XCVIII

Last words of Clara Barton: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Let me go! Let me go!

Percy H. Epler, Author.

A diagnosis of Clara Barton’s illness was made a few months before she passed. The report of the Doctors was that every organ in her body was perfect—heart, lungs, stomach—every organ functioning as in her youth.The Author.

This morning’s papers (Tuesday, April 23, 1912) are filled with startling stories to the effect that Miss Barton died of a broken heart, caused by a clique of Washington politicians and ambitious society people. That she died of a broken heart, so caused, is a fact.W. H. Sears, Secretary to Clara Barton.

Considerable comment was caused at the funeral of Clara Barton by the absence of any representative of ——, or of the American National Red Cross, the organization which Miss Barton founded; neither were there any flowers from either the organization nor the White House in evidence. Rockford (Ills.)Register Gazette.

Governments are but the voice of the people.Clara Barton.

The Government of my countryismy country, and the people of my country are the government of my country as nearly as a representative system will allow.Clara Barton.

The Government which I thought I loved, and loyally tried to serve, has shut every door in my face, and stared at me insultingly through its windows.Clara Barton.

The humanity of peoples is beyond that of Governments.

Clara Barton.

Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou showest thee in a child than the sea monster.

Shakespeare.

Of all the anguish our Heavenly Father calls us to endure—none pierces more keenly, nor wounds more deeply, than the sting of ingratitude.Clara Barton.

Dear Clara Barton! I hope that somewhere she is reaping a glorious reward of her life-long heroism and self-sacrifice.Mrs. La Salle Corbell Pickett.

Clara Barton will still live as a potential force for good, and coming centuries will see her labors carried on even as they were carried on while she directed them in person.

Springfield (Illinois)News.

Sublime, O Life, when in Easter balms did cease,When shadows of thy sunset hour bore thee “peace.”E. May Glenn Toon.

Sublime, O Life, when in Easter balms did cease,

When shadows of thy sunset hour bore thee “peace.”

E. May Glenn Toon.

The funeral exercises for Clara Barton, who had served for 23 years as President of the Red Cross, were held in her Red Cross home in Glen Echo, Maryland. Flowers in profusion were there; her personal andrealfriends, with moistened eyes and aching hearts, were there; hundreds of telegrams of sympathy from all over the country were there; millions of humanity-loving American men and women, in spirit, were there; her devoted friend and immediate successor as President of the Red Cross, Mrs. General John A. Logan, was there.

History will record that certain then acting officials of the Red Cross, either personally or in sympathy,werenotthere; that not a flower, not a word of sympathy, from any Red Cross official was there; that not national honors, not even Red Cross honors, were then bestowed lovingly or at all upon the great and good Red Cross Mother, that made possible officially the very existence of the then Red Cross officers.

And history will record that no good reason could be given why these certain Red Cross officials werenotthere; and history will further record that the reason must be understood as that in the case of Another when, on a similar occasion, no Pontius Pilate and no politicians were there, but “many women were there beholding from afar.” And finally history will again record that, centuries after the doer of “petty politics” shall have been forgotten, the doer of humane deeds will shine as a fixed star in humanity’s firmament, diffusing her beneficent rays upon the millions, in generations as they successive come and go.

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