She had never seen a treaty, and did not know what it looked like. It was a volume, a kind of unbound book, of soft parchment, something like fourteen inches square. She sat down and read it, word for word, the Secretary of State watching her intermittently as he busied himself about other matters. Line by line the full significance of it came over her. It quoted in full the text of the 1864 Convention, and recited in effect the whole situation into which this would bring the United States in its relation to other nations. It was a great and solemn document, such as she had never before handled; and her life and hope were bound up in it. At the very end were the formal words of ratification, with blank spaces for the signature of the President and Secretary of State, and a place for the big seal of the United States of America.
I had kept my eyes clear enough to read to the very end; but then I could hold up no longer, and how long a cry I indulged in, I do not know. But I know that it rested me; and after a while he stepped over and asked, very gently, “How does it suit you?” I told him it was all I could have hoped for, but I was ashamed to have done so badly myself. He, laughing, said that was all right. I asked him when it would be signed, and he said, “Any time, now.”
At last it was done!
Why had she worried so much about it?
She worried because she knew there was reason to worry; and because there were so few to worry; and because she did not know whether her worrying would do any good.
For it is necessary to tell a little, a very little, about why she worried.
There lie before me as I write certain letters written to Clara Barton by a woman who came to her in the latter part of her struggle to secure the recognition of the Red Cross, and who wrote to Miss Barton that to be associated with her in such work would be the crowning glory of her life:
I should think it a greater glory to be a doorkeeper in such a society as the Red Cross than to be—well, Mrs. President of the United States. If in the humblest way I can help you, I am at your service. There may be nothing for me to do, but if there is, command me.
Sadly, in after years, Clara Barton gathered up these and other documents, arranged them neatly in order, and endorsed them:
The enclosed papers will serve to show in part what the Red Cross had to meet in its incipiency before we had the treaty. This woman had been our secretary and trusted friend, but by some means became a strong competitor, and organized an opposing society.