FAREWELL TO MISS BARTON.
How shall we thank Miss Clara Barton and the Red Cross for the help they have given us? It cannot be done; and if it could, Miss Barton does not want our thanks. She has simply done her duty as she saw it and received her pay—the consciousness of a duty performed to the best of her ability. To see us upon our feet, struggling forward, helping ourselves, caring for the sick and infirm and impoverished—that is enough for Miss Barton. Her idea has been fully worked out, all her plans accomplished. What more could such a woman wish?
We cannot thank Miss Barton in words. Hunt the dictionaries of all languages through and you will not find the signs to express our appreciation of her and her work. Try to describe the sunshine. Try to describe the starlight. Words fail, and in dumbness and silence we bow to the idea which brought her here. God and humanity! Never were they more closely linked than in stricken Johnstown.
Men are brothers! Yes, and sisters, too, if Miss Barton pleases. The first to come, the last to go, she has indeed been an elder sister to us—nursing, soothing, tending, caring for the stricken ones through a season of distress such as no other people ever knew—such as, God grant, no other people may ever know. The idea crystallized, put into practice. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” “Even as ye have done it unto the least of these, so also have ye done it unto Me!” Christianity applied, Nature appeased and satisfied. This has been Miss Barton’s work, and nobly has she done it.
Picture the sunlight or the starlight, and then try to say good-bye to Miss Barton. As well try to escape from yourself by running to the mountains. “I go, but I return” is as true of her as of Him who said it. There is really no parting. She is with us, she will be with us always—the spirit of her work even after she has passed away.
But we can say God bless you, and we do say it, Miss Barton, from the bottom of our hearts, one and all.
Some bard, whose name I do not know, but whose sad, lovely words frequently recur to me, has commemorated the disaster of the Conemaugh in the following beautiful poem, which, I think, is worthy of preservation: