Part 9

This was the _last time_. When she again visited Europe he had passed to the Beyond. But Prince Henry later visited the United States. Clara Barton was then temporarily at Hotel Willard, Washington, D. C. At the request of Kaiser William, Lieutenant Commodore Von Egidy, of the Royal Suite, made a personal call upon Clara Barton at her hotel. She had been apprised of his coming and was tastefully attired, wearing her historic souvenirs, including those presented to her by the Royal Family of Prussia. Among the souvenirs were the Iron Cross of Prussia, by Emperor William the First and Empress Augusta; Gold Cross of Remembrance, by the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden; Silver Medal, by Empress Augusta of Germany; Jewels, including the Ruby Pin, by the Queen of Prussia; Jewels, including the famed Pansy Pin, by the Grand Duchess of Baden; Medal of the International Committee of the Red Cross of Geneva, Switzerland. The Lieutenant Commodore, in full uniform, bore the greetings of Prince Henry to Miss Barton; and also friendly messages from the Emperor and other members of the Royal Family. Among the other pleasant messages from the Emperor was the statement that he still cherished the “little lady,” as a member of his own family.

XLI

Were all the crowns and laurels of earth won by the kings of earth within my reach on one hand, and on the other there rested the One Never Dying Jewel—made brilliant and lustrous by Clara Barton’s good deeds—I would count myself most blessed of men to—in reverence—touch the latter rather than become the owner of all the others. T. V. POWDERLY.

Clara Barton’s name was mingled with the orations of statesmen, the elegance of the pulpit, the command of royalty, the commands of generals—engraved in the halls of fame, in books of story for children and adults, and engraved on jewels of costly make and rare art. Bangor (Me.) _Commercial_.

What have kings The privates have not, too, save ceremony? SHAKESPEARE.

A crown Golden in show is but a wreath of thorns. MILTON.

The crowned heads of Europe were quick to perceive the benign uses of Red Cross Associations, and bestowed upon the Central Committees of their countries money, credit and personal approbation.

CLARA BARTON.

Secretary of State Frelinghuysen, insisting that illness was not a good excuse, and that Clara Barton _must_ represent the United States at the International Conference at Geneva, in 1884, said: “All the country knows what you have done and is more than satisfied. Regarding your illness—you have had too much fresh water, Miss Barton—I recommend salt and shall appoint you.”

THE AUTHOR.

I saw Paris when the Commune fell; the Army of Versailles shot down its victims on the streets by the ghastly glare of blazing palaces. CLARA BARTON.

In 1872, at the time of the Reign of Terror there, Clara Barton walked into the city of Paris. When the people saw her entering the stricken city on her errand of mercy, they cried out: “God, it is an angel!” PERCY H. EPLER, Author.

As Clara Barton and her faithful attendant, Antoinette Margot, a fair haired Swiss maiden, were on their way in Europe to the front they heard “Turn back, turn back; turn back; the Prussians are coming.” “Yes,” said Miss Barton, “that is why we are going, we are on our way to care for the wounded of the battle.” And the people cried out: “Dieu vous benisse!” PERCY H. EPLER.

For services among the Armenians, Turks and Kurds, Sultan Abdul-Hamid of Turkey decorated Clara Barton with the order of Shefacat and diploma for charity, and referred to her as “A Missionary of Humanity.” W. H. SEARS.

Miss Barton was President of the Red Cross at the time of the Russian famine. The total contribution from America was estimated at $800,000.

In 1902 Clara Barton, and party, was invited to Moscow, Russia, where she had a royal reception lasting three days.

Referring to her relief work in Russia, to Clara Barton the mayor of St. Petersburg said: “The Russian people know how to be appreciative.” THE AUTHOR.

The Czar of Russia personally decorated me (1902) with the highest honor conferred on anyone not of royal blood. I was entertained in the royal palaces and the imperial railway trains were placed at my disposal. CLARA BARTON.

In 1902 the delegates were received by the Czar, and as such they passed in review. Everyone bent over and kissed his hand. When it was Miss Barton’s turn, she attempted to bend over to kiss his hand, but he pulled his hand away and said: “Oh! no, Miss Barton, not you,” and shook her hand, instead. B. F. TILLINGHAST, Delegate to Quinquennial Conference of the International Red Cross Society, in 1902.

To honor me, the likes o’ me, not so! Poor little me who has not seen the present ruler (1909) of her own country.

CLARA BARTON.

AMERICA—SCARLET AND GOLD—EUROPE

In the autumn of her life honors, like the rich and beautifully colored leaves from the trees of New England, fell upon Clara Barton in showers. Twenty-seven testimonials officially were conferred upon America’s greatest woman philanthropist. The nations thus recognizing her valuable services to their respective countries are: Germany, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, Servia, Turkey, Armenia, Spain, Portugal and Cuba. Through official sources it is learned that several of these nations have under consideration a perpetual Clara Barton memorial, and it is not improbable that the first great monument to our American World-Character will be on foreign soil.

Before the organization of the National Red Cross Society, in 1870–71, Clara Barton was an active participant in relief work on the following battlefields: Hagenau, Metz, Strasburg, Sedan; in relief work at Belfort, Woerth, Montbelard; in hospitals at Baden; in relief work in Paris at the Fall of the Commune; and for some time thereafter personally assisted in organizing relief work for the sick and wounded in France.

Clara Barton officially represented the United States Government at the Red Cross International Conferences. She was appointed by President Arthur in 1884, as our country’s representative at Geneva, Switzerland; by President Cleveland in 1887 to the Conference at Carlsruhe, Germany; by President Harrison in 1890 to the Conference at Rome, Italy; by President McKinley at Vienna in 1897; by President McKinley in 1902 to the Conference at St. Petersburg, Russia. In person she attended the Conference at Geneva, at Carlsruhe, at Vienna and at St. Petersburg.

At Geneva, “Mlle. Barton bien merite de l’human’te,” prepared by an Italian delegate, was adopted by acclamation by the representatives of all the governments of Europe—an honor to a woman never before or since equaled in the world’s history.

At St. Petersburg Clara Barton and party were received by all the royalty of Russia; entertained by them at dinners, luncheons, on excursions, given free transportation with an escort, everywhere. At Carlsruhe she received signal honors at the hands of the Emperor and Empress of Germany, Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, Grand Duchess Luise, Bismarck, Von Moltke, and other statesmen and military officers. At the palace of the Grand Duchess Louise, she had attendants liveried in “scarlet and gold”; received all the honors accorded to royalty; and on leaving for America all Royalty stood hat in hand wishing her _Bon Voyage_ and _Dieu Vous Benisse_!

XLII

Clara Barton is the greatest woman in the world.

GENERAL W. R. SHAFTER.

Greatness is the courage to exercise common sense in high places.

JUDGE T. M. COOLEY.

General Shafter, while in Santiago as he had been at all other times, was the kind and courteous officer and gentleman.

CLARA BARTON.

In Cuba General Leonard Wood—alert, wise and untiring, with an eye single to the good of all—toiled day and night.

CLARA BARTON.

Take whatever three or four years of my existence you will, but leave the old army life _untouched_. CLARA BARTON.

THREE CHEERS—WILD SCENES IN BOSTON—TIGER!! NO, SWEETHEART

It was on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Grand Army of the Republic, held at Atlanta, Georgia. Mrs. W. M. Scott, of O. M. Mitchell No. 2, W. R. C., was the President. At that meeting the President described the scene occurring at one of the sessions in Boston the previous year.

Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer was the President of the W. R. C. at the session in Boston. As President she said: “I have the pleasure and the honor to introduce to you”—and hundreds of lips ejaculated “Clara Barton!” Then there occurred an ovation seldom witnessed. Handkerchiefs waved from every part of the hall, and loving little tears of tenderness streamed down the faces in that vast throng of admirers of the beloved woman. And Clara Barton talked. She, describing a former meeting, said (her voice tremulous): “They showed me the wounds they said _I_ had helped to heal, and the stubs of the limbs they said _I_ had tried to save, and they clustered around me like loving boys, and I—I cried, and they cried too; and we talked of those terrible times, and then we talked of those glorious times. They were grateful to me for what I had done for them, and I was grateful that I had the privilege of doing it.” “And,” says Mrs. Scott, “as Clara Barton told the simple story of her experiences with her soldier boys every one of us women, gazing at her, thought that if we did not have a sweetheart, or husband, at that time to nurse, well,—we wish we had.”

The old soldier boys _brave and true_ in numbers were there. The G. A. R. too was having its session in Boston, and their heroine also was there. He, too, whom history will record as one of the greatest of American generals, was there. As since has the soldier’s idol, the great General also had “suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”—at the hands of schemers and politicians. Under the General she had served in Cuba—the same fearless woman that at the battle of Santiago, perched on a gun-carriage, gave orders to the doctors and nurses. Clara Barton again received an ovation, and General Shafter shared in the honors.

THE ROYALTY OF GERMANY

For more than forty years, I have known dear, beloved Miss Clara Barton. Great affection and great admiration and great gratitude united me with her. Her memory I will keep sacred in faithful and thankful remembrance of her whose friendship was in our never altering affection so very precious to me.—LUISE, the Grand Duchess of Baden (in 1912).

The Grand Duke, one of the kindest and noblest types of manhood. CLARA BARTON.

See pages between 326–7, decorations Nos. 2, 4, 5, 16, 17.

The literary exercises were over. The General had stepped down from the platform. There at the foot of the steps the General waited. The audience had remained sitting. In a few moments Clara Barton and her chivalric old Commander were in private conversation. As that great audience, composed principally of old soldiers, saw together the greatest hero and the greatest heroine of the Spanish-American War, reminiscing of common hardships and common dangers, as one man they rose to their feet, tumultuously cheering.

An old soldier at the top of his voice shouted:

“Three cheers for Clara Barton!”

The cheers given were uproarious, cheers continuing again and again. At a still higher pitch of voice another shouted: “Tiger!!”

Hardly had the echo of that voice died away when still another voice cried out: “No, Sweetheart!!”

Then shouts and tears were intermingled and little Clara, with a love as true to her “soldier boys” as that of her “soldier boys” to her, much embarrassed and speechless, could only smile back her love in return, and in tears smile and smile and smile.

XLIII

I have been shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning, and my right hand is almost paralyzed.

A. LINCOLN, January 2, 1863.

My “duties?” Receiving and shaking hands with _two thousand persons_, sitting down to the May breakfast at one o’clock with eleven hundred—leaving the table at four P. M.

CLARA BARTON, May 3, 1910.

All speaking terrifies me. CLARA BARTON.

Formality and parade I hate. CLARA BARTON.

Vain pomp and glory of the world I hate ye. KING HENRY VIII.

Who was it that said that life is three-fourths conduct? Matthew Arnold, I think. BISHOP WILLIAM F. MCDOWELL.

While Clara Barton’s religion was real, it was a thing expressed not in words nor creeds, but almost wholly in deeds.

REVEREND PERCY H. EPLER.

Such lives as Clara Barton’s teach the world a lesson which it must never be permitted to forget—namely, that the wealth of human life is not what it gets, but what it gives.

REV. WM. E. BARTON, D.D.

THE LAST RECEPTION—HER AUTOGRAPH—THE BOYS IN GRAY

The last great public reception to Clara Barton was in Chicago, May 3, 1910. Miss Barton made the trip alone from Washington to Chicago, she then being nearly ninety years of age. The reception was given by the Social Economics Club, in Mandel’s Tea Room, to twelve hundred delegates, representing the club women of the State of Illinois, Clara Barton being the special guest of honor. Just back of Miss Barton on the stage was a snow-white flag bearing in its center a blazing red cross.

The question to be discussed was “Are We Elevated by Knocks or Boosts?” Under the spell of Miss Barton’s presence, “Knocks” was omitted from the program and “Boosts” resulted in a symposium of tributes,—in an ovation given to Miss Barton “such as few mortals receive.”

Since her death her autograph has become very valuable. Even then it was highly prized, and she was not permitted to leave the hall until every delegate present had her autograph. At the close of the meeting a delegation of Southern women waited on Clara Barton to thank her for what she did for the “boys in Gray” during the Civil War.

The following Sunday evening she was asked to fill the pulpit of a famous Chicago divine. She declined. “But you must, Miss Barton; it is announced, and the audience expects you.”

Commenting on the occasion she remarked to a friend: “I got even with the pastor, for he had to sit in the pulpit to listen to my talk; but possibly more annoying to him is the fact that he sat there, facing the largest audience he had ever seen in his church—wondering all the while what had been the trouble with his sermons.”

XLIV

I am sure I express the sentiment of our great commonwealth when I say “All honor to the memory of the great founder of the Red Cross.”

CHARLES E. TOWNSEND, U. S. Senate.

Clara Barton’s fame will live as long as the race honors self-sacrificing devotion in ministering to the suffering.

Dayton (Ohio) _Journal_.

Clara Barton—her fame will live throughout the ages.

Tampa (Fla.) _Tribune_.

Thou art Freedom’s now and Fame’s. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

Fame outlives marble. W. G. CLARK.

Fame is but a phantom. J. BROOKS.

Fame is the echo of action. FULTON.

Fame is a magnifying glass. PAVILLON.

Fame is the thin shadow of eternity. MARTIN LUTHER.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. SOCRATES.

Fame comes only when deserved. H. W. LONGFELLOW.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. MILTON.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave. HAZLITT.

With fame—in just proportion, envy grows. YOUNG.

He lives in fame that died in virtue’s cause.

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

What is fame? A fancied life in other’s breath.

POPE—_Essay on Man_.

THE ROYALTY OF RUSSIA

There is nothing vainer than the love of fame. THEOPHRASTUS.

Earth hath bubbles as the water has. MACBETH.

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing and for whom you care as little.

STANISLAUS.

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all. ALEXANDER POPE—In _The Temple of Fame_.

So long as we love, we serve. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Happiness can be attained only by considering the good of others as our own. TOLSTOI.

Love gives itself to others, and inclines to extremest sacrifice.

TOLSTOI.

To give up seeking one’s own happiness, as animals, is the true law of the life of humanity. TOLSTOI.

When we help someone else, we add to our own resources and power. DR. EUGENE UNDERHILL.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve happiness. FICHTE.

He serves most who serves his country best. ALEXANDER POPE.

They never fail who die in a good cause. BYRON.

Coarseness and roughness lock doors and close hearts; courtesy, refinement and gentleness are “open sesame” at which bolts fly back and doors swing open. WILLIAM MATTHEWS.

The years of unsheltered days and nights, the sun and storm, the dews and damps have done their work and now with bitter tears I turn my face away from the land I have loved so well and seek in a foreign clime, perchance, a little of the good strength once lent me here. CLARA BARTON.

Reserve your energies, doing those little things that be in your way, each as well as you can, so that when God shall call you to do something good and great you will be ready to do the work quickly and well. CLARA BARTON.

We question whether there has been any man or woman in the whole world’s history who has been a greater blessing to mankind than Clara Barton. _Topeka Daily Journal._

Clara Barton stands as the complete refutation of the spirit of the age that either great wealth, social position or political power is necessary to the achievement of success.

_The Universalist Leader_ (Boston).

Life is giving one’s self to save others. CLARA BARTON.

Grace was in all her steps, heav’n in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. MILTON.

OPEN HOUSE—COST OF FAME, SELF-SACRIFICE—BEST IN WOMAN

Clara Barton kept “open house.” She was “in” to everybody. One had but to knock and enter. Expressive of her welcome, on one occasion she says: “You will begin to feel the strings of welcome tugging at your footsteps when you leave the cars, and will know that it is fastened firmly to the knob of the door, pulling only the harder as the door swings wide open.” At one time her Glen Echo home was filled with indigent, homeless soldiers. About this time “Bessie Beech” was heard to say: “Clara Barton really needs a guardian; she gives away everything she has and almost starves herself. Recently she gave to her soldier friends in distress, $800.00—all the money she had and is “strapped.” A well known millionaire gave, fearing he might die _rich_; Clara Barton gave, knowing that she must die _poor_. Giving,—that was Clara Barton’s whole existence.” “All the world,” she says, “expects me to give something every time it can get through the door or get a letter to me.”

“To pay respects” is a convenient excuse for imposing on good nature. To pay respects to America’s humanitarian became a fad. She not only personally answered 3,700 letters annually, besides her foreign correspondence, but thousands of people every year called, on her “to pay their respects.” On one occasion it would be for her to entertain the First Lady of the Land, representatives of the Army, the Navy, the Military, the Members of the Cabinet, the Members of Congress, the Officers of the Bureau of Education—“Official Washington.” On another occasion it was for her to entertain 600 members of the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by the President Susan B. Anthony. It was for her almost daily to receive delegation after delegation, titled men from Europe, “globe trotters,” “sight-seers,” “prominent officials”—and to receive the “people who want something” all the time. If “the greatest of all sacrifices is the sacrifice of time,” for others, Clara Barton made a sacrifice theretofore without precedent,—“the sacrifice of half a century.”

Fame is one’s misfortune. Clara Barton did not seek fame, she sought work; fame was thrust upon her. It may be enjoyable to achieve fame, but it is misery to be a slave to fame. Only when the possessor of fame is dead can there come compensation—_that’s a monument_. A famous English Cardinal moaned, “Would that I had served my God with half the zeal I served my king!” A world-famed French philosopher soliloquized, “What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous!” An immortal American President said: “I wish I had never been born—my position is anything but a bed of roses.” Again, in the nation’s darkest night, despairingly this same President said: “Oh, if there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do I pity him.” Another, America’s most beloved President, advised a small boy: “Grow up to be a good man, a useful man, but don’t try to be President; it won’t pay you.” Responsive to an admirer, who said “I helped to nominate you,” a world-famed President in the afternoon of his release, with nerves shattered, from an invalid chair commented: “Yes, you helped me into a lot of trouble.”

Even more than a famous man does a famous woman “belong to history and self-sacrifice.” In the evening following an “afternoon at home” to a thousand people, in full dress, and while sitting on the floor entertaining her little children with their toys, America’s most famous society entertainer and wife of a multimillionaire U. S. Senator, was heard to say, “This is the only pleasure I get out of Washington society.” To reach the heights of mere social fame is an achievement of folly. To live in an atmosphere of social aristocracy is to live on a desert-waste; the only attraction, the mirage that deceives.

On the steamer, while in ill health on her way to Europe, in her diary, Clara Barton philosophizes: Is my life really worth while? I give all of my time and strength to the public that seems unappreciative. In obscurity I might have had health, at least personal comfort. I might have married and had a home, a family of children; I might have taken up painting or literature, in each of which my friends say I have ability. In either of such life’s work I might have achieved success. As it is, even while serving the public, I am alone in the world, buffeted about and nobody seems to care for me unless to use me for some purpose. I wonder whether or not any woman thinks her life a success? Oh, well, I guess it was intended that I should do the work I am doing, forget myself and live for others, so I might as well make the best of it and try to be happy.