IN HER DREAMS—AGAIN IN BATTLE
“What’s that big barn of a house?”
“It’s the Red Cross house.”
“Who lives there?” “Clara Barton, don’t you know Clara Barton?” “And what does she want to live in a house like that for?”
“It is her headquarters—her home. There is where she does her work; there is where she keeps her supplies. Whenever there is a cry of distress anywhere in the United States she is off at a moment’s notice.”
No paint on the outside of the house, none on the inside—a regular barn—why wouldn’t the stranger ask questions?
The inside of the house is also strangely mysterious, with its great central part open to the ceiling; the balconies protected by railings, reminding one of a steamship, the atmosphere giving the stranger a sort of weird, uncanny feeling.
The visitor when within is still curious, and would ask other questions. “What are all these things on the wall?”
“They are diplomas, resolutions of cities, states and nations—medals won for services rendered in distress—all kinds of souvenirs complimentary to Clara Barton.”
“Interesting, very interesting!”
“Yes, no other place like it in all the world.”
“But what are these small doors for? They look like doors to sleeping berths.”
“No, they are doors to closets. There are thirty-eight rooms in this house and seventy-six closets.”
“What are the closets for?”
“Well, these closets in the walls, on either side of the big hall, are where she keeps bandages, linen, clothes, food in large quantities, to be shipped wherever wanted. It is surely no vine-clad cottage; it is a veritable store-house of food for the needy, a ware-house of clothes for the suffering,—anywhere in the world. Clara Barton called it her ‘House of Rough Hemlock Boards’—the boards were from the wreckage of the Johnstown flood.”
Hourly in the presence of such environments as to suggest war and flood and famine, and at times delirious, it is not strange that two nights before her death, on April 10, 1912, in her dreams there flitted before her the tragic past; that she dreamt that she was again in battle; that she saw “her boys” with legs and arms gone; that she gave crackers and gruel to the sick and bound up the wounds of the soldiers; that again she felt the twitching at her dress and heard “You saved my life;” that again she caught the last words of the dying to be sent to the mothers and sisters and sweethearts, and heard from the lips of her dying soldier-brother, “Oh! God, save my country!”