CLARA BARTON AT SHERBORN
It will be well at this point to make plain three points which were not
clearly understood at the outset, and have sometimes been misunderstood
since.
The first is that Clara Barton, in establishing the Red Cross in
America, was not seeking primarily to provide a place for herself. At
this period she had three homes, and money enough to support herself
comfortably in any one of them. We have an interesting look into the
Dansville home in a letter of her brother David to his daughter, Ida
Barton Riccius. He was ill, and she, not yet recovered from her own
illness, took him in and nursed him back to health. He wrote:
DANSVILLE, June 13, 1880
Clara’s friends met us at the cars and rendered all necessary
assistance. I was very weak and tired.
Clara lives in a very splendid old mansion, in a location unsurpassed,
and a grand view of all the surroundings. Her house is filled with
almost everything that adds to health, comfort, and happiness. Clara
is very attentive to me. I think it came rather hard on her the first
part of the time. Perhaps she will stand it a little better now that I
am better and can possibly assist her a little. I have been gradually
gaining since I arrived, considering how miserable I was when I came.
The living here agrees with me exceedingly well. We have plenty of
good fresh milk, fresh graham bread from the bakery, fresh graham meal
to make puddings, butter, cheese, apple-sauce, any kind of canned
fruit we choose, which generally constitutes our breakfast. For dinner
we have meat, fish, beans, potatoes, and things of that kind. For
supper we have bread, butter, tea or coffee, cheese, and fruit of any
kind. This is the way we live and I enjoy it much. Clara has nearly
all sorts of canned fruit in abundance, but what is best of all is
plenty of nice fresh apples which I go into without mercy.
Clara Barton would have smiled a little at her brother’s arrangement of
her menus. She probably would have said that she had a simple breakfast
of graham bread, fresh butter, and fruit; a hearty midday meal of meat
or fish and vegetables; and a light supper of bread, butter, cheese,
and fruit, with abundance of sweet milk and an unlimited supply of good
red apples.
This was the kind of home which Clara Barton left when she went to
Washington to plead for the Red Cross. She often longed for it, and
thought of going back there. Yet the purpose which had taken her to
Dansville had been accomplished in her restored health. There was no
important work for her to do there, or at Oxford. She could have a roof
and red apples in either place, but she wanted to be promoting what had
become the great object in life for her. That was what brought her back
to Washington.
If, in all the weary months when she was fighting her lonely battles
for the Red Cross, it ever occurred to her that this organization
would give to her a life position, or bring to her either money or
other emoluments, there is no hint of it in her diaries. So far as one
may judge from these intimate self-revelations, her purpose was as
genuinely altruistic as human nature is capable of becoming.
Nor is there any indication that she supposed that this would bring
her additional honor. She already had more honors of certain desirable
kinds than any other woman in America. Her Civil War record was known
throughout the Nation. The lecture platform offered her an inviting and
remunerative invitation to return if she cared to take it up. She had
brought back with her from Europe official decorations such as royalty
neither before nor since has ever bestowed upon an American woman.
Secretary Blaine inquired about these with interest one day, and a few
days later she handed three of them to his secretary with the following
letter:
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 31, 1881
To the Hon. Secretary of State
Washington, D.C.
DEAR MR. BLAINE:
After the words unintentionally dropped at the interview so kindly
granted me on Saturday, it occurs to me that it is perhaps the
suitable thing for me to do, possibly a duty, to explain to you,
as the Head of our foreign relations, my own connection in that
direction. I will with your kind permission take the liberty to pass
in, by the hand of your secretary, the accompanying “Decorations”:
The “Iron Cross of Merit” issued to me in 1872 by the Emperor and
Empress of Germany on the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of
the Emperor.
The “Gold Cross of Remembrance” presented to me by the Grand Duke and
Grand Duchess of Baden at the close of the Franco-German War.
The “Red Cross of Geneva,” brought to Strassburg and placed upon my
neck by the Grand Duchess of Baden, near whose court I suppose by
courtesy I in a manner belong, as the winter of 1872 was passed there,
and I left with the faithful promise to return to Europe once in
two years, and pass each alternate winter with her, a promise which
circumstances alone have prevented me from keeping,--the first four
years after my return to America in 1873 were passed as a broken-down
invalid, mainly confined to my room or bed. The four last, since on
my feet, I have been held here by my efforts, and my promise given
repeatedly abroad, to plant the Red Cross on our own soil, and hang
its peaceful humane flag beside our “Stars and Stripes.”
I am glad, Mr. Secretary, that you have seen it, as you have in
the late celebration, for you will be the better able, it may be,
to comprehend and excuse my persistency. Except for this constant
and exhaustive occupation, I should have passed either of the last
winters at Carlsruhe; but it has been sufficient to consume my entire
time, strength, and spare means, and must continue to do so, until
the treaty is disposed of and the Societies of the Red Cross, so
indispensable to the effectiveness and utility of the treaty, are
understood by the people, and measurably established throughout the
country. To this end, I have at this moment in press a small work of
a hundred or so pages, explaining the entire subject, its origin,
history, and purposes, and of which I have ordered five thousand
copies for gratuitous circulation. They will be ready at the opening
of Congress or before, and I have four thoroughly formed societies,
one NATIONAL in this city, completed and incorporated, one Local in
Dansville, New York, one in the city of Rochester, New York, for the
county of Monroe, and one similarly organized in Syracuse, New York.
Both Rochester and Syracuse are forming local, town societies under
them, and all, in the happy absence of war, are using up their surplus
energies on the burnt fields of Michigan, to which their agents have
already taken thousands of dollars to the hungry, and thousands of
garments to the naked.
I must beg, Mr. Blaine, that you do not misinterpret my motive in
making this little revelation of foreign recognition. If the incentive
had been mere personal vanity, I should probably have found a way to
make the facts known, short of a decade, but it comes to me now, that
it is perhaps, under the circumstances, a kind of duty that I should
report to you on “Foreign Affairs.”
Begging your pardon for my too long letter, I remain, Mr. Secretary,
with the most grateful respect,
Very truly
CLARA BARTON
The next thing that should be kept clearly in mind is that she did not
establish an organization dependent upon Government appropriations. In
this respect her organization was quite unlike some of those that were
hastily organized to oppose her. At least one of these was organized
with an eye keenly intent upon one form of then existing Government
service, with which it might possibly be affiliated, with an inviting
prospect of salaried positions and official appointments. When the
Treaty of Geneva was ratified, and not only the Senate but House of
Representatives stood ready to do almost anything for Clara Barton,
many of her friends in Congress assumed that the next step would be a
request for a Congressional appropriation to cover the administrative
expense of the Red Cross organization. To every such suggestion Clara
Barton returned an emphatic negative. This was her little creed
announced at the outset, and often reiterated:
The Red Cross means, not national aid for the needs of the people, but
the people’s aid for the needs of the Nation.
She would not accept a salary or permit any friend of hers in Congress
to introduce a bill for her financial advantage.
How keenly she felt the importance of establishing the Red Cross upon
this basis, and how sensitive she was to the opposition which grew
formidable just before the treaty was adopted, is shown in a letter
of hers to her long-time friend Frances Willard, who wrote to ask the
reason why she was not moving faster in her work for the relief of the
people in the flooded district along the Mississippi:
WASHINGTON, Feby. 11, 1882
DEAR FRANCES WILLARD:
Yes, I did get your letter telling me about the state of things in
Mississippi and that all was lost there. I have no doubt but that it
is the same the country through. It is hard and heavy and bitter; the
shots of malice and detraction fall thick, but I must stand at the
helm and steer my ship safely into port. The _Treaty of Geneva_ must
first be secured. I have but one passage to take it through and that
is lined thick on every side with guns manned by the Society ladies
of the Capital of the Nation. The Red Cross, a little stranger craft
from a foreign land, bearing only the banner of peace and love, and
her messages of world-wide mercy begging shelter and acceptance in our
capacious harbor, has chosen me for her pilot to bring her in. Besides
these guns that open upon her on all sides she runs against the
chains which have so long held her out--fancied Government defenses
of “Non-intervention,” “Self-isolation,” beware of “Entangling
alliances,” “Washington’s Farewell Address,” “Monroe Doctrine,”
apathy, inertia, general ignorance, national conceit, national
distrust, a desire to retain the old-time barbarous privileges of
privateering and piracy which we have hugged as a precious boon
against every humane treaty since we began. All these my little ship
has had to meet and breast and bear down, before this new and personal
attack was opened upon her, so you see I cannot turn aside from my
duties of a true pilot to contest a new foe. I must bring my ship
through the natural dangers and anchor it safely in port, though _it_
and I be riddled with shot. I have thrown over all extra weight, put
on all sail, muzzled my guns, put my poor tired wounded crew to the
pumps, nailed the little flag to the mast; and so you see us without
other word or sign, plunging through the surf, breaking down chain
after chain, through the fire and smoke, making for the shore. Never
a messenger of mercy met a more inhospitable welcome, but the poor
battered pilot has faith in the craft, and faith in God, and at no
distant day, in spite of all, we shall throw out a sturdy old iron
anchor to grapple with the reefs of the coast, and run up a little
pennant beside the cross, “Treaty Ratified.” After this we shall
be freed from our national disgrace, relieved from the charge and
duties of safe conduct for our course, and then if there is call for
arbitration we will be ready.
The success of her work along the Mississippi made it evident that she
must continue the direction of the Red Cross. But that did not by any
means convince her that she was to give up everything else and stay in
Washington. She began to look for something else to do, and something
that would take her far away from the seat of government.
She rather coveted than otherwise the opportunity to show without
advertising the fact that she had other and visible means of support,
and that her work for the Red Cross was not undertaken for lack of
other employment. Moreover, it was expected that its organization would
be kept simple, and its work done promptly in times of emergency.
That was why almost immediately after the Red Cross had become an
actual organization, and she had been constituted its official head
by Presidential nomination and international appointment, and all the
opposing organizations had withered and died, she was willing to accept
a salaried position in work of another kind.
About this time she had a letter from Governor Butler of Massachusetts.
He knew her well and had seen much of her work during the Civil War.
Out of a clear sky came his invitation to her.
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT
BOSTON, January 8, 1883
MY DEAR MISS BARTON:
There is a vacancy in the office of Superintendent of the Woman’s
Reformatory Prison of Massachusetts. It wants a woman at once of
executive ability and kind-heartedness, with an honest love of the
work of reformation and care of her living fellow creatures. How would
that suit you? The salary is not very large. It is $1500.00 a year and
house and expenses of living. Please let me hear from you at your
earliest convenience. I am,
Very truly yours
BENJ. F. BUTLER
TO MISS CLARA BARTON
Dansville, New York
Nothing could have surprised her more than this invitation and it was
four months before she decided to accept it. Even then she accepted
with the stipulation that she would need to close her service in time
to attend the International Convention of the Red Cross in Vienna in
the following year.
Her acceptance of the position involved the giving of a bond of
$10,000. With her customary independence she declined to ask any one to
sign her bond, but deposited with the State Treasurer of Massachusetts
$10,000 of interest-bearing bonds and became her own guarantor.
Prison work was something of which Clara Barton knew nothing and she
did not bring to it any considerable number of theories as to how it
ought to be performed. In her first report, rendered at the end of six
months, she took pains to give large credit to those who had preceded
her. She disclaimed for herself either knowledge or achievement. A
portion of this report will bear record here:
With only the little experience of six months, you will readily
concede that it cannot be considered my work; it would be unjust
arrogance in me to assume it. The noble women and men who toiled for
its existence, the faithful, tireless body of commissioners, who have
watched, prayed, and labored unpaid for it, often unthanked since
with its first baby breath it cried aloud. We, the women of the old
Commonwealth, and more than all perhaps the two grand women who have
preceded me in its charge, are entitled to consider Sherborn Prison
their work. The strong brave-hearted woman, Mrs. Atkinson, who first
dared to lay her hand, untried, upon that mass of chaos, and command
order and law, life and reformation, to come out of it, was braver
than a general. The peaceful, skillful, beloved Dr. Mosher who had the
womanly courage to follow her, and strive and labor to shape still
more perfectly the swelling, yeasty mass of human sin and misery till,
like a wounded color-bearer she fell, bravely praying some comrade to
bear them on to victory. These are the people whose work that prison
is, and in their name, and theirs only, let me speak of it a moment
and commend it to your loving interest and tender care.
Last May I found, as I entered its great halls, 230 women convicts.
It has at present 275 to 280 women convicts, and, with those who so
kindly care for them, make up a family of something over 300. These
convicts I am expected to feed, clothe, work, and govern, they in
turn to be fed, clothed, to work and obey. The most comprehensive
and I believe correct report I could make would be, that we all
faithfully perform what is expected of us. The manner in which it is
accomplished, and the causes which lead to the necessity for such
accomplishment, are, then, the remaining points of importance. The
causes are as various and widespread as the sins and mishaps which
beset erring humanity, but if you asked me what proportion I thought
would be left, after all the temptations of liquor and men were
removed, I should not require a large sheet on which to write it down.
Sherborn Reformatory is classed as a State’s Prison, and is thus
squared by the same rule of discipline as ordinary State Prisons for
the retention of State criminals.
And yet it is to be remembered that not a one-fourth part of these
women are guilty of, or convicted of, any real crime, simply
offenses--drunkenness and unseemly appearance upon the streets;
and yet these poor hopeless, misguided, rum-wrecked women and
night-walking girls are sentenced to the same servitude, subjected
to the same code of discipline, and go out with the same brand of
shame upon the brow, nay, far deeper than the clear-headed, cool,
intelligent, calculating men of Concord, where every inmate is
convicted of a crime. The sad conviction settles down upon me every
day that the soul, brains of the crime of the Commonwealth are in
Concord; the wrecks they have made are in Sherborn; and in my dealing
with these women, I cannot lose sight of this fact. They are more
weak than wicked, often more sinned against than sinning. This, to my
mind, invites a parental, maternal system of government, and to this
they are all amenable; even the most obstinate yields to a rule of
kindness, firmly and steadily administered.
The records of this period are necessarily meager. Yet there have
come to the author unsought testimonials of the great work which
Clara Barton accomplished while there. While she never criticized her
predecessors, but gave them generous praise, she stood not at all on
any precedent established by them. She changed the atmosphere of the
place from an institution of punishment to one of instruction and
character-building. One who visited the prison while she was there
has told the author of Clara Barton’s power over the incorrigible;
how women that were violent and untamable by the ordinary methods
became docile under her direction. As for the younger women who were
not hardened, and were often more sinned against than sinning, they
idolized her. She established two letter-boxes in the halls, one to
receive letters addressed to herself. Any one of the three hundred
inmates was at liberty to write to Miss Barton. A number of the letters
which she received were preserved by her and have been read by her
biographer. They were a pathetic group, some of them absurd in their
requests, and others tragic in their appeal for help. The gratitude
of others was quite beyond the poor power of expression possessed by
these girls. In many instances these letters were followed by personal
conferences very fruitful of good.
The other box was for letters of complaint addressed to the Board of
Managers. Any inmate was at liberty to write a letter and place it
there, assured that it would go direct, and that neither Miss Barton
nor any of her assistants would read it. The first box was in constant
use, the second scarcely ever contained a letter.
This was work for which Clara Barton had no natural liking. It was very
far from the type of work she would have chosen. She never supposed
it to be a permanent position. She accepted it because she felt that
her health was sufficiently assured to justify her in undertaking some
definite responsibility, and this was a place where she could go for a
limited time and from it honorably retire. She was glad of a definite
position in some other work than the Red Cross, yet one which did
not compel her to resign her responsibilities in that organization.
She found time while at Sherborn to attend a national gathering of
philanthropic organizations in Denver, and deliver an address on
the Red Cross. And she continued general oversight of its affairs.
She retired from the work with no desire ever to see the inside of
another prison; but also with a deepened interest in all work of that
character, and with increased faith that in such work, as everywhere,
kindness and an appeal to honor and self-respect were more effective
than punishments which degrade and destroy hope.
She continued her work at Sherborn a little longer than she intended,
because the term of Governor Butler was drawing to a close, and he did
not wish to make a temporary appointment. She withdrew at the close of
his term, and the day of her departure was a day of mourning in the
prison at Sherborn.
A few months afterward an international conference was held at
Saratoga and she was invited to deliver an address on prison reform.
The notes of that address are preserved:
Some steps in life are accounted unwise, some foolish, some foolhardy.
Until the present hour perhaps the most foolhardy step I have ever
been led to take was the temporary superintendence of a State Prison
for the management, control, and reformation of women.
Though consenting, however unwillingly, to undertake a work of which I
knew nothing, and under _such_ circumstances, I did undertake it. But,
good, kind, and loving friends, in point of temerity and foolhardiness
the effort of this present hour beggars that. That I, with literally
no experience, no knowledge of the subject, with thoughts running
always in other channels,--should in any way, however tacitly, have
given consent to take my place at this desk this evening beside these
gentlemen who embody in themselves the experimental knowledge of the
world upon this subject, and before this audience, trained to thought,
the cultivated cream of the land, is to me past human comprehension.
The Lord directs--let us obey.
In May, 1883, after four months of combined importunity from the
then Governor, General Butler, and all the people interested in and
controlling the penal institutions of the State of Massachusetts, that
I take the superintendency of Sherborn Reformatory Prison (and it was,
I believe, the only point upon which the Governor and the people ever
did agree), I decided to take it for six months. I remained something
longer.
I entered that prison feeling myself so ignorant of all that pertained
to its line of work and methods and thought, that it seemed to me
positively _wicked_, to waste my own time and that of the community
and those who must come under me, in the strengthless, thoughtless
vacancy of my attempted work--I seemed to myself a kind of empty
balloon.
At the end of eight months I went out of it, with a burden of
thoughts, plans, ways and means, possible and impossible, under which
my body could scarcely hold itself erect or my feet carry me away.
I seemed more to myself like an already heavy-ladened ship, which had
met another in distress and taken on shipwrecked passengers and crew,
till her gunwales hugged the water and her laboring wheels wearily
tugged for the land.
So piled, so criss-crossed, so intricate, so vast, contradictory,
perplexing, so vexed by customs, so hampered by foolish laws, so bound
by mercenary ends, so fettered by political ambitions, aspirations,
asperities and jealousies, to say nothing of the immutable laws of
natural descent as related to crime--so discouraging was all this to
be faced from the latter half of a busy life that I wearily and gladly
turned and laid the burden down on the hands of you skilled laborers,
and have mainly been content to feel and leave it there.
The subject of prison reform seems to me to be so vast, and the
methods by which it is to be attempted so varied, that it can scarcely
be touched in one talk.
The first question might be, What is meant by prison reform? and in
what degree? Palliation or cure? I well remember the one question
which always confronted me from visitors at Sherborn--“Miss Barton,
how is it, do you really reform any one here?” My reply was,
“That depends upon what _you_ consider reform to consist in. If
you mean to ask if we take women here, badly born, worse raised,
with inherited, habitual, vagrant crime in their natures, with the
grogshop and the brothel for their teachers, who never lived a decent
day or knew a decent night, filthy inside and out, and that by a
residence of a few months here we are able to send them out to you
not only good, well-behaved, industrious, cleanly, sober, orderly,
honest, respectable members of society,--something they never were
before,--infallible, proof against all the temptations and vices
which you of the free community on the outside may throw in their
path, so they shall never fall again; then, No, we reform no one,
and our prison is a failure; but, if reform may mean that the habits
which must incidentally grow up in the minds, characters, and tastes
of these women during a term of two years of sober, industrious,
and instructed life, in which they shall see only cleanliness and
order, where the workroom shall replace the street, the quiet cell,
the school-room, and the chapel in the place of the grogshop and the
brothel, kindly spoken words of advice, prayer, praise, and song in
the place of oaths and vulgarity, and a _resolution_ at least to try
to lead a better life,--if all this may be accounted in the direction
of reform, then, Yes, a thousand times Yes, we reform all that come
within our reach.”
The prison in itself is all well, but the danger lies beyond in the
temptations, the lures, and the traps of the community into which
this poor, weak creature is plunged in her first hour of regained
liberty. I never saw one of these women go out with her little bundle
of freedom suit, and watched the eager yet timid and half-frightened
look on her face, and felt the childlike, clinging grasp upon mine,
and heard the universal “Good-bye, don’t forget me,” that through the
tears a great prayer did not rise up in my heart, “O God, strengthen
her weakness--guard her from the temptations and the snares leading
her down to death, of Thy virtuous and free, outside these prison
walls.”
I recall once an official visit from about twenty members of the State
Legislature, at Boston, for the purpose of overlooking the prison
and seeing what it might need and how it could be best officially
served; accordingly they appealed to _me_ for my opinion generally--if
the prison were what it should be in its _appointments_, if it were
_large_ enough or _too_ large, etc., and in a general way what I would
recommend to them to do; as by recent Act they had made me not only
Superintendent but Treasurer and Steward as well. I replied: “This
Prison is all very well--a model prison and certainly as large as it
ought to be for the size of the State; and it is very probable that
there is not very much that you can directly do for it at present, as
an Institution; but, Gentlemen, the Institution from which you come
has the making of the laws by which this Institution exists; any time
when you _there_ will find a way to make it impossible for the people
of this State to get intoxicating liquors, upon which to get drunk, I
will guarantee that in six months the State of Massachusetts may rent
Sherborn for a shoe manufactory.” I am not sure that _they_ believed
what I said, but _I_ did and still do.
True, crime will exist without drunkenness, but to no such extent
as to require two miles of prison galleries for the women of
Massachusetts.
In _this_ country I regard drunkenness as the great father of crime,
and the mother of prisons, almshouses, asylums, and workhouses--the
parent of vice and want and the instigator of murder. Whatever bears
ever so little against this is to my mind “Prison Reform.”
Then follow in their mournful train the sin-bound _cortège_ of primal
and secondary causes of vice and crime and which make necessary the
various methods of treatment which have been so ably discovered that
no words of mine could throw a single ray of added light upon the
subject. I can only _concur_, or perhaps express suggestively some
preferences which may have presented themselves to me.
In regard to intermediate sentences: I may not be sufficiently clear
upon the technical points as presented by our good brother, but in a
general way I would say I am unequivocally in favor of an unfixed term
of imprisonment when the sentence is given. A fixed time of release is
an independence to the prisoner beyond the power of his keepers and
stands directly in the way of all reform.
I would earnestly advocate everywhere, in all prisons, police
stations, houses of detention--in short, everywhere, the placing of
arrested women and women prisoners in charge of women only, and men
in charge of men. It is just and right for every reason of virtue and
decency; here again it is largely this contact that has _destroyed_;
it _cannot restore_.
I would, for every consideration of humanity, have the most careful,
intelligent, and scientific investigation made in all prisons for
any possible tendency to _insanity_ on the part of any prisoner. The
willful subjection to prison rules and penalties of those from whose
benighted souls the light of reason and the power of self-control have
been withdrawn is cruelty inexcusable and accursed in the sight of God
and man.
In the name of all mercy single these out and take them to their own
place.
Again, I would in the name of humanity lessen so far as possible the
stimulating qualities of the food generally given out in prisons--more
of grains, vegetables, and fruit, and less of _meat_. The result of
this I am confident would be seen in the better temper, more tractable
natures, lessened irritability, and happier frame of minds on the part
of all convicts. I would have the food plentiful, but unstimulating,
and the cooking wholesome. The records of the punishments in a prison
could not fail in time to demonstrate the beneficial result of this
course.
Cannot this thought find somewhere and sometime a little consideration
in your deliberations? In the name of humanity I suggest it.
There remains but one subject more which I would name, and but a word
of that--simply the relations and feeling to be maintained between the
inmates of a prison and those in charge of them. I would recommend not
only a uniform kindness and firmness of course on the part of every
attendant, but a uniform politeness as well. Like begets like in spite
of everything. It increases self-respect. This they have lost, and
this they need to have restored so far as may be. Make punishment as
rare as possible, but _sure_, and in all instances as light as the
case will admit of. I regard undue severity of punishment as far more
harmful than no correction at all. Cultivate the love of the convicts
by all proper means; it is more potent than punishment.
I believe the record of my last month at Sherborn shows not a single
punishment among between three and four hundred women. They grew to
feel that the only hurt of their punishment was the pain it gave me.
When I met them for the last night in the chapel, and told them we
should not meet again, and invited each to come and bid me good-bye,
the sobs and wails that went out, and the tears that went over my
hands as I held theirs for the last time, were harder for me than all
the eight months’ work I had done among them. As I passed down the
long corridors in the dark, unheard by them, at ten o’clock, and the
low moans and sobs were still going out, it was too much to bear. I
sought my own room--sank down, cold and shivering with the terrible
thought that rushed over me--Had it not been all wrong? Was I far
enough removed from them? Surely we must be too near alike, if not
akin, or they would never have clung to me with that pitiful love.
I went out from the prison walls of Sherborn next morning. I have
never seen a face there since. I have never returned and I have no
desire to.