Faithfully your friend,
CLARA BARTON.
Glen Echo, Maryland,
May twenty-ninth, 1907.
THE STORY OF MY CHILDHOOD.
BY CLARA BARTON.
It was May—the cherry trees were in bloom. For the first time in three years I had been able to sit for an evening among a company of persons (invalids like myself seeking strength), trying to entertain them with some remembrances of bygone days. I see it still, the broad parlor of that grand old “Hillside Home,” the mother and inspiration of all the hundreds of sanitariums and health restoring institutions of the country to-day. I had made my home near it, at the foot of the blossoming orchard.
Down among the trees and twittering robins next morning came one of my listeners; a broad-shouldered, manly looking man, the face so full of benign intelligence that once seen was never to be forgotten. He came in at the open door, merrily shaking off the cherry blossoms like large flakes of early snow, an entire stranger to me until the previous evening. He seated himself and entered into conversation with a familiar ease that bespoke the cultured gentleman. After a few minutes he turned earnestly to me with: “Miss Barton, I have an errand in coming to you. I have a request to make.”
I said I hoped I should be able to comply. He hesitated, as if thinking how to commence, but at length said: “I want you to recall and write the first thing you remember—the first event that made sufficient impression upon you to be remembered.”