Clara Barton loved a home. Although she went forth from her father’s ample and generous house while still she was a young woman, and lived as school-teacher, department clerk, and humanitarian for many years, she never failed to make a home for herself if there was opportunity. Hotel life had no charms for her, and, while she enjoyed entertainment in the homes of her friends and was a gracious and appreciative guest, she always preferred a roof of her own above her head where she could be hostess rather than guest and could minister instead of being ministered unto. While she was a clerk in Washington, she had her own quarters to which she was accustomed to bring homeless women, girls who lacked friendship, and others who were in need. While she was in Europe during the Franco-Prussian War, although at times the guest of royalty, she fled from the too abundant hospitality of her friends and the excessive luxury of hotels, and lived in her own rented lodgings.

She owned, and kept until her death, a summer home in Oxford. But the home of which it is especially proper to speak is that which she erected for herself and the Red Cross, at Glen Echo, Maryland.

More than once Miss Barton had occasion to meditate on the prayer of Peter offered on the Mount of Transfiguration, that the disciples might be permitted to erect three tabernacles and remain with Jesus and the spirits of the glorified saints. “Lord, it is good to be here,” is the enthusiastic cry of those who, being caught up by the spirit of a noble charity, see no reason why it should not continue permanently. Clara Barton saw to it that her work was discontinued when the need for it had passed.

When she finished her work at Johnstown, she was requested by the lumber dealers not to give away miscellaneously the material which had been used in the erection of her temporary Red Cross buildings. Times were returning to normal; there was employment at good wages for every one who wanted to work; and there was no good reason why people should not buy their lumber or why the lumber business should be demoralized by a thoughtless form of charity. Miss Barton knew that this was good sense. She learned who were the people who really needed and deserved free lumber, and these she assisted; but a portion of the lumber she shipped to Washington and erected at Glen Echo, a few miles out from the city, a permanent home for the American National Red Cross. Here she made her home during the remainder of her life. Now and then she returned for a few weeks to her summer home in Oxford, but the Red Cross Headquarters was where she lived and moved and had her being. There she dwelt and there she died.

It seemed to many to be far from an ideal home for her; it was a bare, barnlike sort of place with two tiers of rooms, the upper tier opening into a gallery as in the cabin of a steamboat. It was erected with reference to use as a possible storehouse and emergency hospital, as well as a central office building for the organization and a shelter for herself and her assistants. One might have expected that a woman who was at heart a tidy housekeeper would have preferred to put her warehouse and office building under one sufficiently ample roof, and to have erected for herself a little cottage adjacent; but Clara Barton lived and died surrounded by all that went into the daily performance of her work.

CLARA BARTON’S SUMMER HOUSE AT OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS

CLARA BARTON’S SUMMER HOUSE AT OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS

The author of this volume confesses to a certain chill and sinking of heart when he first saw the interior of the Glen Echo home. He wanted to take Clara Barton out of it and house her in a cozy little place of her own, where for a few hours of the day she could forget the Red Cross and all its cares. But Clara Barton gloried in those undecorated board walls as if they had been palatial. There she hung her diplomas and testimonials from foreign Governments as proudly as though they had been backed by glorious tapestry of cloth of gold. Her sitting-room was at the south of the house, overlooking the Potomac Canal; there she worked late at night and watched the moon as it rode over the tree-tops and reflected itself in the water. From the windows of her bedroom just above, she habitually witnessed the sunrise. Her narrow bed was a soldier’s cot, and beside it was a little table with a candle, a pad of paper and a pencil. If, as often happened, she lay awake in the night, she did not fret over her insomnia, but lighted her candle, propped herself in bed, wrote down the good thoughts that came to her, and then blew out the candle and went to sleep, and was refreshed for work at five o’clock the next morning.

But there was a certain appropriateness in the construction of the Glen Echo home. One might look down from the bare walls that had seen service in Johnstown to find his feet on a rug presented by a Turkish Pasha; he searched the room in vain for relics, as such, for Clara Barton had no fondness for dust-gathering mementoes, but he could not fail to see about him inconspicuous trophies from hard-won fields of service. There was no luxury, but there was a simple, homely comfort in the air of the place. The main hall of the building was two stories high, with a gallery around the upper tier of rooms. It was a place for service, and that service was the joy and glory of her life.

Glen Echo is on the banks of a canal along the Potomac, about eight miles from the Capitol in Washington. This site she selected for herself in 1890, but did not occupy it until 1897. Her reasons for building there were that the location gave her convenient access to Washington, with ample space and freedom for outdoor life and opportunity for storage of Red Cross supplies without the excessive cost which an adequate building would have required in Washington.

At the time she erected her home, a Chautauqua Assembly was in operation in Glen Echo, and her house adjoined the grounds. Indeed, her home was almost one of the Chautauqua buildings, the front being of native stone such as was used in the construction of the large auditorium and Hall of Philosophy which stood within a stone’s throw of her house. But the stone front which was the one picturesque feature of the house gave it a prison-like chill on the inside and had to be removed, and the Chautauqua Assembly itself went down and gave place to a summer amusement park. Spite of the changes in the environment, Clara Barton kept her home at Glen Echo. A Ferris wheel was erected at her front door; the roller-coaster went thundering by her window; the dancing in what had been the auditorium kept up till a late hour; and the goddess of folly with cap and bells superseded divine philosophy in the hall dedicated to the latter; but Clara Barton lived and died in her home in Glen Echo.

The inside of her house was not much more luxurious than the outside. Few homes have been erected with so little attempt at display, or with such modest provision for reasonable comfort.

In one aspect the Glen Echo home was fashioned almost like a cathedral, but in its practical arrangement much more like a ship. It had more windows than either a ship or a cathedral. They were almost as thick as they could be placed and leave any room for walls, but they were very plain windows, except that one on the stairs had a little inexpensive ornamentation and the glass in the two front doors had a red cross in each.

The front door faced north and led into a long wide hall, cool in summer, cold in winter, with an elongated oval well, railed round on the two upper floors, so that from the main deck one looked up to the upper deck and the boat deck of the ship-like building. This central three-deck cabin was ceiled with unpainted wood, not unattractive but unadorned. Doors opened on either side at regular intervals, and between the doors were deep closets where blankets, Horlick’s Malted Milk, canned goods and emergency supplies of various kinds were duly stored and catalogued. If a fire or a flood broke out in any part of the country, Clara Barton was ready to start and had something with which to begin relief.

It was this attempt to combine in one a home, a storehouse, a place of refuge for the needy, and a kind of organization headquarters which struck the visitor so strangely and almost repellently. She might have built a little bungalow for herself and her offices and housed her supplies in a separate building erected for storage purposes and with emergency sleeping-rooms attached, but she wished it otherwise and she had her way.

If the reader had been privileged to visit Clara Barton there during her lifetime and had made his way down the rather long cabin to her own quarters in the south end of this ship-like cathedral, he would have found Clara Barton at home. It would have made little difference how early or how late the call was made. She was up with the sun and often before, weeding her garden, feeding her chickens, caring for her pets, and looking after her house. She rarely went to bed before midnight. Fourteen to eighteen hours a day of work she did steadily until her death.

Let us suppose that she has an important address to deliver to-morrow night. This is the way she prepares for it. She rises at five this morning and does her own room work. Her bedding is aired, her bed is made, and the carpet sweeper is rolling over her floor before six o’clock gives its warning to other members of the household. She eats a simple breakfast with her household and guests and wastes no time, but still is in no haste about it. She gives no intimation that she is in a hurry, and enjoys the breakfast-table conversation, evincing a keen sense of humor and a hearty interest in all human happenings. She announces that she has attended to her most important correspondence for the morning, and excuses herself to see to the ways of her household. It is the day her curtains are to be washed, and she has to superintend affairs in the laundry and make some changes in her garden. She puts in very nearly the whole day in physical labor. She knows well how to direct the work of others, but she does not scorn to take the flatiron or the garden trowel in her own hands and show how she wants things done. Moreover, she gets things done the way she wants them. That is a habit of hers.

She lingers after the luncheon and evening meal and engages in cheerful conversation. Instrumental music has no charm for her, but good singing she enjoys if there is a distinct melody and if the words mean something. She likes to hear men sing better than she likes to hear women, and she likes the songs she knows, and is willing to hear them again and again. If among the guests is one who sings, she is a good listener. But the greater part of the evening is spent in conversation. Clara Barton was a good conversationalist. She could listen without restlessness and talk without monopolizing the privilege of talking. She was quick to see a point. She had a voice which was low, and while not sweet or musical was pleasant, and its cadences were those of the gentlewoman. Her sentences were always perfectly formed. Her grammar never needed apology; her speech was precise, but free from pedantry. Her talk was habitually cheerful. She was respectful of the opinions of others and never failed to have an opinion of her own.

After her guests have gone to bed, her light still burns. She sits in her south room, where she said it seemed as if “it was always moonlight,” and in her work she enjoyed the companionship of the woods, the stars, and the many voices of the night. Even the racket of the dancing and the whirl of the merry-go-round with the joyously frightened squeals of the girls descending the roller-coaster was far less objectionable than it would have been if it had been her habit to retire early.

But she is not yet working on her address. She is taking care of the belated mail which the day has brought and which her duties in the garden and laundry have kept her from attending to, but she has been thinking about the address more or less during the day, although when midnight comes she has not written a word of it. Beside her bed, however, she places a candle, a pencil, and a pad.

Clara Barton’s bed was a cot. It was not a very soft cot either. She was never a poor woman. From her father she inherited a modest patrimony, and she always had more than enough money of her own to supply her needs. She could have had a wide and soft bed if she had wanted it. She had just what she wanted, and she never cared to have people tell her that she ought to have things differently in so far as they related to her own comfort.

Do not think she was an ascetic or slept in a hard bed because she scorned bodily comfort. Comfort she had and exactly as much of it as she wanted. Luxury she did not want. She thanked no one for wasting any pity upon her. Her bed was as wide as she wished it, and as soft as she cared to have it, and in it she slept soundly and was refreshed.

Before it was light she woke and reached for her matches and her pencil, and sitting up in bed she wrote her address as fully as she cared to have it written. She rarely erased a word. Her mind was clear and her speech came to her just in the form in which she wished it. Her years of training as a school-teacher had laid well the foundations of her composition and rhetoric. She wrote, not rapidly, but accurately, and each word said exactly what she wanted to say.

Her address is finished before daylight, and she puts out the light and takes her final nap, but is up at her accustomed time, having enjoyed a good night’s rest, and is out in the garden and looking after the poultry until she joins her guests at breakfast.

After breakfast she copies her address in ink. Her handwriting is like copper-plate. When it is copied, she lays it aside. The process of copying it has photographed it upon her mind. She can deliver it either with or without manuscript. Although she trembles at the sight of an audience, she has learned to face one with perfect composure and no word of her speech escapes her memory.

Perhaps she excuses herself from lunch to-day and works at her desk, but not at the speech she is to deliver. It is her habit to keep free from any needless accumulation of unfulfilled duties. She sees her guests at the table and is herself within call, but for herself she has ordered an apple, a slice of bread, and a piece of cheese. No member of her household will suggest to her that she ought to eat more, and if one of her guests feels some compunction at eating a more ample repast while her hostess dines on homely fare, it is better that she keep her compunction to herself. If the guest should rise from the table and walk into the other room, carrying some delicacy, she would meet a mild rebuke. “I asked for exactly what I wanted,” Clara would say.

Outside the window at which she sits the mason wasps build their nests of mud. Woe unto the man who molests them! The sparrow finds a house and the swallow a nest in the shelter of the Lord of hosts, and the wasps are as welcome as the birds to a home at Glen Echo. Two or three wasps fly through the open window and light upon her half-eaten apple. She will not permit them to be driven away. There is enough for the wasps and for herself. Like Saint Francis and the birds, she is at home with every kind of gentle life, and the wasps, she maintains, are gentle if gently treated. She gently pushes them away from her apple when she is ready for another bite, cutting off a piece with her desk-knife and leaving it on the corner of her desk for the wasps. They also have a further portion in the core. They light upon her hand, her forehead, they buzz round her, but they never sting her. She and they are friends.

This is the kind of life Clara Barton lived in Glen Echo; and this is what those were privileged to see who visited her in her home.