Still later on in storm-swept Galveston, Texas, she fell at her post of duty and was borne back by loving hands to her home, where she recovered and again resumed her work of love and mercy, to carry it on to the end of her long and useful life.
No wonder the King and court of Germany bestowed upon her medals of remembrance; no wonder the Grand Duchess of Baden placed upon her the "Red Cross of Geneva;" and in the great day of reward, He who bore the cross for us all will place upon Clara Barton the crown of eternal life.
When my wife was president of the House of Mercy, in Lexington, Kentucky, a home for the rescue of fallen girls, she went in her carriage to a dentist with one of the unfortunate inmates.
Soon after a business man of the city said to me: "I hardly see how you can give your consent to have your wife do such work. I saw her recently in her carriage with a girl I would not have my wife seen with for any amount of money."
My reply was: "I would rather my wife should go through the golden gates, bearing in her arms the spirit of a poor girl, snatched from the hell of a harlot's home, than to be the leader of the fashionable four hundred of New York City."
There is a beautiful story told of one of the most influential and wealthy men of England. He inherited fame as well as fortune, had an Oxford education and early in life he was elected a member of Parliament. One evening he sat in his fine library, watching the wood fire build its temples of flame around the great andirons, and as he heard the beating of the wild winter storm against the window pane, his heart went out to the homeless hungry poor of the city. Ordering his carriage he went to the city mission and asked for a helper, and then drove to London Bridge, under the shelter of which the penniless poor gather in time of storms. He took them two by two to shelter, gave them food, and cots on which to sleep, and then returned to his princely home. We are told that for years after, when Parliament would adjourn at midnight, this young man would go through the slums on his way home, that he might relieve some poor child of misfortune.
On Sunday afternoons, while aristocracy lined the boulevards, this son of fortune would take his physician in his carriage and go through the slums, seeking the sick and suffering. One afternoon, while he stood outside a tenement door, awaiting the return of the doctor from a visit to a poor sick soul inside the tenement, he became deeply moved by the ragged children playing in the gutters and reaching into garbage barrels for crusts of bread. He said: "Ah! here's the riddle of civilization. I wish I could help to solve it; perhaps I can."
He began the establishment of "ragged schools" and into these ware gathered thousands of poor children. Then followed night schools for boys who had to work by day. To these schools he added homes for working women, and for these women he persuaded Parliament to give shorter hours of service. He tore down old rookeries, built neat dwellings instead, beneath the windows planted little flower gardens, and rented them to the poor at the same price they had paid for the rookeries.
When he began to fade, as the leaf fades in its autumn beauty, and the day of his departure was at hand, he said: "I am sorry to leave the world with so much misery in it, but I have lived to prove that every kind word spoken, and every good deed done, sooner or later returns to bless the giver."
As the end drew near he said to his daughter: "Read me the twenty-third Psalm, for 'though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.'"