She commented on the great Suffrage parade in London, with satisfaction that the cause of Woman Suffrage was gaining, but with rather sad reflection that, fallible as men were, she had found women even more so; and she thought suffrage would be a blessing, but not an unmixed blessing.
She salted down eggs in early summer, and in the late fall they were candled and found good. She oversaw the management of her household, and part of the time she did her own cooking, in this, her last summer.
These citations are given, not because they are important in themselves, but because they give little glimpses of her life in her last few months. Certainly she did not permit herself to rust out in mind or body. A physical examination after her recovery from pneumonia in 1911 found her with every bodily organ sound, but with a pulse somewhat easily disturbed.
On Christmas, 1911, her ninetieth birthday, she sent to the world through the press this message:
Please deliver for me a message of peace and good-will to all the world for Christmas. I am feeling much better to-day, and have every hope of spending a pleasant and joyful Christmas, my ninetieth birthday.
Her hope was fulfilled and she celebrated her ninetieth Christmas with quiet but cheerful festivities.
As the rigor of winter came on, she was taken again with double pneumonia. In the weeks that followed, hope alternated with fear, until, on April 12, 1912, at nine o’clock in the morning, she cried out, “Let me go; let me go,” and the earthly life of Clara Barton came to its close.
A few days before she died, she talked with her nephew, Stephen, concerning her funeral, and chose for herself the principal speakers. She desired that her long-time and trusted friend, Mrs. John A. Logan, should say the principal words in a preliminary service to be held in Glen Echo, and that at the main funeral service to be held in Oxford, the chief speakers should be her friend the Reverend Percy Epler, and her cousin, the Reverend William E. Barton. She mentioned others as those whom she would be glad to have share in the services, and her wishes were carried out.
On Sunday afternoon a brief service was held at Glen Echo. The Reverend John Van Schaick, Jr., pastor of the “Church of our Father,” Universalist, of Washington, read the Scripture and offered prayer.
The Reverend W. W. Curry, a veteran of the Civil War, paid her a brief and heartfelt tribute, which was followed by three addresses, by Chaplain Coudon, of the House of Representatives, Mrs. John A. Logan, and the Honorable Peter V. De Graw.