XCV

I never had a mission and I don’t know what I should do with one, if I had it.Clara Barton.

We all tumble over opportunities for being brave and good, at every step we take. Life is just made up of such opportunities.

Clara Barton.

Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.

A. Lincoln.

There are other altars than that of Venus on which to light your fires—work, incessant, hard, earnest work.Sir William Osler.

How much of the sweets of life one loses in the rush of it.

Clara Barton.

I lost two months entire, but the time went on and spun its web each day.Clara Barton.

The gray haired military chieftain, whom all would recognize were I to name him, was correct when he once said to me: “Strange as it may seem, the days of ‘rest’ at the field are the hardest days.”

Clara Barton.

I always had a passion for service.Clara Barton.

Honest labor bears a lovely face.Thomas Decker.

Labor: All labor is noble and holy.Frances Sargent Osgood.

Work ye, and God will work.Joan of Arc.

Life is a great bundle of little things.O. W. Holmes.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things.Sir Humphrey Davy.

Nothing is of greater value than a single day.Goethe.

Life is but a day at most.Burns.

Life is a short day, but it is a working day.Hannah Moore.

Living is doing.Clara Barton.

“Even while we say there is nothing we can do, we stumble over opportunities for service that we are passing by in our tear-blinded, self-pity.”Clara Barton.

I have had more work than I could do lyingaround my feet, and try to get it out of my way so I can go on to the next.

Clara Barton.

There is but one method, and that is hard labor.

Sidney Smith.

If God works, Madam, you can afford to work also.

Julia Ward Howe.

Clara Barton was a worker from infancy. She gave to the world nearly a century of work, taking neither vacation nor recreation.

Alice Hubbard.

Women, always—as a rule—have worked harder than men.

Clara Barton.

I do hope I may live long enough to get the story of my life and my life’s work in shape for publication. I am doing this ill in bed (at 90 years of age), sometimes working until two or three o’clock in the morning.Clara Barton.

How so much was accomplished in the lifetime of one woman may be understood by reading “One Day with Clara Barton,” as described by herself in a personal letter to a friend:

“How shall I manage to be a woman of business, and act like a lady of leisure? How strangely odd it seemed to me when I read your pretty description of how your time was passed, that you could dress for breakfast, help do some little things about the house, get ready for tea and walk after it. WhendidI seesuch days, or evenonesuch day. If it would not take too long I could tell you something of how I pass a day. Let me try; and as one day is a fair sample of another, suppose I take yesterday as I remember it better than any other. Well, let me brush up my hair and try to think. First, I rose when I could see to dress, I suppose a little past four, went into my bath room, and bathed thoroughly in preparation for a scorching day and partly made my toilet; then read my chapter in the scriptures bymyself, and offered my own prayer and thanksgiving (no family service to unite in like you, and I have too much of the dust of old Plymouth Rock sticking to me to omit it); then finished a hurried toilet, and sat down to a French lesson at half past six; went to my breakfast at seven, commenced my French recitation, lasted until eight; after this put my chamber and myself in order and started for the office; called on my dress-maker on my way and tried on a dress; called at the post office and found one business letter; and reached the office at nine; distance little over a mile, and then commenced the tug of war. I wrote until three o’clockP. M., took an omnibus home, took my writing, or a portion of it, along with me (don’t tell; it’s against the rule), reached home at three-thirty, took a hurried bath, went to dinner and at four-thirty was seated at my table writing for my life. Did not leave my room again, or scarce arose from my table until twelve o’clock, when I retired and slept as fast and hard as I could until daylight in preparation for a repetition of the same. Perhaps you wish, or are curious, to know how much I accomplished in all that time. Ten thousand words of bold round record which must live and be legible when the mound which once covered meshall have become a hollow and the moss-covered headstone, with ‘born’ and ‘died’ no longer to be traced upon its time-worn front shall have buried itself beneath the kindred turf.”

Working twenty hours out of the twenty-four would give almost any woman the reputation of being agenius. Thinking the woman who had done things held the secret of woman’s success, a touring party of ambitious young ladies called on Clara Barton, in her later years, at Glen Echo. The following conversation took place:

Vassar Girl—Miss Barton, these other ladies and myself called to pay our respects. We have heard much of you since we were little girls. A few weeks ago, in the class of ——, we graduated from Vassar College. We, as you have done, wish to do some good in the world. We cannot decide what we should do; we want your advice.

Clara Barton—My dear young lady, do the first thing that comes to your hand. Do it well. Then do the next thing. Do that well. Then do the next thing, just so keep on doing——.

Clara Barton then pinned a Red Cross badge on each of these young ladies, the happiest visitors when leaving, says Miss Barton’s secretary, that he had ever seen in that “house of rough hemlock boards.”

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