She was Clara Barton, the woman who brought the Red Cross to our country; but, being accustomed to working always for others, her labors did not seem great or unusual to her. Today we know she is one of the heroines of the world, for she believed in the brotherhood of man, and her aim was to relieve suffering humanity, irrespective of nationality or creed.
Her childhood was a happy, joyous one spent in the little village of North Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest child of a large family, and her brothers and sisters were very proud of her because she learned so rapidly and because she was never afraid of anything. She would follow her oldest brother about the house with a slate, begging him to give her hard sums to do. Out of doors she was eager for adventure; her brother David often said, “Clara is never afraid, she can ride any colt on the farm,” and often he would throw her on the bare back of a young horse and cry, “Hold fast to the mane,” and away she would gallop over the fields.
Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
CLARA BARTON
Founder of the American Red Cross
Winter evenings the family would gather about the great fireplace in the living room and listen to the father tell of his experiences on the battle fields of the Revolutionary War. He had been a soldier under the dashing General Anthony Wayne, called “Mad Anthony” Wayne, because of his reckless daring. Clara was thrilled by these stories of army life, and never tired of hearing her father recount them.
When Clara was eleven years of age, her brother David had a terrible fall, and for more than two years he was a helpless invalid. At once she became his nurse and he relied upon her for all manner of service, preferring her to his older sister or even his mother. “Clara is a born nurse,” said the family, as they saw the care she was giving the boy, and indeed she was. It was a joy to her to wait upon the sick, and she considered it no hardship to sacrifice herself.
When David was well, Clara went to school and prepared herself to teach. Her scholars found her an able teacher and liked her ways of instructing them. We know this to be true, because when she opened her first school she had only six pupils, but her fame spread so rapidly that when June came six hundred children had entered her classes and were much disappointed when they found she could not teach them all but had to have assistant teachers.