Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

CLARA BARTON
See [Contents].

CLARA BARTON
A CENTENARY TRIBUTE
TO
THE WORLD’S GREATEST HUMANITARIAN
FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS SOCIETY
AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN AMENDMENT TO THE INTERNATIONAL
RED CROSS CONVENTION OF GENEVA
FOUNDER OF THE NATIONAL FIRST AID
ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

CHARLES SUMNER YOUNG, A.M. Ph.D

ILLUSTRATED

BOSTON

RICHARD G. BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

Copyright, 1922, by Richard G. Badger

All Rights Reserved

Made in the United States of America

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company, New York, U. S. A.

This book is respectfully dedicated to the Boys and Girls of the World; and to the Men and Women who are still Boys and Girls, in their love for humanity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author, in the preparation of his pen pictures, begs to acknowledge with sincere thanks the courtesies extended to him by Mr. Stephen E. Barton, the Executor of the Clara Barton Estate; by Doctor J. B. Hubbell, for many years the manager for Clara Barton; by the Oxford (Mass.) Memorial Day Committee of 1917; by the Twenty-First Massachusetts Regiment G. A. R.; by many of the Army Nurses of the Civil War; also for material assistance in data by the American National Red Cross; by Mrs. J. Sewall Reed Acting-President, National First Aid Association of America; by Honorable Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress; by General W. H. Sears for the use of his data in his book of 177 pages, prepared for and used in the defense of Clara Barton before the Library Committee of Congress, and his generous contribution of incidents in the life of his personal friend; by Honorable Francis Atwater for data in “The Story of My Childhood,” by Clara Barton; by the Macmillan Co., Publishers of the Life of Clara Barton by Percy H. Epler, the book of the best data on her life now before the American people; by the National First Aid Association of America and likewise to many other associations, personal friends and admirers of America’s most remarkable woman.

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.

Lamartine.

Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life. Schiller.

“The fairest chaplet Victory wears

is that which mercy weaves.”

I live to learn their story,

Who suffered for my sake;

To emulate their glory

And follow in their wake;

Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,

The noble of all ages,

Whose deeds crown History’s pages,

And Time’s great volume make.

· · · · ·

For the cause that needs assistance,

For the wrongs that need resistance,

For the future in the distance

And the good that I can do.

THE FOREWORD

The author undertakes to produce a few pen pictures of a personal friend—humanity’s friend. They are pictures of sentiment, pictures of reality—pictures of humanity.

Although precluded the use of data left by Clara Barton for her biography the author, nevertheless, is conforming to the sentiment of her oft expressed wish that he write the story of her life. Recognizing the wish to be a sacredly imposed trust, for the past six years he has gleaned what he could for his sketches from public documents, from her personal friends in California, New England, New York, Washington and elsewhere, as well as from his memory of facts developing through the years he enjoyed her confidence and received from her highest inspirations.

The author assumes not a rôle literary—has herein no aspirations, literary. His impulse to write is not fame; it is sentiment, a love-sentiment for a woman whom all the world loves and whose “life gives expression to the sympathy and tenderness of all the hearts of all the women of the world.” His motive in writing is to point a moral in “a passion for service”; to limn scenes, vivid, along “paths of charity over roadways of ashes”; to depict for the lesson it teaches a career, a career the memory of which must remain a rich heritage to the American people.

In life’s drama, wherein Clara Barton played the leading rôle, there appear faces to inspire, faces to instruct, but also the faces of intrigue. In the closing incidents of a life-heroic time’s detectives disclose the plotters, and the motive in their plot to destroy—

Like a led victim to my death I’ll go,

And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.

Except now and then in dim outline, the faces of intrigue in the tragic scene do not appear. These faces are un-American—inhuman—and would mar humanity’s picture.

The Divine Humanitarian forgave His enemies, but the picture of the crucified on the cross ever suggests the Pontius Pilate and the executioners. Clara Barton also forgave her enemies, and yet some day a literary artist may portray the Judasette Iscariot, or possibly the plotting Antony and Cleopatra, to make a Clara Barton picture historically and tragically complete.

In biography is the world’s history. If, in human logic, the silencing of truth in biography be an imperative virtue, then literature should be relegated to the ash-heap of forgotten lore. As “in a valley centuries ago grew a fern leaf green and slender,” leaving its impress on what have become the rocks of the centuries, so truth leaves its impress imperishable on what become the tablets of history. Truth crushed to earth again and again will appear; and, when Clara Barton’s Gethsemane appears with all its delineations in a picture complete, there will be none so poor to do reverence to Clara Barton’s character assassins, nor to the Clara Barton ghouls who desecrate her tomb and use the United States mails to traduce the dead.

Sentiment is the soul of action. The highest tribute to mortal is the angel-sentiment—the tribute to self-sacrificing woman that blazes her “path where highways never ran.”

Ever the blind world

Knows not its angels of deliverance

Till they stand glorified ’twixt earth and heaven,

and yet more powerful than armies is the soul-sentiment that protects fame,—the fame of the Florence Nightingales, the Clara Bartons and the Edith Cavells.

Her “friends” say time will vindicate Clara Barton. The more such “friends” the more’s the pity. It’s not time, it’s truth, that vindicates. “Procrastination is the thief of time.” The thief of time must not be permitted to steal from the present, even under pledge to disgorge in the future. The present is ours to possess, ours to enjoy. It’s not that the millions can do something for Clara Barton; instead, the Clara Barton spirit can do something for the millions. The plotter may revile the Red Cross Mother; the Red Cross Artist may picture the cross of red on the breast of a fictitious “Greatest Mother in the World;” the self-constituted autocrat in Red Cross literature may suppress, and belie, truth; but the spirit of Clara Barton is the Mother-Spirit still, the real spirit of the American Red Cross, the Red Cross spirit in all Christendom. The fighting sons of America on the “Western Front” may not have read of Clara Barton in recent Red Cross literature but, trooping under the Red Cross peace-banner that Clara Barton brought here from Europe, were more millions of her followers in America than in the world war there were soldiers marshalled under the military banners in all the armies in Europe.

Grant was “Grant the Great” at Appomattox; Lincoln was more than “six feet four” when in the home of Confederate General Pickett he stooped down to kiss the brow of “Baby George” Pickett; Stephen A. Douglass was more than “the little giant” when at the inauguration on the east steps of the capitol he held the hat of Abraham Lincoln; Clara Barton was more divine than human when, with love for her enemies, in her last world prayer she gave expression to the forgiving sentiment of the Divine Humanitarian.

Clara Barton said that the bravest act of her life was crossing the pontoon bridge under fire at Fredericksburg. The historian will say that the bravest act of her life was snatching her Red Cross child from the social—political—fat-salaried-swiveled-chair clique at Washington, and handing over her best beloved unharmed to the country for which in the smoke of battle and terrors of disaster she had many times risked her life. The historian will further say that in refusing to accept a pension of $2500 for life and Honorary Presidency of the Red Cross from that “clique” as the price of her child, and suffering persecution for life as the penalty, there was shown the true mother spirit that must commend her for all time to those who respect the spirit of self-sacrificing Motherhood.

President Warren G. Harding, the president also of the Red Cross, “entertains the highest sentiment regarding the splendid service of Miss Barton.” Ex-President Woodrow Wilson—also ex-president of the Red Cross—has voiced the sentiment of the American people in no uncertain sound as has a second Clara Barton,—the soldier-angel Margaret Wilson. General John J. Pershing has not been silent in his admiration of the great woman, nor have the hundreds of thousands of American boys on the “Western Front” been unmindful in gratitude to the Founder of the American Red Cross; and, if signs fail not, from the American Congress there will come to America’s greatest humanitarian a testimonial—accompanied by an acclaim that will be heard around the world.

On a certain state occasion the statement was made that there is less to censure, and more to commend, in the public life of Clara Barton for the twenty-three years she was President of the Red Cross than in the public life of any one of the twenty-eight Presidents from George Washington to Woodrow Wilson. There commenting on the statement, America’s beloved Mrs. General George E. Pickett significantly said: “Yes, that’s true, but Clara Barton was a woman.” But woman is coming into her own, and Clara Barton said, “My own shall come to me.” Never was prophecy more certain of fulfillment. With hundreds of thousands of Americans receiving the benefits of “First Aid”; with more than thirty thousand brave American nurses, ten thousand of these following the illustrious example of Clara Barton by going to the battlefield; with more than thirty millions of Americans serving the Red Cross in time of war; with more than a billion of human beings making use of the Red Cross American Amendment in times of peace and war, Clara Barton already has come into her own.

The American nation will come into its own, as did respectively two great nations of Europe, when she wipes out from the scroll of history its foulest blot,—by giving national recognition to a national heroine; the American Red Cross will come into its own when it shall repossess the name Clara Barton; the American people will come into their own when they patriotically recognize, and sacredly cherish, that immortal Mother-Spirit which, after a half century of heroic sacrifices in the war of human woes, passed triumphant through the archway ’twixt earth and heaven.

If these pen pictures give to the boys and girls of America inspiration to loftier patriotism and higher ideals in achievement; if truth in the biography give renewed impulse to American Red Cross philanthropy; if through this volume immortal deeds, and a name unsullied, be treasured for world-humanity then Clara Barton’s dying message to the author shall not have been in vain.

CHARLES SUMNER YOUNG

The only picture of myself that I have cared anything about at all is the one taken at the time of the Civil War (1865), in which I am represented in the uniform of a nurse. If my friends had let me have my way, I would never have had another picture taken. ([Frontispiece])

Clara Barton.

CONTENTS

I want the last picture of the friends I love to show them in their strength, and at their best, not after time and age shall have robbed them of all characteristic features which represented them in actual life.—Clara Barton, from her diary of December 13, 1910.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CLARA BARTON

There is a kind of character in thy life,

That to the observer doth thy history

Fully unfold.

I

I take my pencil (at 86 years of age) to describe the first moment of my life that I remember. Clara Barton—In The Story of My Childhood.

Do not sin against the child. Genesis.

The fir trees dark and high,

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky.

Hood—I remember, I remember.

The rude wooden cradle in which Clara Barton was rocked is now one of the very interesting curios in possession of the Worcester (Mass.) Historical Society. The Author.

The child’s grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man’s sorrow. Chapin.

Baby lips will laugh me down. Tennyson.

A child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence

Than the strong man in his wrath.

E. B. Browning.

Dispel not the happy delusions of children. Goethe.

Happy child! The cradle is to thee a vast space.

Schiller.

Who can foretell for what high cause

This destiny of the gods was born.

Andrew Marvell.

BABYHOOD IMPRESSIONS

Babyhood repeats itself. Babyhood is practically the same yesterday, today and forever. And yet who does not try to recall first impressions and first experiences? Clara Barton says her first baby experience that she recalls was when she was two and one half years of age. She thus describes it:—

“Baby los’ ’im—pitty bird—baby los’ ’im—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 forevermore. Her baby had ‘mos’ caught’ a snake.”

Her second experience that she recalls was when four years old, at a funeral of a beloved friend of the family. She previously had been terrified by a large old ram on the farm. On this occasion she was left in care of a guardian, in a sitting room. The four windows were open. Suddenly there came up a thunder storm. Sharp flashes of lightning darted through the rising, rolling clouds. She thought the whole heavens were full of angry rams and they were coming down upon her. Her screams alarmed, and her brother rushed into the room only to find her on the floor in hysterics.

Sorrows put permanent wrinkles on the face, in maturity; on the mind, in childhood. Only strangeness may produce fear in babyhood but, with a baby, strangeness is everywhere. Darkness and strange noises frighten. Forms of phantasy float on the imagination; when gradually, it’s comedy; when suddenly, it’s tragedy.

These tragic moments left their impressions on Clara Barton’s plastic mind. Such impressions ever must remain. Miss Barton said she remembered nothing but fear in her earlier years; and terror-stricken she remained to the end, except when she could serve someone in distress, or rescue someone from danger of death. An English philosopher says: “the least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important and are of long duration.” The greatest minds of earth, in all ages, have tried to recall baby experiences, and have wondered what they had to do with success or failure.

II

At three years Clara Barton was taken a mile and one-half to school on the shoulders of her brother Stephen; at eleven years she ceased growing, then but five feet three inches. The Author.

When I found myself 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.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton—The memories of her childhood belong to our little town, and are our most precious heritage.

Mrs. Allen L. Joslyn, Oxford, Mass.

Remember that you were once a child, full of childish thoughts and actions. Clara Barton.

Sweetly wild

Were the scenes that charmed me when a child.

Lydia H. Sigourney.

The sports of children satisfy the child. Goldsmith.

Children’s plays are not sports, and should be regarded as their most serious actions. Montague.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. I Corinthians.

A sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature. C. Lamb.

Sweet childish days, that were as long

As twenty days are now.

S. Wordsworth.

The scenes of childhood are memories of future years.

J. O. Choules.

I do not like to beat my children—the world will beat them.

Elihu Burritt.

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood

When fond recollections present them to view.

S. Wordsworth.

Deep meaning often lies in childish plays. Schiller.

Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight!

Make me a child again, just for to-night.

Elizabeth A. Allen.

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain;

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

E. A. Allen.

The Baker homestead (Bow, N. H.)—Around the memory thereof cluster the golden days of my childhood.

Mary Baker Eddy.

A long way seems the dear old New England home—its sheltering groves and quiet hills; amid the clustering memories my tears are falling thick and silently like the autumn leaves in forest dells.

Clara Barton.

Children have more need of models than of critics.

Joseph Joubert.

Children think not of what is past nor of what is to come but enjoy the present time, which few of us do.

La Bruyere.

Women are only children of a larger growth.

Chesterfield—Letter to his son.

The only fun is to do things. Clara Barton.

I pledged myself to strive only for the courage of the right and for the blessedness of true womanhood. Clara Barton.

SCHOOL—CHILDISH MEMORIES—MILITARY

What woman has not said “I remember when I was a girl....” Clara Barton at eighty-six years said, in the story of her childhood, I remember ..., I remember riding wild colts when I was five years of age. I remember how frightened I was, but acquired assurance when my brother used to tell me to “cling fast to the mane.” To this day (at eighty-six years of age) my seat in the saddle, or on the bare back of a horse, is as secure and tireless as in a rocking chair. I remember I thought the President might be as large as the meeting house and the Vice President perhaps the size of the school house. I remember telling my teacher that I did not spell such little words as “cat” and “dog,” but I spell in artichoke, artichoke being the first word in the column of three syllables.

I remember writing verses, many of which for years were preserved—some of these verses by others recited to amuse people—some verses to tease me. I remember, in school, making a mistake in pronouncing ‘Ptolmy,’ when the children laughed at me, and I burst out crying and left the room.

I remember that my father taught me politics; and that, as an old soldier,[^[1]] he amused the other children and myself by giving us practical lessons in military life. We used improvised material, such as children are accustomed to use in “playing soldier,”—paper caps, plumes, banners, kettle for the kettle drum, tin swords, sticks for guns and bayonets—all of which were perfectly satisfactory to us.

[1]. A Clara Barton paternal ancestor immigrated to America from Lancashire, England, about twelve years after the landing of The Mayflower. Since that date a direct descendant of his has participated in every war, by this country.

Our muskets were of cedar wood

With ramrods bright and new;

With bayonets forever set,

And painted barrels, too.

We shouldered arms, we carried arms,

We charged the bayonet;

And woe unto the mullen stalk

That in our course we met!

The armies played havoc with each other, had fearful encounters and, what seemed to our young minds then, suffered disastrous results. Camps, regiments, brigades, military terms, she said, thus became familiar to her as the most ordinary matters of home.

Is it warm in that green valley,

Vale of childhood, where you dwell?

Is it calm in that green valley,

Round whose bowers such great hills swell?

Are there giants in the valley—

Giants leaving footprints yet?

Are there angels in the valley?

Tell me—I forget.

III

In my home here at Oxford, we would listen with intense interest to the story of her early years, to childhood and girlhood, and to scenes and events in her old home on the hillside. Clara Barton, by her shining example to our children and our children’s children, has left a rare legacy to the town of her birth.

Mrs. A. L. Joslyn—In Clara Barton In Memoriam.

Bucephalus was calmed, and subdued, by the presence of Alexander and became his favorite war-horse.

Abbott.

My arms, my arms. My horse; come quick, my horse——.

Joan of Arc.

My brother David was the “Buffalo Bill” of all that surrounding country.

Clara Barton.

My father was a lover of horses, one of the first in the vicinity to introduce blooded stock.

Clara Barton.

The first horses imported into the United States were brought to New England in 1629. Surviving the ocean voyage were one horse and seven mares. Oxen being used for all farm work, horses did not come into general use until one hundred years afterwards.

The Author.

Joan of Arc, Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale was each an expert horsewoman and each made use of her skill in horsemanship, in war.

The Author.

ON HER FAVORITE BLACK HORSE

Like many other country girls, Clara Barton was fond of horseback riding. When twelve years of age, on one occasion, she ran away from home to go for a ride. She came down stairs quietly and slipped out for a ride on her favorite black horse.

What a wild triumph, that this “girlish hand”

Such a steed in the might of his strength may command!

Falling from the horse, she injured her knee. Determined to keep the injury a secret she joined her brothers in the field as though nothing had happened. But she limped, and her brothers noticed it. She merely told her brothers she had injured her knee, but would say no more. They sent for a doctor. By plying many questions as to how it happened, the doctor drew from her a confession. In later life—in the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish American War, her skill as a horseback rider was of great service to her. On several occasions she had to “ride for her life.” In speaking of this accomplishment, she used to say “When I was a little girl I could ride like a Mexican.”

IV

Clara Barton—the pitying sweetness which fills her eyes and the sympathetic lines which have been drawn about her mouth bear witness to a long intimacy with suffering and death.

Central (Mo.) Christian Advocate. (1912)

Physiognomy is the language of the face. Jeremy Collier.

Physiognomy is reading the handwriting of nature upon the human countenance. Chatfield.

Palmistry is a science as old as the history of the human race. The mind deceives; the hand tells the truth; the thumb in particular, the tell-tale of character.

Dolores Cortez, Queen of the Spanish Gypsies.

Show me an outspread hand and I’ll show you whether or not its master is honest, is kind, is affectionate.

Arthur Delroy, Author.

Human nature, as unfolded by phrenology, is being universally accepted by all classes of people. Cranium.

Phrenology can be used in every phase of life. C. S. Hardison.

Phrenology is very fruitful in its capacity to paint mental images.

Miss Jessie Allen Fowler.

Phrenology,—a science that has been of great help to us in the progress of life. Doctor Charles H. Shepard.

The shape of the brain may generally be ascertained by the form of the skull. O. S. and L. N. Fowler.

Phrenology professes to point out a connection between certain manifestations of the mental and peculiar conditions and developments of the brain. O. S. and L. N. Fowler.

Of all the people in England, I was most glad to meet Doctor L. N. Fowler, the same gentle, kind man he used to be so many years ago, and who has done so much for the middle classes of England, giving them helpful advice they could not get from other sources. Clara Barton.

Remembering that fully one-fifth of my life (1856) has been passed as a teacher in schools, it is not strange that I should feel some interest in the cause of education. Clara Barton.

’Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Alexander Pope.

PHRENOLOGY—READ HER CHARACTERISTICS—BASIS OF FRIENDSHIP

The physiognomist reads character in the face; the palmist in the hand; the phrenologist in the skull. Physiognomy since the origin of man has been nature’s open book. The science of palmistry is at least five thousand years old; but the science of phrenology is of comparatively recent origin. When Clara Barton was a little girl phrenology received its really first great impulse in this country, through the lectures and writings of the Doctors Fowler of England. In England, as in this country, phrenology was then the subject of much ridicule. Of this strange science Thomas Hood sarcastically writes:

’Tis strange how like a very dunce,

Man, with his bumps upon his sconce,

Had lived so long; and yet no knowledge he

Has had, till lately, of phrenology—

A science that by simple dint of

Head-combining he should find a hint of,

When scratching o’er those little pole-hills

The faculties threw up like mole hills.

Little Clara was bashful, afraid of strangers, too timid to sit at the family table when guests were present; would not so much as tell her name when asked to do so. When spoken to by a stranger she would burst out crying—sometimes leaving the room. Now and then she would go hungry rather than ask a favor even of a member of the family. Doctor L. N. Fowler visited Oxford. While there he was a guest at the Barton home.

Doctor, what shall we do with this girl, asked the mother; she annoys us almost to death. We can hardly speak to her without her crying, from fear. The doctor examined her head. He replied, she is timid, that’s all. The “bump” of fear is over-developed. Nothing will change a child’s innate fear; that is a characteristic of her nature. She may outgrow it to some extent but her sensitive nature will remain as long as she lives. The doctor advised the parents to give her something to do; to keep her at work, and thus to let her forget herself. Don’t scold her; encourage her. When she does anything well, give her full credit—compliment her. Throw responsibility on her; when she is old enough give her a school to teach.

To be understood is the basis of friendship. The Doctor understood Clara; little Clara understood the Doctor. They became friends. That friendship lasted through life. Many years after the Doctor visited Oxford Clara Barton visited the Doctor, in London. They spent evenings together. The Doctor renewed his interest in the people of those early days in New England. He especially recalled the characteristics of Miss Barton’s father;—they became mutually reminiscent of the days of her childhood. The Doctor had then become old and decrepit but was still giving lectures on phrenology. The happiest hours Clara Barton spent in England were in the home of the Fowlers; with the Doctor, his charming wife and three beautiful daughters.

V

The earth can never have enough women like Clara Barton.

Detroit (Mich.) Free Press.

Clara Barton belonged not only to the United States but to the entire civilized world. Boston (Mass.) Globe.

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Proverbs.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

Shakespeare.

A little nonsense now and then

Is relished by the best of men. Anonymous.

The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one.

J. C. Hare.

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he. Goldsmith.

If ever there were lost, or omitted, a well-turned joke or a bit of humor by the various members of the Barton family it was clearly an accident. Clara Barton.

Joking decides great things stronger and better of’t than earnest can. Milton-Horace.

THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, MAIN STREET, OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Where Clara Barton attended church. Oldest Universalist Church in the world, built 1792. Society second oldest. Organized April 27, 1785. Denomination organized here, September 14, 1785.

SUMMER HOME OF CLARA BARTON, OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Arrow points towards the window of the room where Clara Barton was bed-ridden for several months, through her last fatal illness, in the latter part of 1911.

“SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION” LAID TO CLARA BARTON

A timid child is invariably the butt of jokes. Clara Barton, in her youth, was not an exception. As a little girl she had learned to weave, working in a North Oxford satinet mill. She had not been it work there very long when the mill took fire and burned down. Then, as no satisfactory explanation of the cause could be given by the members of the Barton family, the fire was attributed to spontaneous combustion, brought on because Clara had worked so fast as to set the mill on fire. Clara Barton did not object to, but rather enjoyed, a joke on herself. She used to tell her friends of this joke and said that in her own town and among her playmates that joke was “told on me for many years.”

VI

Forget not Christmas. Henry IV. of England.

At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal,

And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small. Tusser.

Those who at Christmas do repine,

And would fain hence despatch him,

May they with old Duke Humphry dine,

Or else may ‘Squire Ketch catch him.’

Poor Robin’s Almanac, 1684.

Without the door let sorrow lie,

And if, for cold, it hap to die,

Wee ’le bury ’t in a Christmas pye,

And evermore be merry.

Wither’s Juvenilia.

Now Christmas is come,

Let us beat up the drum,

And call all our neighbors together.

And when they appear,

Let us make them such cheer,

As will keep out the wind and the weather. Old Song.

A Christmas baby! Now, isn’t that the best kind of a Christmas gift for us all? Father Stephen Barton (1821).

Clara Barton was a Christmas present, given to the world.

Bridgeport (Conn.) Standard (—In 1912).

The sweet love-planted Christmas tree. Will Carleton.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Benjamin Franklin.

This day shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

Shakespeare.

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. Charles Dickens.

On Christmas Day we will shut out from our fireside nothing.

Charles Dickens.

’Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial fire of charity in the heart. Washington Irving.

I was born on one bright Christmas day, and I am told that there was a great family jubilation upon the occasion. Clara Barton.

For which the shepherds at their festivals

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays. John Milton.

The winds ever chant on the bright Christmas morn,

The sweetest of carols for “Two” that were born.

E. May Glenn Toon.

CHRISTMAS
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
(1894)

For my 30,000 Sea Island Friends

A Loving Greeting and Merry Christmas. Clara Barton.

Lo! The Christmas morn is breaking,

Bring the angels bright array,

For the Christian world is waking,

And the Lord is born to-day.

Shout then, brothers; shout and pray,

For the blessed Lord is born to-day.

No more tears and pain and sorrow,

Hark! I hear the angels say

Blessed be the bright to-morrow,

For the Lord is born to-day.

Shout then, sisters; shout and pray,

For the blessed Lord is born to-day.

Forget your night of sad disaster,

Cast your burdens all away,

Wait the coming of the Master,

For the Lord is born to-day.

Shout then, children; shout and pray,

For the blessed Lord is born to-day.

In the sunlight, soft and golden,

Round the babe the angels play;