BARTON
How so much was accomplished in the lifetime of one woman may be
understood by reading “One Day with Clara Barton,” as described by
herself in a personal letter to a friend:
“How shall I manage to be a woman of business, and act like a lady of
leisure? How strangely odd it seemed to me when I read your pretty
description of how your time was passed, that you could dress for
breakfast, help do some little things about the house, get ready for tea
and walk after it. When _did_ I see such days, or even _one_ such day.
If it would not take too long I could tell you something of how I pass a
day. Let me try; and as one day is a fair sample of another, suppose I
take yesterday as I remember it better than any other. Well, let me
brush up my hair and try to think. First, I rose when I could see to
dress, I suppose a little past four, went into my bath room, and bathed
thoroughly in preparation for a scorching day and partly made my toilet;
then read my chapter in the scriptures by _myself_, and offered my own
prayer and thanksgiving (no family service to unite in like you, and I
have too much of the dust of old Plymouth Rock sticking to me to omit
it); then finished a hurried toilet, and sat down to a French lesson at
half past six; went to my breakfast at seven, commenced my French
recitation, lasted until eight; after this put my chamber and myself in
order and started for the office; called on my dress-maker on my way and
tried on a dress; called at the post office and found one business
letter; and reached the office at nine; distance little over a mile, and
then commenced the tug of war. I wrote until three o’clock P. M., took
an omnibus home, took my writing, or a portion of it, along with me
(don’t tell; it’s against the rule), reached home at three-thirty, took
a hurried bath, went to dinner and at four-thirty was seated at my table
writing for my life. Did not leave my room again, or scarce arose from
my table until twelve o’clock, when I retired and slept as fast and hard
as I could until daylight in preparation for a repetition of the same.
Perhaps you wish, or are curious, to know how much I accomplished in all
that time. Ten thousand words of bold round record which must live and
be legible when the mound which once covered me shall have become a
hollow and the moss-covered headstone, with ‘born’ and ‘died’ no longer
to be traced upon its time-worn front shall have buried itself beneath
the kindred turf.”
Working twenty hours out of the twenty-four would give almost any woman
the reputation of being a _genius_. Thinking the woman who had done
things held the secret of woman’s success, a touring party of ambitious
young ladies called on Clara Barton, in her later years, at Glen Echo.
The following conversation took place:
Vassar Girl—Miss Barton, these other ladies and myself called to pay our
respects. We have heard much of you since we were little girls. A few
weeks ago, in the class of ——, we graduated from Vassar College. We, as
you have done, wish to do some good in the world. We cannot decide what
we should do; we want your advice.
Clara Barton—My dear young lady, do the first thing that comes to your
hand. Do it well. Then do the next thing. Do that well. Then do the next
thing, just so keep on doing——.
Clara Barton then pinned a Red Cross badge on each of these young
ladies, the happiest visitors when leaving, says Miss Barton’s
secretary, that he had ever seen in that “house of rough hemlock
boards.”
XCVI
Finally Clara Barton was forced out of her position in May, 1904.
_New York Examiner._
Clara Barton—antagonism she encountered. But in all of them she bore
herself with a poise that lost for her no friends.
Utica (N. Y.) _Observer_.
I know there is a God, and he hates injustice. A. LINCOLN.
There were no heroes, there were no martyrs.
BULWER-LYTTON.
Great women belong to history and self-sacrifice.
LEIGH HUNT.
I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full
to the overflowing. A. LINCOLN.
Let us have faith that right makes might. A. LINCOLN.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice
of the people? Is there any better, or equal, hope in the world? A.
LINCOLN.
Beneficence breeds gratitude, gratitude admiration, admiration fame,
and the world remembers its benefactors.
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.
To be great is to be misunderstood. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
The people will never understand the motive, and of course cannot
comprehend that it was necessary for the “aspirants” to resort to
“charges” in order to accomplish their purpose,—to gain possession of
the Red Cross. CLARA BARTON.
What you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure. Calvaries and
Crucifixions take deepest hold of humanity; the triumphs of might are
transient, they pass and are forgotten; the sufferings of the right
are graven deepest on the chronicles of nations.
FATHER RYAN.
Alas! I have not words to tell my grief:
To vent my sorrows would be some relief. DRYDEN.
For the heart must speak when
The lips are dumb. KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
Clara Barton speaketh from the heart in eloquence pathetic and
convincing; through her own words, written to Professor Charles Sumner
Young at this time (1904), are “The most vital, and interesting of a
wonderful life and a wonderful work, and few men hear of it without
envy and emulation.” _New York Sun._
THE PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE—CLARA BARTON’S PROPOSED SELF-EXPATRIATION
Occurring in October, 1911, in the sick room at Oxford, was the
following interview:
Mr. Young: Miss Barton, you once requested me to do a certain thing for
you. I did not do it then and I won’t do it now, so please don’t ask it.
Miss Barton: What’s that? I don’t understand.
Mr. Young: You requested me to destroy a certain letter. I did not do
it.
Miss Barton: Was that the letter in which I asked you to take me to
Mexico? And why did you not destroy it as I requested?
Mr. Young: That’s the letter. It is now in a safe deposit box in Los
Angeles. I did not destroy it because, in my opinion, that letter would
do more in your defense than any argument that could be put up by the
greatest lawyers in America. What you wrote at the time of your
persecution, in confidence to a friend with a request that the letter be
destroyed, the American people would believe. No slander would stand for
a moment against your heart’s secrets, thus told to a friend. In case I
should die before you do, I have arrangements with a mutual personal
friend that in any event the letter will be published after you shall
have passed.
Miss Barton: (Hesitatingly, then very frankly): Mr. Young, you are a
very wise man; possibly you are right. Anyway, do what you please with
that letter when I am gone. Now, Mr. Young, I meant it. For several
months I was getting together my belongings and adjusting my affairs so
that I could go. There were but two countries where the _Red Cross_ did
not exist; one was China, and the other Mexico. I did not want to go to
China, but I did want to go to Mexico. Oh! Well, it’s probably best that
I did not go; if I had gone I might not be alive now.
Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. SHAKESPEARE.
Have stooped my neck under your injuries, eating the bitter bread of
banishment. SHAKESPEARE.
The letter referred to and similar correspondence follow:
THE WAIL OF AN ACHING HEART
Glen Echo, Maryland,
January 13, 1904.
My dear Mr. Young:
It is a blessing to your friends that you have a good memory.
Otherwise, how should you have carried the recollection of poor me,
all these weary months running into years and, through friends all
unknown to me, sent such tribute of respect.
I waited, after receiving the notices from you, to be sure of the
arrival. I have directed the acknowledgement to be made to Mr. and
Mrs. Canfield, but words tell so little; you will, I am sure, thank
them for me.
You will never know how many times I have thought of you, in this
last, hard and dreadful year to me. I cannot tell you, I must _not_,
and yet I _must_. So much of the time, under all the persecution it
has seemed to me I _could_ not remain in the _country_, and have
sought the range of the world for _some_ place among strangers and out
of the way of people and mails—and longed for some one to _point_ out
a quiet place in some _other_ land; my thoughts have fled to you, who
would at least tell me a _road_ to take, outside of America, and who
would ask of the authorities of Mexico if a woman who could not live
in her own country might find a home, or a resting place, in theirs.
[Illustration:
© _Hartsook._
CHAMP CLARK
Clara Barton rendered her country and her kind great and noble
service.—CHAMP CLARK, of Missouri. Congress, 1893–1895; 1897–1921;
Speaker of the House, 1911–1921.
]
REPRESENTATIVE OF UNITED STATES CONGRESS
[Illustration:
CHARLES F. CURRY
]
[Illustration:
DENVER S. CHURCH
]
Clara Barton, one of the great characters of history; unselfish and
altruistic in her service for humanity; an American, intensely
patriotic, but with an international mind and sympathy that embraced
all humanity.—CHARLES F. CURRY, of California. Congress 1913—
I regard Clara Barton one of the greatest women that ever
lived.—DENVER S. CHURCH, of California. Congress, 1913–1919.
This will all sound very strange to you—you will wonder if I am “out
of my mind”—let me answer—no; and if you had only a glimpse of what is
put upon me to endure, you would not wonder, and in the goodness of
your heart, would hold the gate open to show me a mule-track to some
little mountain nook, where I might escape and wait in peace. Don’t
think this is _common_ talk with me, I have never said it to others;
and yet I think they, who know me best, may _mistrust_ that I cannot
endure _everything_ and will try in some way to relieve myself.
To think of sitting here through an “_investigation_” by the country I
have tried to serve,—“in the interest of _harmony_,” they say, when I
have never spoken a discordant word in my life, meaningly, but have
worked on in _silence_ under the fire of the entire press of the U. S.
for twelve months,—forgiven all, offered friendship,—and am still to
be “investigated,” for “inharmony,” “unbusinesslike methods,” and too
many years—all of these I cannot help. I am still unanimously bidden
to work on for “life,” bear the burden of an organization—meet its
costs myself—and am now threatened with the expenses of an
“investigation.”
Can you wonder that I ask a bridle track? And that some other country
might look inviting to me?