Miss Barton—I always regarded this too sacred to use, so I placed it in a New York bank. This was in 1851. I kept it there on interest until President Lincoln commissioned me to look up the names of the missing soldiers. I did not consider it too sacred for this purpose, and so in 1865 I drew it out of the bank, then with the interest about $15,000, and used it to pay the expenses....
The romance includes the trip in a sailing vessel around the “Horn,” the “49ers outfit” in San Francisco, and on the way to the “placer diggins,” the death scene in the pueblo of Los Angeles, the story of the sack of “gold dust” that reached the sweetheart, and its use later in giving cheer to thousands of unhappy homes.
Only on the two occasions were these disclosures of that heart secret, and yet visions of her sweetheart are said to have appeared to Clara in her dying hours. The most sacred of the heart secrets of womankind Clara Barton carried with her to the other world—a secret of her love affair which her closest friends think may have been the inspiration of her self-sacrifice for humanity.
LXXI
Clara Barton represented the spirit that knows not race nor color.
New York Globe.
Charity and beneficence are degraded by being reduced to a dependence on a system of beggary. Clara Barton.
A grateful mind is a great mind. T. Secker.
There is not a more pleasing attitude of mind than gratitude.
Joseph Addison.