That is all she said about it; no word of bitterness or of self-justification. But this was not the only woman who rushed to her when she first gained publicity, proclaimed that she would be a servant of the servants of Clara Barton, learned all her confidential affairs, and then betrayed her.
This volume will make no catalogue of those who ate of her bread and accepted her confidences and who proved base and ungrateful. This particular woman is mentioned because it seemed to Clara Barton that she might very possibly defeat all that Clara Barton was working for. She gained friends in high places, and she knew just whom Clara Barton counted to be her friends, and how to approach some of them.
There lie before the author, also, certain anonymous letters, received at this time, some of them written in one city and sent to other cities to be mailed. There were also some vicious newspaper articles, one of them first published in a remote Southern city, and later copied into Washington and Philadelphia papers, and these Clara Barton clipped, and labeled with the name of the person who, without any question, she believed to be their author. These and the anonymous letters and the letters of affection are all in the same package. Clara Barton arranged them, and she thought she knew.
Now, on the day that Clara Barton visited the office of the Secretary of State, she was so overjoyed that she went straight to the White House to thank the President. Mr. Arthur was not in, but her little note was accepted by his secretary, who smiled and assured her that he understood, and that the President would be glad to receive it. And she went home with a happy heart. And Senator Lapham sent her a big bouquet of roses that night.
The next Monday was the day set for Mr. Blaine to deliver the memorial address on President Garfield, and she had a seat in the gallery of the House of Representatives; which was a much-coveted honor. She rose in full expectation of going; and she went.
But at breakfast she received her mail; and there was a letter from her rival:
It was the most abusive of all I have ever received from her. She charged me with all little meannesses, and warned me if I do not stop people’s tongues, she will take redress upon me, either through the press or by law.
It had the effect to stun or daze me until I did not want to go to the Address. But I did go.
That was one of the things that was oppressing Clara Barton in those days. That was why she was troubled when the wife of a Senator came to see her and ask whether there was such a thing as the Red Cross, and what it was, and why it was opposing another organization of which the Senator’s wife was a member. That was why she was worried when the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations grew strangely distant.
But she went to hear Mr. Blaine, and she met prominent people, some of whom knew her.