Part 7

Chivalry has not entirely died out in this prosaic age.

CECILIA FINDLAY.

“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.”

MARY R. PARKMAN—In _Heroines of Service_.

Fear loves the idea of danger. S. CROXALL.

The moment my fear begins, I cease to fear. SCHILLER.

The weak most fear, the timid tremble, but the brave and stout of heart will work and hope and trust. CLARA BARTON.

YOU’RE RIGHT, MADAM—GOOD DAY

Immediately following the Battle of Fredericksburg, every house in the city became a hospital. Among the thousands of wounded Clara Barton, in her usual unobtrusive manner, passed in and out of the houses, first on one side of the street then on the other, on her mission of mercy. Provost Marshal General Patrick seeing her alone among the soldiers mistook her for a resident driven from her home.

The general did not seem to know that any good woman is safe among men, brave and true, and nowhere else more so than among soldiers. He did not fully appreciate that when a woman is true to herself

So dear to heav’n is saintly chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her;

and he did not know Clara Barton.

So, with admirable southern chivalry, he dashed to her side, bowing with hat in hand, and said: “Madam, you are alone and in great danger here!”

“No, I think not, Marshal.”

“Yes, you are, Madam. May I offer you my protection?”

“No, Marshal, I think it is not necessary.” Then turning to the ranks of the soldiers she further commented: “No, Marshal, I am the best protected woman in the United States.”

The soldiers appreciating the compliment sent up cheer after cheer, accompanied with “That’s so! that’s so!”

The Marshal, taking in the situation and waving his hand towards Miss Barton with a broad smile, said: “I think you are right, Madam, Good day!”

XXXI

Clara Barton dared the bullets on the battlefield with the abandon of a dashing cavalry leader. Pawtucket (R. I.) _Times_.

In Clara Barton, the world has lost a guardian angel.

PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN.

Death grinned a horrible ghastly smile. JOHN MILTON.

Says Clara Barton, in one of the battles of the Civil War, “A little sibley tent had been hastily pitched for me in a slight hollow upon a hillside. How many times I fell from sheer exhaustion in the darkness and mud of that slippery hillside I have no knowledge; but at last I grasped the welcome canvas, and a well established brook which washed in on the upper side, at the opening which served as the door, met me on my entrance to the tent.”

PERCY H. EPLER.

Clara Barton slept on the ground, wrapped in a blanket like a soldier, but her zeal was in no way diminished by hardship.

St. Paul (Minn.) _Pioneer Press_.

Clara Barton gave a lifetime of glorious service to humanity—a ministering angel like a benediction of her God amid the desolate, the stricken, the hungry and despairing. _Los Angeles Examiner._

Sickness, confusion and death—these are inseparable from every conflict. CLARA BARTON.

I can never see a poor mutilated wreck, blown to pieces with powder and lead, without wondering if visions of such an end ever floated before his mother’s mind when she washed and dressed her fair-skinned boy. CLARA BARTON.

When giant misery stalks to the very threshold, and raps with bloody hands on one’s door, it is almost a libel upon the good Christian term to call it charity that answers. CLARA BARTON.

Women should certainly have some voice in the matter of war, either affirmative or negative, and the fact that she has not this should not be made the ground to deprive her of other privileges.

CLARA BARTON.

“They say”:

Imagine their skirts ’mong artillery wheels, And watch for their flutter as they flee ’cross the fields, When the charge is rammed home and the fire belches hot;— They never will wait for the answering shot. They would faint at the first drop of blood in sight— CLARA BARTON.

BLEEDING TO DEATH—HIS HEADLESS BODY—WOMEN IN THE WAR

One day Miss Barton was asked to tell what was the most terrible experience she had ever gone through on a field of disaster or war, and she replied: “It was at the battle of Antietam. The poor boys were falling so fast that I rushed up into the line of fire to save them from bleeding to death by temporarily binding up their wounds. Bullets went through my clothing, but I did not think of danger. I loaded myself with canteens and went to a nearby spring and filled them with water, until I staggered under the load. The wounded were crying for water and I went to one poor boy who was wild with thirst and, stooping, I lifted his head on my arm and knee and was giving him water from the canteen when a cannon ball took his head off, covering me with blood and brains. I dropped the headless body and went to the next wounded soldier, and so all day I worked through this awful battle and refused to retire, though officers and men tried to drive me back.”

In the Civil War there was widespread opposition to the presence of women on the battlefield—both on the part of civilians and the military officers. Lincoln was not the exception. He protested that a woman on the battlefield would be a “fifth wheel to a wagon.” After the close of the war Clara Barton penned the following, a part of the poem entitled “The Women who went to the Field”:

Will he glance at the boats on the great western flood, At Pittsburgh and Shiloh, did they faint at the blood? And the brave wife of Grant stood there with them then, And her calm stately presence gave strength to the men.

XXXII

In spite of her retiring nature and shrinking from publicity, Clara Barton remained probably the best known woman in America, surely one of the best-beloved.

New Orleans (La.) _Item_.

Miss Barton took the lecture platform, under an agreement to lecture 300 nights at $100 a night.

Louisville (Ky.) _Courier-Journal_.

Fear is the mother of foresight. HENRY TAYLOR.

Fear is the mother of safety. EDMUND BURKE.

Fear makes us feel for humanity. EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.

In the earlier years of my life, I remember nothing but fear.

CLARA BARTON.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person: “Always do what you are afraid to do.”

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Timid as a sheep. OUIDA.

Timid as a doe. ROBERT NOEL.

Timid as a fawn. THACKERAY.

I am the most timid person on earth. CLARA BARTON.

Some critic has said that I was visibly agitated when I arose to address my audience;—the critic was right, and why should I not be? CLARA BARTON.

All speech-making terrifies me. First I have no taste for it, and lastly I hate it. CLARA BARTON.

Nothing could gratify me more than to know that I had been one of these self-reliant American girls like our sweet poetess Lucy Larcrom. CLARA BARTON.

If I could have gotten over my timid sensitiveness it would have given far less annoyance to my friends, and trouble to myself, all through life. CLARA BARTON.

TIMID CHILD—TIMID WOMAN

Fear is relative. The fear of death by flames is greater than by water. The fear not to do is ofttimes greater than the fear to do. The fear of failure is supplanted by courage. To the sensitive nature the fear that others may suffer impels to the greatest courage. Despite innate fear, courage is uppermost in the minds of those who would achieve results. The most renowned in the fine arts, in oratory, in patriotism, in the humanities, are those by nature timid.

John B. Gough and Clara Barton at one time lived in the same town; were personal friends; in the lecture season, successively talked from the same platform. These two Americans were each as timid, probably, as ever appeared before a public audience. But each achieved an enviable reputation as a platform lecturer.

The morning following one of his inimitable temperance lectures, I remarked: “Mr. Gough, I wish I had your assurance before an audience.” “Young man,” he replied, “you don’t know me. I have given thousands of lectures, but I never rise to address an audience that my knees don’t knock together, from stage fright. Last night, as I arose to address that splendid body of college boys, I was scared stiff; for some moments I was so frightened I couldn’t utter a word.”

In his autobiography he wrote: “For thirty-seven years I have been a public speaker, but have never known the time when I did not dread an audience. Often that fear amounts to positive suffering. In my suffering, trembling seizes every nerve.”

Clara Barton was a timid child; so much so as to annoy her parents, and other friends. When about eight years of age she was sent away to school in the hope that, among strangers, she would become at ease in the presence of others. At school she grew tired; became thin and pale; said she was hungry, but refused to eat. It was suspected that it was all on account of her timidity, and that she might die of starvation. Because she dared not eat, the teacher returned her to her home. In referring to this experience, and her later experiences in the presence of strangers, a few years before she died, she said: “To this day I would rather stand behind the lines of artillery at Antietam, or cross the pontoon bridge under fire at Fredericksburg, than to preside at a public meeting.”

XXXIII

The negro has no linguistic laws—his pathetically musical speech is fast dying away—only will linger the salient printed form to convey to the future some idea of the olden dialect.

LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT—“_In de Miz Series_.”

I know of the intelligence of the negro, for I have heard of his unquestioned loyalty between every war of our land from Bunker Hill to the Argonne. SECRETARY OF THE NAVY DANIELS.

The only flag the negro ever carried was when his spirit was stirred crimson by the sacrificial blood he gave for America. Cite me a negro traitor! JUSTICE STAFFORD.

In the World War, in France up in the zone where death was spread about I found the black man and the white man fallen side by side. SECRETARY OF WAR BAKER.

The courage that faces death on the battlefield, or calmly awaits it in the hospital, is not the courage of race or color.

CLARA BARTON.

Two of the bravest men I ever saw lay wounded, almost side by side, one white and the other black. CLARA BARTON.

The patient suffering of the black soldier is fully equal to that of the Anglo-Saxon. CLARA BARTON.

EZ EF WE WUZ WHITE FOLKS

At Galveston one day, when Miss Barton was busy dictating letters her companion, Mrs. Fannie B. Ward, came in and told her that there were two negro soldiers of the Civil War waiting to see her. Miss Barton said, “Let them come in.” The two old negroes came in with their hats in their hands and bowing at every step.

One of them asked, “Miss Barton, do you know us?” She replied, “No, I don’t remember you.”

“We knows you, Miss Barton,” was the reply, “We wuz in de battle er Fo’t Wagner an’ got wounded dyar, an’ you foun’ us an’ tied up our wounds an’ tuk cyar er us same ez ef we wuz white folks.”

Proud of their wounds, one of the negroes rolled up his sleeve and showed a great scar on his arm, saying, “I wuz in de cha’ge, Miss Barton, an’ a officer slashed me wid a swo’d.” The other pulled up his trousers and displayed a very deep scar on the calf of his leg and said, “En’ I got wounded in de leg wid a bullet.”

Miss Barton’s smile of appreciation and her cordial handshake sent them away with happy memories.

XXXIV

Clara Barton’s name will take its place among the world’s heroines. Denver (Colorado) _Times_.

Life is like a dream. DR. S. JOHNSON.

Our Life is a dream. CHARLES WESLEY.

I have a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion.

A. LINCOLN.

Dreams are the bright evidence of poem and legend, who sport on the earth in the night season. CHARLES DICKENS.

Dreams in their development have breath and tears, and torture and a touch of joy. LORD BYRON.

I have dreamed of bloody turbulence; and this whole night Hath nothing been but forms of slaughter. SHAKESPEARE.

It seems to me I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years; now the nightmare is gone. A. LINCOLN.

O Memory! that midway world, ’Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise. A. LINCOLN.

To dream of battle—danger of persecution.

MADAME CLAIRE ROUGEMONT, Author.

For a woman to dream that she is in battle is a very lucky omen.

_The Queen of the Romanies._

IN HER DREAMS—AGAIN IN BATTLE

“What’s that big barn of a house?”

“It’s the Red Cross house.”

“Who lives there?” “Clara Barton, don’t you know Clara Barton?” “And what does she want to live in a house like that for?”

“It is her headquarters—her home. There is where she does her work; there is where she keeps her supplies. Whenever there is a cry of distress anywhere in the United States she is off at a moment’s notice.”

No paint on the outside of the house, none on the inside—a regular barn—why wouldn’t the stranger ask questions?

The inside of the house is also strangely mysterious, with its great central part open to the ceiling; the balconies protected by railings, reminding one of a steamship, the atmosphere giving the stranger a sort of weird, uncanny feeling.

The visitor when within is still curious, and would ask other questions. “What are all these things on the wall?”

“They are diplomas, resolutions of cities, states and nations—medals won for services rendered in distress—all kinds of souvenirs complimentary to Clara Barton.”

“Interesting, very interesting!”

“Yes, no other place like it in all the world.”

“But what are these small doors for? They look like doors to sleeping berths.”

“No, they are doors to closets. There are thirty-eight rooms in this house and seventy-six closets.”

“What are the closets for?”

“Well, these closets in the walls, on either side of the big hall, are 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.

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.