My kitty is charming. She knows almost as much as folks, and has just taken to mousing. She often carries in two and three and sometimes four and five bits of game a day, and all the family have to recognize each one before she will be at all quiet. She is too comical, standing at the door with her nice white face and her mouth full of mouse and grass, calling all the household out to see her.

Yours lovingly

Clara

Miss Barton’s views on health, on politics, on society, on idle women, and incidentally, perhaps, her best description of herself, her tastes and habits, is contained in a letter of this period to a learned German professor, who, knowing of her life in Germany, wrote to her, and proposed to visit her. It is interesting to note that in this letter she speaks of her hair as having been dark brown and changed in a few months of illness to a silvery gray. It did not remain gray, but with her return of health resumed its color of brown, though not so dark as before:

Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
April 17, 1877

Esteemed and dear Friend:

I beg you not to be alarmed even if you were correct in your conjecture that illness caused my silence. It is very true, but I am so far recovered now that, although not released from my bed, I have taken up my pen again, and yesterday, before receiving your card, had laid out your last letter as one of the first to be answered. I might, or I might not, have reached it to-day in regular order, but now, I place it first, and commence my morning roll-call with “Prof. Thed. Pfau,” and a long, narrow, blue-tinted envelope responds, half wearily, half impatiently, “Here.” So “here” we have it.

First, having admitted illness, which I never do if possible to avoid, I must settle your apprehensiveness; it is no new play, or act or scene, simply a calling before the curtain for repetition. I have in these exhausted days only a given amount of strength, and if, by any accident or oversight, I overdraw on my accounts, I am at once bankrupt, and can carry on business no further. Having been in former days accustomed to draw from an unlimited and ever-recruiting stock of strength and health, I find it a difficult problem to solve, how to bring myself down to the necessary economies of my present condition. I cannot realize that a few hours, a few rods, a few steps even, a little overwork at my desk, the quiet arranging of a simple room, a little overrun of company, may use up all my little capital, and I must wait and compromise with my creditors, start business anew on a smaller scale, and work my way up again to the lost point, probably only to lose it again. A month or six weeks ago I committed some one of these extravagances, and immediately comes a notice from my physical banker shutting off my supply of sleep. He had been allowing me nearly seven hours in the four and twenty, but he cut it down to three, two, one, a few minutes, none at all, and so left me for several days and nights, then let it come back in a similar ratio up to—Oh, well, no matter how much, but not seven hours, no, nor for a long time to come; but I can get up and walk about my room and sit part of the day; and I write, because it is better for me to write chatty letters, with no thought in them, than to relapse into solid thinking as I would in doing nothing. One sometimes needs to be saved from himself.

I do not know if I have ever told you of my illness, or what holds me so weak. It is what is known as “prostration of the nervous system,” and very complete at that, I suppose. I am not aware of any decided organic disease, only as all the organs are affected by this great letting down of nerve power and force. Of the class of disease generally denominated “female weaknesses” I know nothing experimentally. Of the lame backs and aching lower spine, that the majority of feeble women suffer torture from, I am ignorant, and can sympathize with them only through observation, but of the hot sore spot on the spine, high up between the shoulders, leading up to the base of the brain, bursting into flame at every over-taxation of mental energy, I know all. It is the same thing that over-worked public men sink under, in sudden deaths, softening of the brain, paralysis, or something analogous to these. This is the illness that has become my master and will one day prove my conqueror. There is no looking forward to “restored health,” soundness and security. The price of not only my liberty, but my life is “eternal vigilance.” Now a truce to illness, to which, thank God, you are a comparative stranger, and I pray Him you always may be.

I have received “Puck” since his advent into this warring world, and he is growing to be a fine little fellow, stout and healthy, a jolly little elf, isn’t he? His wit will get him some clips over the nose by and by, when it begins to be felt, but this he does not care for, for he means to bite. I laughed heartily at his satire on Stanley two weeks ago, and yet Stanley is a valued friend, and I have fought terrible battles for him on both continents, but the imitation is excellent and full of ingenuity. The cuts are, of course, inimitable. Mr. Kepler’s pencil has a master touch, and I wish him long life, abundant success, full pockets, and artistic fame.