CII

Time rolls rapidly—and the events we meet to revive are already history.Clara Barton.

Clara Barton—before the growing strength and power of her sweet spirit, the armies of the world shall some day halt and ground arms. Madison (Wis.)Journal.

Worcester has even a tenderer affection than all humanity for Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was in her Oxford birth a Worcester County Contributor to the world’s upward move. Worcester (Mass.)Post.

Her career as a nurse in the battlefields of the Civil War ranks high among the achievements of women in human history. In the roll of the centuries no other name will stand higher nor shine brighter than that of the modest, the loving, the loyal, the world-wide patriot. Worcester (Mass.)Gazette.

MILLIONS WILL REGARD THE SIMPLICITY OF THE END. Worcester (Mass.)Telegram.

She lives whom we call dead.Henry W. Longfellow.

To die is to begin to live.Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Death borders on our birth and our cradle stands in the grave.

Bishop Hall—Epistles.

Death but entombs the body; life, the soul;—death is the crown of life.Young’sNight Thoughts.

How sleep the brave who sink to restBy all their Country’s wishes blest!William Collins.

How sleep the brave who sink to rest

By all their Country’s wishes blest!

William Collins.

Nor shall your story be forgot,While Fame her record keeps,Or Honor points the hallowed spotWhere Valor proudly sleeps.Theodore O’Hara.

Nor shall your story be forgot,

While Fame her record keeps,

Or Honor points the hallowed spot

Where Valor proudly sleeps.

Theodore O’Hara.

Resolutions have been adopted by the army nurses to provide for perpetual decoration of Miss Barton’s resting place with the flag she loved, and served under from 1861 to 1865, that its folds may wave, summer and winter, in loving remembrance of the glorious work for humanity accomplished during her long life. Boston (Mass.)Transcript. April 17th, 1912.

Memorial address delivered at the Annual Reunion of the Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment,—held at Worcester, Mass., August 23, 1921ByComrade Charles Sumner Young(Honorary Member of the Regiment)

Memorial address delivered at the Annual Reunion of the Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment,—held at Worcester, Mass., August 23, 1921

ByComrade Charles Sumner Young

(Honorary Member of the Regiment)

Comrades of the Twenty-first Massachusetts:

This year is the centenary of the birth of a Daughter of the Regiment. Three score years today that regiment left Worcester for fields of frightful carnage. Regiment and daughter shared in scenes tragic that the Union might live.

At the close of the war the war-service of the regiment ended, but not the public service of the daughter. Continuous thereafter she served the human race. She served in disaster;—in fire and flood and famine and

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFTThe President, March 4, 1909–March 4, 1913.President American Red Cross Society, January 8, 1905–March 4, 1913Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, 1921——.

cyclone and earthquake and yellow-fever and massacre. She served in two succeeding wars. She served in the camp, in the hospital, and on the firing-line. She was on the firing-line in the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish-American War;—she was on the “firing-line” for half a century in the War of Human Woes.

It was fifty years after his passing that the American people fully appreciated the heart and public services of Abraham Lincoln. Long before half a century shall have lapsed into history world-recognized will be the world-services of the Daughter of the Regiment. An oft recital of her deeds is the best tribute that mortal man can pay to her. But there are now of record tributes to her by powerful influences; tributes by eleven American presidents, including ex-President Wilson and President Harding; tributes to her by nine foreign rulers, by eleven foreign nations, by several American States, and Cities, and by more than fifteen hundred thousand American citizens. At the laying of the corner stone of the Red Cross Building, in March, 1915, at Washington, D. C., Acting Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge of her said: “Hers is an immortal American destiny, the greatest an American woman has yet produced.” General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, in November, 1919, said, “The accomplishments of the Red Cross during the past four years constitute an historical monument to the memory of this noble woman.”

Autocracy cannot take precedence over heart; wealth cannot compensate the loss of the spirit of love; wrong cannot win permanent victory over right; official mandatecannot dim the glory of record achievements. The highest achievement is the highest ideal, realized. In a nation the highest ideal, realized, is not wealth, not the palace of wealth; it is the individual. Eliminate the individual and there would be no history. The history of the individual is the history of a nation. In Greece the highest realized ideal is Homer; in Italy, Dante; in England, Shakespeare; in American philanthropy it is the Founder of the American Red Cross, of the National First Aid, and author of the American Amendment.

As in the early sixties the Daughter of the Regiment lit the fires of hope on the field and in the hospital of the Southland, in later years through her “American Amendment” her service-system in alleviating human suffering has become the system of forty civilized nations, comprising four-fifths of the human race. Certain of fulfillment the prophecy of our illustrious statesman, the late George F. Hoar of this city, who said that countless millions and uncounted generations will profit through the Founder of our American systems of philanthropy.

The achievements of the Daughter of the Regiment are the heritage of the nation. But the fame of the daughter is indissolubly linked with that of the regiment; the fame of the regiment, with that of the daughter.

Regiment and daughter were comrades in adversity, comrades when bullets whizzed and death stalked. That comradeship was the most beautiful of the humanities in the Civil War. Said a gallant son of the Twenty-first Massachusetts: “We dearly loved her, and I do not think there was a man in the regiment whowould not have been willing to die for her.” Said the Daughter of the Regiment: “If my life could have purchased the lives of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine, how cheerfully and quickly would the exchange have been made.” That sentiment reciprocal—willing to serve at the risk of life—is a sentiment chivalric, unsurpassed by the belted and spurred knights of the sword in Feudal Days.

The guns cease firing,—the battleground, a ghastly scene. Human ghouls are lurking, preying upon the helpless. The “lone woman” is in their midst, going in and coming out of houses where lay the dead and dying, walking through the streets and alley ways, on her mission. A knight-errant in his saddle, with hat in hand graciously bowing, gallops up to her, admonishing that she is in great danger and offering her the City’s protection. Pointing to the thousands of boys wearing the blue, she answered: “No, Marshal, I think not; I am the best protected woman in the United States.”

In the autumn of her life when war scenes were a misty memory, on a public occasion, she again comments: “In all the world none is so dear to me as the Old Guard who toiled by my side years ago.” As she is not here to speak for herself, kindly permit me to echo her sentiments in the very words the late daughter expressed to you at a former annual reunion:

Ye have met to remember, may ye ever thus meet,So long as two comrades can rise to their feet;May their withered hands join, and clear to the lastMay they live o’er again the great deeds of the pastTill summoned in victory, honor and love,To stand in the ranks that are waiting above,And on their cleared vision God’s glory shall burst,Re-united in Heaven, the old Twenty-first.

Ye have met to remember, may ye ever thus meet,

So long as two comrades can rise to their feet;

May their withered hands join, and clear to the last

May they live o’er again the great deeds of the past

Till summoned in victory, honor and love,

To stand in the ranks that are waiting above,

And on their cleared vision God’s glory shall burst,

Re-united in Heaven, the old Twenty-first.

The meek brown-eyed little maiden who, in 1836, left the scenes of her childhood at the age of fifteen had returned crowned with laurel, in 1912, then seventy-six years a veteran in the service of humanity. Impressive in its simplicity is that home coming which occurred at Oxford. In Memorial Hall had assembled gray-haired men and women who had known her from her youth. In that hall were the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the playmates of her childhood. The hall had been decorated by loving hands; flowers of rare beauty gently had been placed near the temporary altar. By her request her beloved pastor was there to invoke Him who was highest in service to humanity; to speak words of cheer and to bespeak immortality. Songs were sung, prayers were said, eulogies of her real character pronounced, and the long line of personal friends accompanied her to the Silent Home of her ancestors. Still clad as from youth in her fair robes of charity, there she lives and sleeps and sleeps and lives.

The Cradle and the TombAlas! so nigh.

The Cradle and the Tomb

Alas! so nigh.

No bugle sound reached the ear, no crack of the soldier’s rifle rent the air, no war hero’s honors were hers; hers were the honors of a gentle maiden that came to save life, not to destroy it. Into the open earth that received her, and on the grassy slope of the hill, lovingly were dropped flowers of sentiment; among these the red rose, the flower she loved best; the lily,symbol of immortality. There Valor proudly sleeps,—there almost in sight of the birthplace; where her eyes greeted, first, the Christmas Morn; where she was rocked in her rude wooden cradle; where her baby fingers had pressed against the window pane and her eyes looked out upon innocent nature; where she had romped with other children in the wildwood, gathered wild flowers in the field, ridden untamed horses, skated upon the smooth surface of frozen waters, learned life’s early lessons at home and in the school-room; where she had said “goodbye” to childhood, to enter public service. There, after more than four score years and ten, death was still almost amidst her baby playthings. Only a few steps from her cradle to the grave and yet, on that short journey, she had taken millions of steps for humanity. At the end of her journey is her memorial tribute to those she loved; waving appreciative is the flag she served; looming significant is the Memorial Red Cross, a memorial that gives expression to “a world of memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears and a world of glories;” and, as was said of another great American at his passing, Clara Barton now belongs to the ages.

After the ceremonies at the cemetery, concluding with the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the following conversation took place, at a christening:

The Mother: My little girl was born in Clara Barton’s birthplace; in the very room.

Reverend Barton: Bring her to me and I will christen her at once, “Clara Barton.”

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