Hanging on the wall between her bedroom and private sitting-room was a small mirror into which her mother looked when she came home as a bride.
Her bed was small and hard. Near it were the books that meant so much to her—the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, the stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, the poems of Lucy Larcom, and many other well-worn, much-read classics.
That she was still feminine, as in the days of girlhood when she fashioned her first straw bonnet, so now she was fond of wearing handsome gowns, often with trains. Lavender, royal purple, and wine color were the shades she liked best to wear, and in which her friends most often remember her. Despite her few extravagant tastes, Clara Barton was the most democratic woman America ever produced, as well as the most humane. She loved people, sick and well, and in any State and city of the Union she could claim personal friends in every walk of life.
When, after ninety-nine years of life and fifty of continuous service to suffering human nature, death laid its hand upon her on that spring day, the world to its remotest corner stopped its busy barter and trade for a brief moment to pay reverent tribute to a woman, who was by nature of the most retiring, bashful disposition, and yet carried on her life-work in the face of the enemy, to the sound of cannon, and close to the firing-line. She was on the firing-line all her life. That is her life story.
Her "boys" of all ages adored her, and no more touching incident is told of her than that of a day in Boston, when, after a meeting, she lingered at its close to chat with General Shafter. Suddenly the great audience, composed entirely of old soldiers, rose to their feet as she came down the aisle, and a voice cried:
"Three cheers for Clara Barton!"
They were given by voices hoarse with feeling. Then some one shouted:
"Tiger!"
Before it could be given another voice cried:
"No! Sweetheart!"