Part 4

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."

Clara Barton was present on sixteen battle-fields; she was eight months at the siege of Charleston, and served for a considerable period in the hospitals of Richmond.

When the war was ended and the survivors of the great armies were marching homeward, her heart was touched by the distress in many homes where sons and fathers and brothers were among those listed as "missing." In all, there were 80,000 men of whom no definite report could be given to their friends. She was assisting President Lincoln in answering the hundreds of heartbroken letters, imploring news, which poured in from all over the land when his tragic death left her alone with the task. Then, as no funds were available to finance a thorough investigation of every sort of record of States, hospitals, prisons, and battle-fields, she maintained out of her own means a bureau to prosecute the search.

Four years were spent in this great labor, during which time Miss Barton made many public addresses, the proceeds of which were devoted to the cause. One evening in the winter of 1868, while in the midst of a lecture, her voice suddenly left her. This was the beginning of a complete nervous collapse. The hardships and prolonged strain had, in spite of her robust constitution and iron will, told at last on the endurance of that loyal worker.

When able to travel, she went to Geneva, Switzerland, in the hope of winning back her health and strength. Soon after her arrival she was visited by the president and members of the "International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded in War," who came to learn why the United States had refused to sign the Treaty of Geneva, providing for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers. Of all the civilized nations, our great republic alone most unaccountably held aloof.

Miss Barton at once set herself to learn all she could about the ideals and methods of the International Red Cross, and during the Franco-Prussian War she had abundant opportunity to see and experience its practical working on the battle-field.

At the outbreak of the war in 1870 she was urged to go as a leader, taking the same part that she had borne in the Civil War.

"I had not strength to trust for that," said Clara Barton, "and declined with thanks, promising to follow in my own time and way; and I did follow within a week. As I journeyed on," she continued, "I saw the work of these Red Cross societies in the field accomplishing in four months under their systematic organization what we failed to accomplish in four years without it--no mistakes, no needless suffering, no waste, no confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness, and comfort wherever that little flag made its way--a whole continent marshaled under the banner of the Red Cross. As I saw all this and joined and worked in it, you will not wonder that I said to myself 'if I live to return to my country, I will try to make my people understand the Red Cross and that treaty.'"

Months of service in caring for the wounded and the helpless victims of siege and famine were followed by a period of nervous exhaustion from which she but slowly crept back to her former hold on health. At last she was able to return to America to devote herself to bringing her country into line with the Red Cross movement. She found that traditionary prejudice against "entangling alliances with other powers," together with a singular failure to comprehend the vital importance of the matter, militated against the great cause.

"Why should we make provision for the wounded?" it was said. "We shall never have another war; we have learned our lesson."

It came to Miss Barton then that the work of the Red Cross should be extended to disasters, such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and epidemics--"great public calamities which require, like war, prompt and well-organized help."

Years of devoted missionary work with preoccupied officials and a heedless, short-sighted public at length bore fruit. After the Geneva Treaty received the signature of President Arthur on March 1, 1882, it was promptly ratified by the Senate, and the American National Red Cross came into being, with Clara Barton as its first president. Through her influence, too, the International Congress of Berne adopted the "American Amendment," which dealt with the extension of the Red Cross to relief measures in great calamities occurring in times of peace.

The story of her life from this time on is one with the story of the work of the Red Cross during the stress of such disasters as the Mississippi River floods, the Texas famine in 1885, the Charleston earthquake in 1886, the Johnstown flood in 1899, the Russian famine in 1892, and the Spanish-American War. The prompt, efficient methods followed in the relief of the flood sufferers along the Mississippi in 1884 may serve to illustrate the sane, constructive character of her work.

Supply centers were established, and a steamer chartered to ply back and forth carrying help and hope to the distracted human creatures who stood "wringing their hands on a frozen, fireless shore--with every coal-pit filled with water." For three weeks she patrolled the river, distributing food, clothing, and fuel, caring for the sick, and, in order to establish at once normal conditions of life, providing the people with many thousands of dollars' worth of building material, seeds, and farm implements, thus making it possible for them to help themselves and in work find a cure for their benumbing distress.

"Our Lady of the Red Cross" lived past her ninetieth birthday, but her real life is measured by deeds, not days. It was truly a long one, rich in the joy of service. She abundantly proved the truth of the words: "We gain in so far as we give. If we would find our life, we must be willing to lose it."

A MAIDEN CRUSADER: FRANCES E. WILLARD

Instead of peace, I was to participate in war; instead of the sweetness of home, I was to become a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I have felt that a great promotion came to me when I was counted worthy to be a worker in the organized crusade for "God and Home and Native Land."... If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would say it is to make the whole world homelike. The true woman will make every place she enters homelike--and she will enter every place in this wide world.

FRANCES E. WILLARD.

A MAIDEN CRUSADER

There is no place like a young college town in a young country for untroubled optimism. Hope blossoms there as nowhere else; the ideal ever beckons at the next turn in the road. When Josiah Willard brought his little family to Oberlin, it seemed to them all that a new golden age of opportunity was theirs. Even Frances, who was little more than a baby, drank in the spirit of the place with the air she breathed.

It was not hard to believe in a golden age when one happened to see little Frances, or "Frank," Willard dancing like a sunbeam about the campus. She liked to play about the big buildings, where father went every day with his big books, and watch for him to come out. Sometimes one of the students would stop to speak to her; sometimes a group would gather about while, with fair hair flying and small arms waving, in a voice incredibly clear and bird-like, she "said a piece" that mother had taught her.

"Is that a little professorling?" asked a new-comer one day, attracted by the child's cherub face and darting, fairylike ways.

"Guess again!" returned a dignified senior. "Her father is one of the students. Haven't you noticed that fine-looking Willard? The mother, too, knows how to appreciate a college, I understand--used to be a teacher back in New York where they came from."

"You don't mean to say that this happy little goldfinch is the child of two such solemn owls!" exclaimed the other.

"Nothing of the sort. They are very wide-awake, alive sort of people, I assure you,--the kind who'd make a success of anything. The father wants to be a preacher, they say--wait, there he comes now!"

It was plain to be seen that Mr. Willard was an alert, capable man and a good father. The little girl ran to him with a joyful cry, and a sturdy lad who had been trying to climb a tree bounded forward at the same time.

"I trust that my small fry haven't been making trouble," said the man, giving his free hand to Frances and graciously allowing Oliver to carry two of his armful of books.

"Only making friends," the senior responded genially, "and one can see that they can't very well help that."

The Oberlin years were a happy, friendly time for all the family. While both father and mother were working hard to make the most of their long-delayed opportunity for a liberal education, they delighted above all in the companionship of neighbors with tastes like their own. After five years, however, it became clear that the future was not to be after their planning. Mr. Willard's health failed, and a wise doctor said that he must leave his book-world, and take up a free, active life in the open. So the little family joined the army of westward-moving pioneers.

Can you picture the three prairie-schooners that carried them and all their goods to the new home? The father drove the first, Oliver geehawed proudly from the high perch of the next, and mother sat in the third, with Frances and little sister Mary on a cushioned throne made out of father's topsyturvy desk. For nearly thirty days the little caravan made its way--now through forests, now across great sweeping prairies, now over bumping corduroy roads that crossed stretches of swampy ground. They cooked their bacon and potatoes, gypsy-fashion, on the ground, and slept under the white hoods of their long wagons, when they were not kept awake by the howling of wolves.

When Sunday came, they rested wherever the day found them--sometimes on the rolling prairie, where their only shelter from rain and sun was the homely schooner, but where at night they could look up at the great tent of the starry heavens; sometimes in the cathedral of the forest, where they found Jack-in-the-pulpit preaching to the other wild-flowers and birds and breezes singing an anthem of praise.

It was truly a new world through which they made their way--beginnings all about--the roughest, crudest sort of beginnings, glorified by the brightest hopes. Tiny cabins were planted on the edge of the prairies; rough huts of logs were dropped down in clearings in the forest. Everywhere people were working with an energy that could not be daunted--felling trees, sowing, harvesting, building. As they passed by the end of Lake Michigan they caught a glimpse of a small, struggling village in the midst of a dark, hopeless-looking morass, from which they turned aside on seeing the warning sign _No bottom here_. That little settlement in the swamp was Chicago.

Northward they journeyed to Wisconsin, where on the bluffs above Rock River, not far from Janesville, they found a spot with fertile prairie on one side and sheltering, wooded hills on the other. It seemed as if the place fairly called to them: "This is home. You are my people. My fields and hills and river have been waiting many a year just for you!"

Here Mr. Willard planted the roof-tree, using timber that his own ax had wrested from the forest. Year by year it grew with their life. "Forest Home," as they lovingly called it, was a low, rambling dwelling, covered with trailing vines and all but hidden away in a grove of oaks and evergreens. It seemed as if Nature had taken over the work of their hands--house, barns, fields, and orchards--and made them her dearest care. Here were people after her own heart, people who went out eagerly to meet and use the things that each day brought. They found real zest in plowing fields, laying fences, raising cattle, and learning the ways of soil and weather. They learned how to keep rats and gophers from devouring their crops, how to bank up the house as a protection from hurricanes, and how to fight the prairie fires with fire.

Frank Willard grew as the trees grew, quite naturally, gathering strength from the life about her. She had her share in the daily tasks; she had, too, a chance for free, happy, good times. There was but one other family of children near enough to share their plays, but the fun was never dependent on numbers or novelty. If there were only two members of the "Rustic Club" present, the birds and chipmunks and other wood-creatures supplied every lack. Sometimes when they found themselves longing to "pick up and move back among folks," they played that the farm was a city.

"'My mind to me a kingdom is,'" quoted Frank, optimistically; "and I think if we all put our minds to it, we can manage to people this spot on the map very sociably."

Their city had a model government, and ideal regulations for community health and enjoyment. It had also an enterprising newspaper of which Frank was editor.

Frank was the leader in all of the fun. She was the commanding general in that famous "Indian fight" when, with Mary and Mother, she held the fort against the attack of two dreadful, make-believe savages and a dog. It was due to her strategy that the dog was brought over to their side by an enticing sparerib and the day won. Frank, too, was the captain of their good ship _Enterprise_.

"If we do live inland, we don't have to _think inland_, Mary," she said. "What's the use of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing because we've never seen the ocean. Let's take this hen-coop and go a-sailing. Who knows what magic shores we'll touch beyond our Sea of Fancy!"

A plank was put across the pointed top of the hen-coop, and the children stood at opposite ends steering, slowly when the sea was calm and more energetically when a storm was brewing. The hens clucked and the chickens ran about in a panic, but the captain calmly charted the waters and laid down rules of navigation.

Perhaps, though, the best times of all were those that Frank spent in her retreat at the top of a black oak tree, where she could sit weaving stories of bright romance to her heart's content. On the tree she nailed a sign with this painted warning: "The Eagle's Nest. Beware!" to secure her against intruders. Here she wrote a wonderful novel of adventure, some four hundred pages long.

But this eagle found that the wings of her imagination could not make her entirely free and happy. She had to return from the heights and the high adventures of her favorite heroes to the dull routine of farm life. She was not even allowed to ride, as Oliver was.

"Well, if I can't be trusted to manage a horse, I'll see what can be done with a cow and a saddle. I simply must ride _something_," Frank declared, with a determined toss of her head.

It took not only determination, but also grim endurance and a sense of fun to help her through this novel experiment, which certainly had in it more excitement than pleasure. However, when her father saw her ride by on her long-horned steed, he said with a laugh:

"You have fairly earned a better mount, Frank. And I suppose there is really no more risk of your breaking your neck with a horse."

That night Frank wrote in her journal:

"Hurrah! rejoice! A new era has this moment been ushered in. Rode a horse through the corn--the acme of my hopes realized."

In the saddle, with the keen breath of a brisk morning in her face, she felt almost free--almost a part of the larger life for which she longed. "I think I'm fonder of anything out of my sphere than anything in it," she said to her mother, whose understanding and sympathy never failed her.

Perhaps she loved especially to pore over a book of astronomy and try to puzzle out the starry paths on the vast prairie of the heavens, because it carried her up and away from her every-day world. Sometimes, however, she was brought back to earth with a rude bump.

"When I had to get dinner one Sunday, I fairly cried," she said. "To come back to frying onions, when I've been among the rings of Saturn, is terrible."

She didn't at all know what it was for which she longed. Only she knew that she didn't want to grow up--to twist up her free curls with spiky hair-pins and to wear long skirts which seemed to make it plain that a weary round of shut-in tasks was all her lot and that the happy days of roaming woods and fields were over.

Through all the girlhood days at "Forest Home" Frank longed for the chance to go to a real school as much as she longed to be free. Oliver went to the Janesville Academy, and later to Beloit College, but she could get only fleeting glimpses of his more satisfying life through the books he brought home and his talks of lectures and professors. She remembered those far-off days at Oberlin as a golden time indeed. There even a girl might have the chance to learn the things that would set her mind and soul free.

It was a great day for Frances and Mary Willard when Mr. Hodge, a Yale man who was, like her father, exiled to a life in a new country, decided to open a school for the children of the neighboring farms. On the never-to-be-forgotten first day the girls got up long before light, put their tin pails of dinner and their satchels of books with their coats, hoods, and mufflers, and then stood watching the clock, whose provokingly measured ticks seemed entirely indifferent to the eager beating of their hearts. At last the hired man yoked the oxen to the long "bob-sled," and Oliver drove them over a new white road to the new school. The doors were not yet open.

"I told you it was much too early," said Oliver. "The idea of being so crazy over the opening of a little two-by-four school like this!"

"It does look like a sort of big ground-nut," said Frank, with a laugh, "but it's ours to crack. Besides, we have a Yale graduate to teach us, and Beloit can't beat that!"

"Let's go over to Mr. Hodge's for the key, and make the fire for him," suggested Mary.

There was an unusually long entry in Frank's diary that night:

At last Professor Hodge appeared, in his long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, carrying an armful of school-books and a dinner-bell in his hand. He stood on the steps and rang the bell, long, loud, and merrily. My heart bounded, and I said inside of it, so that nobody heard: "At last we are going to school all by ourselves, Mary and I, and we are going to have advantages like other folks, just as Mother said we should." O! goody-goody-goody! I feel satisfied with the world, myself, and the rest of mankind.

This enthusiasm for school and study did not wane as the days went by. "I want to know everything--_everything_," Frank would declare vehemently. "It is only _knowing_ that can make one free."

The time came when she was to go away to college. Wistfully she went about saying good-by to all the pleasant haunts about "Forest Home." For a long time she sat on her old perch in the "Eagle's nest," looking off towards the river and the hills.

"I think that as I know more, I live more," said Frank to her mother that night. "I am alive to so many things now that I never thought of six months ago; and everything is dearer--is more a part of myself."

The North-West Female College, at Evanston, Illinois, was Frank's alma mater. Here her love of learning made her a leader in all her classes; and her originality, daring, and personal charm made her a leader in the social life of the students. She was editor of the college paper, and first fun-maker of a lively clan whose chief delight it was to shock some of their meek classmates out of their unthinking "goody-goodness." She was known, for instance, to have climbed into the steeple and to have remained on her giddy perch during an entire recitation period in the higher mathematics.

In her days of teaching, Frank was the same alert, free, eager-minded, fun-loving girl. First in a country school near Chicago, and afterward in a seminary in Pittsburg, she was a successful teacher because she never ceased to be a learner.

"Frank, you have the _hungriest_ soul I ever saw in a human being. It will never be satisfied!" said one of her friends.

"I shall never be satisfied until I have entered every open door, and I shall not go in alone," said Frank.

In all of her pursuit of knowledge and culture she was intensely social. She was always learning with others and for others. A bit from her diary in 1866 reveals the spirit in which she worked: