Part 1

THE STORY OF MY CHILDHOOD

BY

CLARA BARTON

NEW YORK THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 1907

Copyright, 1907, by THE JOURNAL PUBLISHING CO., Meriden, Conn.

THE JOURNAL PRESS.

THE STORY OF MY CHILDHOOD.

PREFACE

_Dear Miss Clara Barton_:

Our classes in The History of the United States are studying about you, and we want to know more.

Our teacher says she has seen you. That you live in, or near Washington, District of Columbia, and that, although very busy, she thought you might be willing to receive a short letter from us, and I write to ask you to be so kind as to tell us what you did when you were a little girl like us. All of us want to know. I am almost thirteen.

If you could send us a few words, we should all be very happy. I write for all.

Your little girl friend, MARY ST. CLARE, * * * New York.

October third, nineteen hundred, six.

_Miss Clara Barton_:

I am studying about you in my History, and what you did in the war, and I thought I would write and ask you what you did afore you did that.

Yours truly, JAMES C. HAMLIN.

* * * Center, Iowa, May 24th, 1906.

=Dear Children of the Schools:=

Your oft-repeated appeals have reached me. They are too many and too earnest to be disregarded; and because of them, and because of my love for you, I have dedicated this little book to you. I have made it small, that you may the more easily read it. I have done it in the hope that it may give you pleasure, and in the wish that, when you shall be women and men, you may each remember, as I do, that you were once a child, full of childish thoughts and action, but of whom it was said, “Suffer them to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Faithfully your friend, CLARA BARTON.

Glen Echo, Maryland, May twenty-ninth, 1907.

THE STORY OF MY CHILDHOOD.

BY CLARA BARTON.

It was May—the cherry trees were in bloom. For the first time in three years I had been able to sit for an evening among a company of persons (invalids like myself seeking strength), trying to entertain them with some remembrances of bygone days. I see it still, the broad parlor of that grand old “Hillside Home,” the mother and inspiration of all the hundreds of sanitariums and health restoring institutions of the country to-day. I had made my home near it, at the foot of the blossoming orchard.

Down among the trees and twittering robins next morning came one of my listeners; a broad-shouldered, manly looking man, the face so full of benign intelligence that once seen was never to be forgotten. He came in at the open door, merrily shaking off the cherry blossoms like large flakes of early snow, an entire stranger to me until the previous evening. He seated himself and entered into conversation with a familiar ease that bespoke the cultured gentleman. After a few minutes he turned earnestly to me with: “Miss Barton, I have an errand in coming to you. I have a request to make.”

I said I hoped I should be able to comply. He hesitated, as if thinking how to commence, but at length said: “I want you to recall and write the first thing you remember—the first event that made sufficient impression upon you to be remembered.”

I waited in silence and he went on:

“And then I want you to write the next, and then the next, and so on, until you have written all—everything connected with yourself and your life that you can recall. I want it; we want it; the world wants it, and again I ask you to do it. Can you promise me?”

His earnest manner demanded an earnest reply. I could not promise to do it, but would promise to consider it.

This was in the spring of 1876. I have never forgotten the request through all these thirty-one busy years, and have carefully kept the promise to consider it; and to-night take my pencil to describe the first moment of my life that I remember.

By the dates I must have been nearly two and a half years old, for I was born on Christmas day, and now the lilacs were in bloom. It was a rather newly built country house where I had commenced my earthly pilgrimage, and being the youngest by a dozen or so years, of a family of two brothers and two sisters, I naturally lacked child playmates and was left much to my own entertainment.

On this occasion I must have been enjoying a ramble by myself in the grass-green dooryard, with the broad hand-hewn doorstep and the traditional lilacs on either side. Suddenly my resounding cries brought the whole family to the door in alarm. My wailing took the form of a complaint expressed with my best linguistic ability:

“Baby los’ ’im—pitty bird—baby los’ ’im—baby mos’ caught him—pitty bird—baby mos’ caught ’im.”

At length they succeeded in inducing me to listen to a question, “But where did it go, Baby?”

Among my heart-breaking sobs I pointed to a small round hole under the doorstep. The terrified scream of my mother remained in my memory forever more. Her baby had “mos’ caught” a snake.

I recall nothing more for nearly a year and a half, when my terrors again took possession. An esteemed and greatly beloved relative of the family had died. The funeral services were to be held four miles away. All the household would attend excepting myself and the younger of my two brothers, David, some sixteen years old, who was deputed to act as body guard, doubtless under strict orders.

I can picture the large family sitting room with its four open windows, which room I was not to leave, and my guardian was to remain near me. Some outside duty called him from the house and I was left to my own observations. A sudden thunder shower came up; massive rifts of clouds rolled up in the east, and the lightning darted among them like blazing fires. The thunder gave them language and my terrified imagination endowed them with life.

Among the animals of the farm was a huge old ram, that doubtless upon some occasion had taught me to respect him, and of which I had a mortal fear. My terrors transformed those rising, rolling clouds into a whole heaven full of angry rams, marching down upon me. Again my screams alarmed, and the poor brother, conscience stricken that he had left his charge, rushed breathless in, to find me on the floor in hysterics, a condition of things he had never seen; and neither memory nor history relate how either of us got out of it.

In these later years I have observed that writers of sketches, in a friendly desire to compliment me, have been wont to dwell upon my courage, representing me as personally devoid of fear, not even knowing the feeling. However correct that may have become, it is evident I was not constructed that way, as in the earlier years of my life I remember nothing but fear.

There can be no doubt that my advent into the family was at least a novelty, as the last before me was a beautiful blue-eyed, curly-haired little girl of a dozen summers. That the event was probably looked for with interest is shadowed in the fact of preparations made for it. The still existing few pieces in my possession testify to the purchase of a full, complete and withal rather aristocratic dinner set of “Old Willow,” which did faithful service many years; and the remaining bits of dainty pink and white, tell of the tea set to match, in the cups of which were told the future of many a merry party that learned their reality through still later years, not all pink and white.

I became the seventh member of a household consisting of the father and mother, two sisters and two brothers, each of whom for his and her intrinsic merits and special characteristics deserves an individual history, which it shall be my conscientious duty to portray as far as possible as these pages progress. For the present it is enough to say that each one manifested an increasing personal interest in the newcomer, and as soon as developments permitted, set about instructing her in the various directions most in accord with the tastes and pursuits of each.

Of the two sisters, the elder was already a teacher. The younger followed soon, and naturally my book education became their first care, and under these conditions it is little to say, that I have no knowledge of ever learning to read, or of a time that I did not do my own story reading. The other studies followed very early.

My elder brother, Stephen, was a noted mathematician. He inducted me into the mystery of figures. Multiplication, division, subtraction, halves, quarters and wholes, soon ceased to be a mystery, and no toy equalled my little slate. But the younger brother (he of the thunder storm and hysterics) had entirely other tastes, and would have none of these things. My father was a lover of horses, and one of the first in the vicinity to introduce blooded stock. He had large lands, for New England. He raised his own colts; and Highlanders, Virginians and Morgans pranced the fields in idle contempt of the solid old farm horses.

Of my brother, David, to say that he was fond of horses describes nothing; one could almost add that he was fond of nothing else. He was the Buffalo Bill of the surrounding country, and here commences his part of my education. It was his delight to take me, a little girl five years old, to the field, seize a couple of those beautiful young creatures, broken only to the halter and bit, and gathering the reins of both bridles firmly in hand, throw me upon the back of one colt, spring upon the other himself, and catching me by one foot, and bidding me “cling fast to the mane,” gallop away over field and fen, in and out among the other colts in wild glee like ourselves. They were merry rides we took. This was my riding school. I never had any other, but it served me well. To this day my seat on a saddle or on the back of a horse is as secure and tireless as in a rocking chair, and far more pleasurable. Sometimes, in later years, when I found myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper’s saddle, flying for life or liberty in front of pursuit, I blessed the baby lessons of the wild gallops among the beautiful colts.

Various as were the topics of instruction pursued by my youthful teachers, my father had still others. He was “Captain” Stephen Barton, had served as a non-commissioned officer, under General Wayne (Mad Anthony) in the French and Indian Wars on the then Western frontiers. His soldier habits and tastes never left him. Those were also strong political days—Andrew Jackson days—and very naturally my father became my instructor in military and political lore. I listened breathlessly to his war stories. Illustrations were called for, and we made battles and fought them. Every shade of military etiquette was regarded. Generals, colonels, captains and sergeants were given their proper place and rank. So with the political world; the president, cabinet and leading officers of the government were learned by heart, and nothing gratified the keen humor of my father more than the parrot-like readiness with which I lisped these often difficult names, and the accuracy with which I repeated them upon request. My elder sister, with a teacher’s intuition, mistrusting that my ideas on these points might be somewhat vague, confidentially drew from me one day my impressions in regard to the personages whose names I handled so glibly, and to the amusement of the family found that I had no conception of their being men like other men, but had invested them with miraculous size and importance. I thought the president might be as large as the meeting house, and the vice-president perhaps the size of the school house. And yet I am not going to say that even this instruction had never any value for me. When later, I, like all the rest of our country people, was suddenly thrust into the mysteries of war, and had to find and take my place and part in it, I found myself far less a stranger to the conditions than most women, or even ordinary men for that matter; I never addressed a colonel as captain, got my cavalry on foot, or mounted my infantry.

My mother, like the sensible woman that she was, seeming to conclude that there were plenty of instructors without her, attempted very little, but rather regarded the whole thing as a sort of mental conglomeration, and looked on with a kind of amused curiosity to see what they would make of it. Indeed, I heard her remark many years after, that I came out with a more level head than she would have thought possible.

My first individual ownership was “Button.” In personality (if the term be admissible), Button represented a sprightly, medium-sized, very white dog, with silky ears, sparkling black eyes and a very short tail. His bark spoke for itself. Button belonged to me. No other claim was instituted, or ever had been. It was said that on my entrance into the family, Button constituted himself my guardian. He watched my first steps and tried to pick me up when I fell down. One was never seen without the other. He proved an apt and obedient pupil, obeying me precept upon precept, if not line upon line. He stood on two feet to ask for his food, and made a bow on receiving it, walked on three legs when very lame, and so on, after the manner of his crude instruction; went everywhere with me through the day, waited patiently while I said my prayers and continued his guard on the foot of the bed at night. Button shared my board as well as my bed. This fact gave opportunity for an amusing bit of sport for the family at my expense, as was their wont.

One would, with considerable ado (to lend importance to the occasion), make me a present of some divisible luxury, as cake or candies. This called, on my part, for positive orders to all to sit down and share my gift with me, as I never partook of it alone. A line or circle was formed, comprising the entire family, Button occupying the last seat. I then proceeded to make a careful hand count of each, including Button; then retired and accurately divided my gift, a piece for each, but not myself, as I was not in the count. I then went and gave a piece to every one. The fun came in watching the silent wonderment and resignation with which I contemplated my own empty hands, a condition of things I could not at all comprehend, but made no complaint. Of course, each in generous sympathy offered to give back to me his or her piece; but here came in my careful mother’s protest and command, so seldom heard. “No,” I must not be taught to think I could give a thing and still possess it, or its value. A gift must be outright. I must do earnestly all that I did. Each might generously give me back a very small piece, to make in all no more than would have been my share, and I must be made to understand that even this was a favor and not a right. I then went around and received my crumbs. This all went well till I came to Button. When I held out my hand for his little charity, he had nothing for me. I could never understand this discourtesy of Button.

This was one of the many jokes reserved for me as I grew older. But far above and beyond it all, as the years sped on, and the hands were still, shone the gleam of the far-sighted mother’s watchfulness that neither toil could obscure, nor mirth relax.

My home instruction was by no means permitted to stand in the way of the “regular school,” which consisted of two terms each year, of three months each. The winter term included not only the large boys and girls, but in reality the young men and young women of the neighborhood. An exceptionally fine teacher often drew the daily attendance of advanced scholars for several miles. Our district had this good fortune. I introduce with pleasure and with reverence the name of Richard Stone; a firmly-set, handsome young man of twenty-six or seven, of commanding figure and presence, combining all the elements of a teacher with a discipline never questioned. His glance of disapproval was a reprimand, his frown something he never needed to go beyond. The love and respect of his pupils exceeded even their fear. It was no uncommon thing for summer teachers to come twenty miles to avail themselves of the winter term of “Col.” Stone, for he was a high militia officer, and at that young age was a settled man with a family of four little children. He had married at eighteen.

I am thus particular in my description of him, both because of my childish worship of him, and because I shall have occasion to refer to him later. The opening of his first term was a signal for the Barton family, and seated on the strong shoulders of my stalwart brother Stephen, I was taken a mile through the tall drifts to school. I have often questioned if in this movement there might not have been a touch of mischievous curiosity on the part of these not at all dull youngsters, to see what my performance at school might be.

I was, of course, the baby of the school. I recall no introduction to the teacher, but was set down among the many pupils in the by no means spacious room, with my spelling book and the traditional slate, from which nothing could separate me. I was seated on one of the low benches and sat very still. At length the majestic schoolmaster seated himself, and taking a primer, called the class of little ones to him. He pointed the letters to each. I named them all, and was asked to spell some little words, “dog,” “cat,” etc., whereupon I hesitatingly informed him that I did “not spell there.” “Where do you spell?” “I spell in ‘Artichoke,’” that being the leading word in the three syllable column in my speller. He good naturedly conformed to my suggestion, and I was put into the “artichoke” class to bear my part for the winter, and read and “spell for the head.” When, after a few weeks, my brother Stephen was declared by the committee to be too advanced for a common school, and was placed in charge of an important school himself, my unique transportation devolved upon the other brother, David.

No colts now, but solid wading through the high New England drifts.

The Rev. Mr. Menseur of the Episcopal church of Leicester, Mass., if I recollect aright, wisely comprehending the grievous inadaptability of the school books of that time, had compiled a small geography and atlas suited to young children, known as Menseur’s Geography. It was a novelty, as well as a beneficence; nothing of its kind having occurred to makers of the school books of that day. They seemed not to have recognized the existence of a state of childhood in the intellectual creation. During the winter I had become the happy possessor of a Menseur’s Geography and Atlas. It is questionable if my satisfaction was fully shared by others of the household. I required a great deal of assistance in the study of my maps, and became so interested that I could not sleep, and was not willing that others should, but persisted in waking my poor drowsy sister in the cold winter mornings to sit up in bed and by the light of a tallow candle, help me to find mountains, rivers, counties, oceans, lakes, islands, isthmuses, channels, cities, towns and capitals.

The next May the summer school opened, taught by Miss Susan Torrey. Again, I write the name reverently, as gracing one of the most perfect of personalities. I was not alone in my childish admiration, for her memory remained a living reality in the town long years after the gentle spirit fled. My sisters were both teaching other schools, and I must make my own way, which I did, walking a mile with my one precious little schoolmate, Nancy Fitts. Nancy Fitts! The playmate of my childhood; the “chum” of laughing girlhood; the faithful trusted companion of young womanhood, and the beloved life friend that the relentless grasp of time has neither changed, nor taken from me.

On entering the wide open door of the inviting schoolhouse, armed with some most unsuitable reader, a spelling book, geography, atlas and slate, I was seized with an intense fear at finding myself with no member of the family near, and my trepidation became so visible that the gentle teacher, relieving me of my burden of books, took me tenderly on her lap and did her best to reassure and calm me. At length I was given my seat, with a desk in front for my atlas and slate, my toes at least a foot from the floor, and that became my daily, happy home for the next three months.

I partially recall an event which occurred when I was five years old; the incidents which I could not have personally remembered, must have been supplied by later relations. It seems that I was suddenly discovered to be alarmingly ill. In response to the terror of the moment, the saddle was thrown on Black Stallion, the king of the herd, his rough rider mounted and away for the doctor, on “Oxford Plain,” five miles away. “Not at home—out on a professional drive.” Followed to “Sutton Street,” six miles further on. “Gone.” Back over “Hog Hill” and across the town to the west. At length overtaken and brought back at a speed little less than that which had called him, for the doctor was a fearless driver. The thunder of the flying hoofs and the speed of the rider as they passed had alarmed the people. All the town knew the horse and the rider, and knew as well that something bad had happened at Captain Barton’s. Men dropped their work, harnessed their own teams and drove with all haste to see if, perchance, it were anything in which they could help. When the doctor arrived, the yard and road were filled with people, waiting his coming and diagnosis.

Shortly the verbal bulletin went out: “A sudden, unaccountable and probably fatal attack of bloody dysentery and convulsions.” There was no more for the sympathetic neighbors to do; they turned sadly away, and with them went the report that Captain and Mrs. Barton had lost their little baby girl.

Of all this I have, naturally, no recollection—neither do I know the lapse of time till memory again got hold; but her first grasp of the event was this: I had occupied as a bed a great cradle which had been made for some grown invalid, and preserved in the household. I was bolstered up in this cradle, with a little low table at the side on which was my first meal of solid food. How I had previously been nourished I do not know, but I can see this meal as clearly as if it had been yesterday. A piece of brown bread crust, about two inches square, rye and Indian, baked on the oven bottom; a tiny wine glass, my Christmas gift, full of home-made blackberry cordial, and a wee bit of my mother’s well cured old cheese. There was no need to caution me to eat slowly; knowing that I could have no more, and in dread of coming to the last morsel, I nibbled and sipped and swallowed till I mercifully fell asleep from exhaustion.

There are a good many men over the country who would readily believe that sometimes, at the end of a long fast, food might have tasted very good to me, as it did to them; but no food through the longest fast, ever had the relish of that brown bread crust; and no royal table has ever been so kingly as that where I presided alone over my own feast.