only by "divine right," but also by the glad "consent of the governed."
Perhaps it was her youth and charm and the romance of her brilliant
success that won for her the affectionate title of "The Princess";
perhaps it was her undisputed sway in her kingdom of girls. It was said
that her radiant, "outgoing spirit" was felt in the atmosphere of the
place and in all the graduates. Her spirit became the Wellesley spirit.
"What did she do besides turning all of you into an adoring band of
Freeman-followers?" a Wellesley woman was asked.
The reply came without a moment's hesitation: "She had the life-giving
power of a true creator, one who can entertain a vision of the ideal,
and then work patiently bit by bit to 'carve it in the marble real.'
She built the Wellesley we all know and love, making it practical,
constructive, fine, generous, human, spiritual."
For six years the Princess of Wellesley ruled her kingdom wisely. She
raised the standard of work, enlisted the interest and support of those
in a position to help, added to the buildings and equipment, and won the
enthusiastic cooperation of students, faculty, and public. Then, one
day, she voluntarily stepped down from her throne, leaving others to go
on with the work she had begun. She married Professor George Herbert
Palmer of Harvard, and, (quite in the manner of the fairy-tale) "lived
happily ever after."
"What a disappointment!" some of her friends said. "That a woman of such
unusual powers and gifts should deliberately leave a place of large
usefulness and influence to shut herself up in the concerns of a single
home!"
"There is nothing better than the making of a true home," said Alice
Freeman Palmer. "I shall not be shut away from the concerns of others,
but more truly a part of them. 'For love is fellow-service,' I believe."
The home near Harvard Yard was soon felt to be the most free and perfect
expression of her generous nature. Its happiness made all life seem
happier. Shy undergraduates and absorbed students who had withdrawn
overmuch within themselves and their pet problems found there a thaw
after their "winter of discontent." Wellesley girls--even in those days
before automobiles--did not feel fifteen miles too great a distance to
go for a cup of tea and a half-hour by the fire.
[Illustration: College Hall, destroyed by fire in 1914]
[Illustration: Tower Court, which stands on the site of College Hall]
Many were surprised that Mrs. Palmer never seemed worn by the
unstinted giving of herself to the demands of others on her time and
sympathy. The reason was that their interests were her interests. Her
spirit was indeed "outgoing"; there was no wall hedging in a certain
number of things and people as hers, with the rest of the world outside.
As we have seen, people counted with her supremely; and the ideas which
moved her were those which she found embodied in the joys and sorrows of
human hearts.
Mrs. Palmer wrote of her days at this time:
I don't know what will happen if life keeps on growing so
much better and brighter each year. How does your cup manage to
hold so much? Mine is running over, and I keep getting larger
cups; but I can't contain all my blessings and gladness. We are
both so well and busy that the days are never half long enough.
Life held, indeed, a full measure of opportunities for service.
Wellesley claimed her as a member of its executive committee, and other
colleges sought her counsel. When Chicago University was founded, she
was induced to serve as its Dean of Women until the opportunities for
girls there were wisely established. She worked energetically raising
funds for Radcliffe and her own Wellesley. Throughout the country her
wisdom as an educational expert was recognized, and her advice sought
in matters of organization and administration. For several years, as a
member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, she worked early
and late to improve the efficiency and influence of the normal schools.
She was a public servant who brought into all her contact with groups
and masses of people the simple directness and intimate charm that
marked her touch with individuals.
"How is it that you are able to do so much more than other people?"
asked a tired, nervous woman, who stopped Mrs. Palmer for a word at the
close of one of her lectures.
"Because," she answered, with the sudden gleam of a smile, "I haven't
any nerves nor any conscience, and my husband says I haven't any
backbone."
It was true that she never worried. She had early learned to live one
day at a time, without "looking before and after." And nobody knew
better than Mrs. Palmer the renewing power of joy. She could romp with
some of her very small friends in the half-hour before an important
meeting; go for a long walk or ride along country lanes when a vexing
problem confronted her; or spend a quiet evening by the fire reading
aloud from one of her favorite poets at the end of a busy day.
For fifteen years Mrs. Palmer lived this life of joyful, untiring
service. Then, at the time of her greatest power and usefulness, she
died. The news came as a personal loss to thousands. Just as Wellesley
had mourned her removal to Cambridge, so a larger world mourned her
earthly passing. But her friends soon found that it was impossible to
grieve or to feel for a moment that she was dead. The echoes of her life
were living echoes in the world of those who knew her.
There are many memorials speaking in different places of her work. In
the chapel at Wellesley, where it seems to gather at every hour a golden
glory of light, is the lovely transparent marble by Daniel Chester
French, eternally bearing witness to the meaning of her influence with
her girls. In the tower at Chicago the chimes "make music, joyfully to
recall," her labors there. But more lasting than marble or bronze is the
living memorial in the hearts and minds "made better by her presence."
For it is, indeed, people that count, and in the richer lives of many
the enkindling spirit of Alice Freeman Palmer still lives.
OUR LADY OF THE RED CROSS: CLARA BARTON
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.
"The Vision of Sir Launfal."--LOWELL.
OUR LADY OF THE RED CROSS
"A Christmas baby! Now isn't that the best kind of a Christmas gift for
us all?" cried Captain Stephen Barton, who took the interesting flannel
bundle from the nurse's arms and held it out proudly to the assembled
family.
No longed-for heir to a waiting kingdom could have received a more royal
welcome than did that little girl who appeared at the Barton home in
Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821. Ten years had passed
since a child had come to the comfortable farm-house, and the four big
brothers and sisters were very sure that they could not have had a more
precious gift than this Christmas baby. No one doubted that she deserved
a distinguished name, but it was due to Sister Dorothy, who was a young
lady of romantic seventeen and something of a reader, that she was
called Clarissa Harlowe, after a well-known heroine of fiction. The name
which this heroine of real life actually bore and made famous, however,
was Clara Barton; for the Christmas baby proved to be a gift not only
to a little group of loving friends, but also to a great nation and to
humanity.
The sisters and brothers were teachers rather than playmates for Clara,
and her education began so early that she had no recollection of the way
they led her toddling steps through the beginnings of book-learning. On
her first day at school she announced to the amazed teacher who tried to
put a primer into her hands that she could spell the "artichoke words."
The teacher had other surprises besides the discovery that this mite of
three was acquainted with three-syllabled lore.
Brother Stephen, who was a wizard with figures, had made the sums with
which he covered her slate seem a fascinating sort of play at a period
when most infants are content with counting the fingers of one hand. All
other interests, however, paled before the stories that her father told
her of great men and their splendid deeds.
Captain Barton was amused one day at the discovery that his precocious
daughter, who always eagerly encored his tales of conquerors and
leaders, thought of their greatness in images of quite literal and
realistic bigness. A president must, for instance, be as large as a
house, and a vice-president as spacious as a barn door at the very
least. But these somewhat crude conceptions did not put a check on the
epic recitals of the retired officer, who, in the intervals of active
service in plowed fields or in pastures where his thoroughbreds grazed
with their mettlesome colts, liked to live over the days when he served
under "Mad Anthony" Wayne in the Revolutionary War, and had a share in
the thrilling adventures of the Western frontier.
Clara was only five years old when Brother David taught her to ride.
"Learning to ride is just learning a horse," said this daring youth, who
was the "Buffalo Bill" of the surrounding country.
"How can I learn a horse, David?" quavered the child, as the
high-spirited animals came whinnying to the pasture bars at her
brother's call.
"Catch hold of his mane, Clara, and just feel the horse a part of
yourself--the big half for the time being," said David, as he put her on
the back of a colt that was broken only to bit and halter, and, easily
springing on his favorite, held the reins of both in one hand, while he
steadied the small sister with the other by seizing hold of one excited
foot.
They went over the fields at a gallop that first day, and soon little
Clara and her mount understood each other so well that her riding feats
became almost as far-famed as those of her brother. The time came when
her skill and confidence on horseback--her power to feel the animal she
rode a part of herself and keep her place in any sort of saddle through
night-long gallops--meant the saving of many lives.
David taught her many other practical things that helped to make her
steady and self-reliant in the face of emergencies. She learned, for
instance, to drive a nail straight, and to tie a knot that would hold.
Eye and hand were trained to work together with quick decision that made
for readiness and efficiency in dealing with a situation, whether it
meant the packing of a box, or first-aid measures after an accident on
the skating-pond.
She was always an outdoor child, with dogs, horses, and ducks for
playfellows. The fuzzy ducklings were the best sort of dolls. Sometimes
when wild ducks visited the pond and all her waddling favorites began to
flap their wings excitedly, it seemed that her young heart felt, too,
the call of large, free spaces.
"The only real fun is to do things," she used to say.
She rode after the cows, helped in the milking and churning, and
followed her father about, dropping potatoes in their holes or helping
weed the garden. Once, when the house was being painted, she begged to
be allowed to assist in the work, even learning to grind the pigments
and mix the colors. The family was at first amused and then amazed at
the persistency of her application as day after day she donned her apron
and fell to work.
They were not less astonished when she wanted to learn the work of the
weavers in her brothers' satinet mills. At first, her mother refused
this extraordinary request; but Stephen, who understood the intensity
of her craving to do things, took her part; and at the end of her first
week at the flying shuttle Clara had the satisfaction of finding that
her cloth was passed as first-quality goods. Her career as a weaver was
of short duration, however, owing to a fire which destroyed the mills.
The young girl was as enthusiastic in play as at work. Whether it was a
canter over the fields on Billy while her dog, Button, dashed along at
her side, his curly white tail bobbing ecstatically, or a coast down the
rolling hills in winter, she entered into the sport of the moment with
her whole heart.
When there was no outlet for her superabundant energy, she was genuinely
unhappy. Then it was that a self-consciousness and morbid sensitiveness
became so evident that it was a source of real concern to her friends.
"People say that I must have been born brave," said Clara Barton.
"Why, I seem to remember nothing but terrors in my early days. I was a
shrinking little bundle of fears--fears of thunder, fears of strange
faces, fears of my strange self." It was only when thought and feeling
were merged in the zest of some interesting activity that she lost her
painful shyness and found herself.
When she was eleven years old she had her first experience as a nurse.
A fall which gave David a serious blow on the head, together with the
bungling ministrations of doctors, who, when in doubt, had recourse only
to the heroic treatment of bleeding and leeches, brought the vigorous
young brother to a protracted invalidism. For two years Clara was his
constant and devoted attendant. She schooled herself to remain calm,
cheerful, and resourceful in the presence of suffering and exacting
demands. When others gave way to fatigue or "nerves," her wonderful
instinct for action kept her, child though she was, at her post. Her
sympathy expressed itself in untiring service.
In the years that followed her brother's recovery Clara became a real
problem to herself and her friends. The old blighting sensitiveness made
her school-days restless and unhappy in spite of her alert mind and many
interests.
At length her mother, at her wit's end because of this baffling,
morbid strain in her remarkable daughter, was advised by a man of
sane judgment and considerable understanding of child nature, to throw
responsibility upon her and give her a school to teach.
It happened, therefore, that when Clara Barton was fifteen she "put
down her skirts, put up her hair," and entered upon her successful
career as a teacher. She liked the children and believed in them,
entering enthusiastically into their concerns, and opening the way
to new interests. When asked how she managed the discipline of the
troublesome ones, she said, "The children give no trouble; I never
have to discipline at all," quite unconscious of the fact that her
vital influence gave her a control that made assertion of authority
unnecessary.
"When the boys found that I was as strong as they were and could teach
them something on the playground, they thought that perhaps we might
discover together a few other worth-while things in school hours," she
said.
For eighteen years Clara Barton was a teacher. Always learning herself
while teaching others, she decided in 1852 to enter Clinton Liberal
Institute in New York as a pupil for graduation, for there was then
no college whose doors were open to women. When she had all that the
Institute could give her, she looked about for new fields for effort.
In Bordentown, New Jersey, she found there was a peculiar need for some
one who would bring to her task pioneer zeal as well as the passion for
teaching. At that time there were no public schools in the town or,
indeed, in the State.
"The people who pose as respectable are too proud and too prejudiced to
send their boys and girls to a free pauper school, and in the meantime
all the children run wild," Miss Barton was told.
"We have tried again and again," said a discouraged young pedagogue. "It
is impossible to do anything in this place."
"Give me three months, and I will teach free," said Clara Barton.
This was just the sort of challenge she loved. There was something to
be done. She began with six unpromising gamins in a dilapidated, empty
building. In a month her quarters proved too narrow. Each youngster
became an enthusiastic and effectual advertisement. As always, her
success lay in an understanding of her pupils as individuals, and
a quickening interest that brought out the latent possibilities of
each. The school of six grew in a year to one of six hundred, and the
thoroughly converted citizens built an eight-room school-house where
Miss Barton remained as principal and teacher until a breakdown of her
voice made a complete rest necessary.
The weak throat soon made it evident that her teaching days were over;
but she found at the same time in Washington, where she had gone for
recuperation, a new work.
"Living is doing," she said. "Even while we say there is nothing we can
do, we stumble over the opportunities for service that we are passing by
in our tear-blinded self-pity."
The over-sensitive girl had learned her lesson well. Life offered moment
by moment too many chances for action for a single worker to turn aside
to bemoan his own particular condition.
The retired teacher became a confidential secretary in the office of
the Commissioner of Patents. Great confusion existed in the Patent
Office at that time because some clerks had betrayed the secrets of
certain inventions. Miss Barton was the first woman to be employed in a
Government department; and while ably handling the critical situation
that called for all her energy and resourcefulness, she had to cope
not only with the scarcely veiled enmity of those fellow-workers who
were guilty or jealous, but also with the open antagonism of the rank
and file of the clerks, who were indignant because a woman had been
placed in a position of responsibility and influence. She endured covert
slander and deliberate disrespect, letting her character and the quality
of her work speak for themselves. They spoke so eloquently that when
a change in political control caused her removal, she was before long
recalled to straighten out the tangle that had ensued.
At the outbreak of the Civil War Miss Barton was, therefore, at the very
storm-center.
The early days of the conflict found her binding up the wounds of the
Massachusetts boys who had been attacked by a mob while passing through
Baltimore, and who for a time were quartered in the Capitol. Some of
these recruits were boys from Miss Barton's own town who had been her
pupils, and all were dear to her because they were offering their lives
for the Union. We find her with other volunteer nurses caring for the
injured, feeding groups who gathered about her in the Senate Chamber,
and, from the desk of the President of the Senate, reading them the home
news from the Worcester papers.
Meeting the needs as they presented themselves in that time of general
panic and distress, she sent to the Worcester "Spy" appeals for money
and supplies. Other papers took up the work, and soon Miss Barton had to
secure space in a large warehouse to hold the provisions that poured in.
Not for many days, however, did she remain a steward of supplies. When
she met the transports which brought the wounded into the city, her
whole nature revolted at the sight of the untold suffering and countless
deaths which were resulting from delay in caring for the injured. Her
flaming ardor, her rare executive ability, and her tireless persistency
won for her the confidence of those in command, and, though it was
against all traditions, to say nothing of iron-clad army regulations,
she obtained permission to go with her stores of food, bandages, and
medicines to the firing-line, where relief might be given on the
battle-field at the time of direst need. The girl who had been a "bundle
of fears" had grown into the woman who braved every danger and any
suffering to carry help to her fellow-countrymen.
People who spoke of her rare initiative and practical judgment had
little comprehension of the absolute simplicity and directness of her
methods. She managed the sulky, rebellious drivers of her army-wagons,
who had little respect for orders that placed a woman in control, in the
same way that she had managed children in school. Without relaxing her
firmness, she spoke to them courteously, and called them to share the
warm dinner she had prepared and spread out in appetizing fashion. When,
after clearing away the dishes, she was sitting alone by the fire, the
men returned in an awkward, self-conscious group.
"We didn't come to get warm," said their spokesman, as she kindly
moved to make room for them at the flames, "we come to tell you we are
ashamed. The truth is we didn't want to come. We know there is fighting
ahead, and we've seen enough of that for men who don't carry muskets,
only whips; and then we've never seen a train under charge of a woman
before, and we couldn't understand it. We've been mean and contrary all
day, and you've treated us as if we'd been the general and his staff,
and given us the best meal we've had in two years. We want to ask your
forgiveness, and we sha'n't trouble you again."
She found that a comfortable bed had been arranged for her in her
ambulance, a lantern was hanging from the roof, and when next morning
she emerged from her shelter, a steaming breakfast awaited her and a
devoted corps of assistants stood ready for orders.
"I had cooked my last meal for my drivers," said Clara Barton. "These
men remained with me six months through frost and snow and march and
camp and battle; they nursed the sick, dressed the wounded, soothed the
dying, and buried the dead; and, if possible, they grew kinder and
gentler every day."
An incident that occurred at Antietam is typical of her quiet
efficiency. According to her directions, the wounded were being fed with
bread and crackers moistened in wine, when one of her assistants came to
report that the entire supply was exhausted, while many helpless ones
lay on the field unfed. Miss Barton's quick eye had noted that the boxes
from which the wine was taken had fine Indian meal as packing. Six large
kettles were at once unearthed from the farm-house in which they had
taken quarters, and soon her men were carrying buckets of hot gruel for
miles over the fields where lay hundreds of wounded and dying. Suddenly,
in the midst of her labors, Miss Barton came upon the surgeon in charge
sitting alone, gazing at a small piece of tallow candle which flickered
uncertainly in the middle of the table.
"Tired, Doctor?" she asked sympathetically.
"Tired indeed!" he replied bitterly; "tired of such heartless neglect
and carelessness. What am I to do for my thousand wounded men with
night here and that inch of candle all the light I have or can get?"
Miss Barton took him by the arm and led him to the door, where he could
see near the barn scores of lanterns gleaming like stars.
"What is that!" he asked amazedly.
"The barn is lighted," she replied, "and the house will be directly."
"Where did you get them!" he gasped.
"Brought them with me."
"How many have you?"
"All you want--four boxes."
The surgeon looked at her for a moment as if he were waking from a
dream; and then, as if it were the only answer he could make, fell to
work. And so it was invariably that she won her complete command of
people as she did of situations, by always proving herself equal to the
emergency of the moment.
Though, as she said in explaining the tardiness of a letter, "my hands
complain a little of unaccustomed hardships," she never complained of
any ill, nor allowed any danger or difficulty to interrupt her work.
"What are my puny ailments beside the agony of our poor shattered
boys lying helpless on the field?" she said. And so, while doctors and
officers wondered at her unlimited capacity for prompt and effective
action, the men who had felt her sympathetic touch and effectual aid
loved and revered her as "The Angel of the Battlefield."
One incident well illustrates the characteristic confidence with which
she moved about amid scenes of terror and panic. At Fredericksburg,
when "every street was a firing-line and every house a hospital," she
was passing along when she had to step aside to allow a regiment of
infantry to sweep by. At that moment General Patrick caught sight of
her, and, thinking she was a bewildered resident of the city who had
been left behind in the general exodus, leaned from his saddle and said
reassuringly:
"You are alone and in great danger, madam. Do you want protection?"
Miss Barton thanked him with a smile, and said, looking about at the
ranks, "I believe I am the best-protected woman in the United States."
The soldiers near overheard and cried out, "That's so! that's so!" And
the cheer that they gave was echoed by line after line until a mighty
shout went up as for a victory.
The courtly old general looked about comprehendingly, and, bowing low,
said as he galloped away, "I believe you are right, madam."