Something must be said about her habit of economy, and it must be said with some care lest it give a very wrong impression. Clara Barton was economical to a very marked degree. If a list of her actual economies were here given, it would produce on many minds the impression that she was stingy. This would be wide of the truth. If a valid distinction may be made between two words that are nearly synonymous, she was parsimonious, but was not penurious.
She was reared in a community and in a family where want was unknown, but where money was earned by hard work, and capital was accumulated by thrift and economy. It was part of her birthright and of her being. There was about her nothing that inclined her to waste or even extravagance.
She entered into life early as a teacher, at first at a small salary. She had opportunity to save, and she did save. Her necessary expenses were small, and she began at the outset to save money. She continued to save money. She had good business judgment, and, excepting for a few times when she permitted her sympathies or her friendships to get the better of that judgment, her investments, conservatively made, were remunerative.
When she first went abroad in 1869, she knew that she had money enough to support her as long as she lived. If she recovered her health, the lecture platform was still open to her, and she could earn and save above all expenses from four thousand dollars to six thousand dollars a year. If she returned an invalid, she had the income on about thirty thousand dollars, which was more than she needed. In no year of her life, probably, did she spend upon herself as much as eighteen hundred dollars. Even when she traveled abroad, her expenses were moderate, and she never drew on her principal for her own support. But eighteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars a year, which was about what her investments brought her, did not invite reckless extravagance, She knew that she must exercise reasonable economy, and her tastes were such that this was no hardship.
When, therefore, she sat up at night rather than take a sleeping-car, it was not wholly that she was unwilling to pay for the price of the berth. She had been accustomed to doing so until an attempt was made to rob her, after which she was greatly disinclined to the use of the sleeper. Her prime reason for sitting up was that she disliked sleepers after that night. But she was not at all averse to saving two dollars. She slept few hours in the night, and was accustomed to sleeping under unfavorable conditions. She thought she rested quite as well sitting in a corner of her seat as lying in a stuffy and dark berth.
Her lunch at home was often a few crackers and a red apple, and the more nearly she regulated her diet when journeying in accordance with her custom at home, the better life went with her. So her bag often contained a little package of the kind of crackers which she liked, and one or more big red apples. If she sat in her seat and ate these, it was not primarily because she was unwilling to pay a dollar for her lunch; she had the dollar, and she had no ambition to leave any considerable sum of money behind her when she died. On the other hand, she was not unmindful of the good she could do with the dollar in some other way. And she did that good with it. She was parsimonious with herself; she was generous toward others.
To enumerate her economies would misrepresent her. It would seem that she was niggardly. The contrary was true. She abhorred waste. She could not tolerate extravagance. But she could draw her last dollar, and did draw her last dollar from investment, to put into her search for missing soldiers, and she could do it and did do it without whining and without fear. Even the possibility that she might die a pauper did not terrify her or win from her in her diary any more than a half-mirthful recognition. She economized in things she did not greatly care for that she might do the things that were to her of supreme importance.
She did not hoard money. The amount which she had at the end of her lecturing career, she did not greatly increase, nor, until she got deep into the work of the Red Cross, did it materially diminish. In order to support the Red Cross work in its earlier stages, she drew upon her principal, and she did not to the end of her life restore it to what it had been before. But she never complained of this, nor did it in the least worry her. Year by year she had sufficient income, with reasonable economy, to supply all her needs. Now and then she delivered an address and received a hundred dollars. Occasionally she replied to a request of newspaper or magazine for an article, and received a check in return. For a year she received a salary from the State of Massachusetts as matron of the Reformatory for Women at Sherborn. The annuity paid to her by the Massachusetts General Hospital gave her a little more margin. She was free from worry as to her own finances. I have not found in her diary or her letters a single sentence in which she expressed anxiety about her own financial future. There were several times when she was not sure what she ought to do next, and in her decisions she was not unmindful of financial necessities. But she did not keep in constant thought her own need of saving money for herself. She saved, because it was natural for her to save, and because she had causes at heart which she wished to save for.
Careful in her expenditures upon herself, Clara Barton lavished her love upon others. She cherished her friends, and there was little that she was not willing to do for them. More than once she jeopardized plans of her own for the sake of unselfish ministry to others, some of whom had little claim upon her. She received under her own roof, fed at her table, sheltered at her fireside, and assisted from her purse not a few people who later proved ungrateful; indeed, those who wrought her most pain were those whom she had befriended and of whom she later learned that they sought not her, but hers.
Yet it would not be fair to give any impression that the number of ingrates among her companions was large. Relatively, it was small. Those who loved her loved with a fervent loyalty; and there are few things more beautiful than the adoring and grateful affection which those bestow upon her memory who knew her longest and best. A strong individualist, she inspired in those who came to know her well that perfect confidence and grateful devotion which are the crowning test of leadership. There were those, who, for her sake and that of any cause which she held dear, would have gone with her singing to the stake, and she would never have permitted one of them to go there unless she went first.