I notice a strife over the placing of Mrs. Howe’s portrait in Fanueil Hall. The art committee object to it, but the people demand that it be placed there. No reasons on the part of the art committee are yet given. The painting is by Mr. Elliott, husband of Maude. I wonder at the idea of people having their pictures taken after time and age have robbed them of all their characteristic features. I regard this as a mistake. I want the last picture of the friends I love to show them in their strength and at their best. Mrs. Howe’s picture as now painted would have shocked even herself in strong middle life. Why not show the world the writer of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as she was when she wrote it? Is it the rush of the curious for the “latest photo”? I think the idea wrong. I wish the art committee would insist on a picture of Mrs. Howe at the age of forty years.
When Clara Barton was in her eighties, she often, as was her custom, would sit upon the floor, à la Turk, with her work spread around her. When her work was finished, she would rise, with the suppleness of a girl, without touching her hands to the floor.
She had an almost morbid shrinking from the infliction of pain, or from the taking of life. She was not strictly a vegetarian. If she was at another’s table and meat was offered her, she ate it sparingly.
She carried through life a pulse ten beats slower to the minute than that of an ordinary woman of her years, but her pulse beat steadily and reliably. A half-cup of coffee stimulated her almost to the point of intoxication, and a child’s dose of medicine was too much for her. So simply did she live that when she died at the age of ninety-one there was not a physical lesion, not a diseased organ in her body. Her physician, who for thirty years had been her almost daily companion, Dr. J. B. Hubbell, declared that, barring accident, or some acute attack, such as that which actually caused her death, she could easily have lived to be one hundred years of age and still not have been technically old.
There was nothing about her voice or manner that suggested a really aged person. Senility was farther removed from her at ninety than from most women at sixty. A California octogenarian was compiling a book of personal testimonies by aged people and wrote to her asking for the secret of her long life. Her answer was contained in four words, “Low fare, hard work.” If to this she had added anything, it should have been a self-forgetful purpose, a serene spirit, and an upholding faith.
From her father Clara Barton inherited a spirit of broad philanthropy and wide human interest. From her mother she inherited a warm heart and a very hot temper. It was this temper that gave her self-control. She kept it perfectly under her bidding, and that lowered voice was the sign of mighty resolution and smouldering passion under the control of a conquering will.
Clara Barton was a lifelong believer in woman’s suffrage. She was a close friend and a warm admirer of Susan B. Anthony, and shared her aims and hopes for her sex. She believed in women receiving the same wages as men for the same work. She was never as militant an advocate of the rights of women as Miss Anthony, however. Temperamentally she was of quite another disposition. In her later years she saw with marked disapproval what she regarded as the unwomanly efforts of women to advance their cause. This she believed hurt the cause more than it helped it, and whether it helped or hurt she did not like it.
A lady who was about to undertake a long journey by rail spoke to Clara Barton of her dread of it. Railway travel, she said, always tired her out and made her sick. Miss Barton said, “Travel rests me.”
Her friend asked her how she managed it. She replied:
“I delegate to the conductor and the engineer the full responsibility for the running of the train. I do not overeat, nor take with me candy or other needless food to upset my digestion just when I am getting less than my usual exercise. I carry with me a book and a note-book. When I think of something that I want to remember, I jot it down; when I see something that interests me, I make note of it. I read as long as I enjoy reading; and when I grow tired of that, I close my eyes and rest, and let the train go on.”