Her friend replied, “That all sounds very simple; I will try it.”
She returned from her journey, reporting that she had had a delightful time, and that she had alighted from the train at each end of the trip less weary than when she started.
The directions which Clara Barton gave were those which she herself had tested.
Clara Barton lived long, and her life had many changes. Account has been given of certain episodes in her young womanhood in which she was loved and did not return the affection of the men who loved her. The question has been asked and should be answered whether in her later years she had any experience which made up for the lack of love in her youth. Some stories, nearly or quite apocryphal, have been told concerning the men who are supposed to have loved her and whom she loved, but whom she refused because she loved her work more.
The lovers of her youth were all good, worthy men, as good as the average New Englander. There is nothing to be said concerning any one of them that is not to his credit; but no one of them was the equal of Clara Barton. There was no tragedy about her experience, neither was there any consciousness of the ecstasy of a love completely possessing her. These affairs left her something of loneliness, but no memory of bitter grief or cruel disappointment. She could write, and did once write, some tender, sentimental verses about a sad parting, but the sadness did not break her heart, nor permanently cloud that of any of her lovers.
The time came when all this was changed. She lived in Washington, amid a wide circle of friends, among them men of every station in life. No longer was she possessed of ambition beyond that of any man of her age and acquaintance. There were men whom she knew and men whom she liked, who had ambitions equal to her own and ideals with which her own had much in common. During the Civil War she might have chosen any one of scores of grateful men, as her husband. But she seems hardly to have given matrimony a thought in those years. After she became famous, she was less readily accessible to any multitude of lovers, but at least one man to whom she had been kind sought to reward her with his heart and hand, and, after she had returned from Europe, at least one man whom she met abroad pressed upon her his ardent and unrewarded affections. If she had married any one, she would have married an American. No offer of matrimony from a man not of her own land would seem to have made any appeal to her. This offer of marriage she regarded rather with amusement than with serious consideration. It was honorable, but in her judgment most unsuitable, and she refused with a smile,—not the smile of contempt, but of good-humor and healthy merriment.
Among other friends in middle life there were two whom she would seem to have considered in the aspect of possible lovers.
In the days during and following the Civil War, she came to know intimately an American professor of wide repute, who at that time was pursuing extended researches in Washington. He was a widower of about her own age, a profound scholar, and he became a dear and trusted friend. For several months their paths were thrown together and for a time they boarded at the same table. She was interested, not only in his work, but in himself. The ardor and enthusiasm with which he worked impressed her. Like herself, he was little bound by precedent, and was engaged in a task which he confidently believed would increase the sum of human learning. There was something in a task of this character that made a direct appeal to Clara Barton. Much as she prized any kind of useful knowledge, she especially admired the spirit of the pioneer, and honored the man who blazed new paths and widened the horizons of learning. Such a man was this friend of hers. He read to her in many evenings the results of his investigation, and she shared his enthusiasm for his task. Her two nephews, Bernard and Sam, then in Washington, were wont to poke quiet fun at him and to joke their aunt about the possibility of his becoming an uncle of theirs and swamping the family with his knowledge of subjects which the boys cared little about. She took their raillery in good part. But one day, when she thought it had gone a little too far, she reproved her nephews and made a spirited defense of the professor. She said, “You need not wonder that, notwithstanding all your attempts to make fun of him, I admire a man of his profound learning and high character.” Her nephews then believed that their respect for each other had merged into affection, but, as the years went by and he and Clara gradually lost sight of each other, they came to think that they might have been mistaken, that the two were good friends and nothing more. So far as the author is aware, there exists no evidence from which an answer can be had to the question of how much they really cared for each other, or, if they cared, why they did not marry. The author has his own conjecture, and it is only a conjecture, but it is this: Both he and she were at that time at the beginnings of a great work. How long either one would need to continue to labor and sacrifice before success was won, neither could determine.
The last and in some respects the most interesting, as certainly the most distinguished, among Clara Barton’s matrimonial possibilities, came to her late in life. During the Civil War she became acquainted with a man who even then was held in high regard, and was attracting the attention of his own State and to some extent of the Nation. Rising largely by his own exertions to a position of eminence, he became one of the leading men of the generation. Through all the years when she was pursuing her war relief work, with scant appropriation for postage, he cheerfully loaned her his frank and was her friend. Through many long years they knew each other and always held each other in esteem. He was in Washington and so was she, and there was little need of interchange of letters between them; nor is there in the letters that are preserved any indication of personal affection. Those letters grew out of particular events when one or the other of them was away from Washington, and for the most part they had no significance as indicating the extent to which they may have cared for each other.
But there came a time when his work and her work brought them into close and more constant relations. They were both at the zenith of their respective careers. At that time he was a widower. Both were free and they could have married without the sacrifice of any important interest. The home which they might have established would have been a congenial one.