V The earth can never have enough women like Clara Barton. Detroit (Mich.) _Free Press._ Clara Barton belonged not only to the United States but to the entire civilized world. Boston (Mass.) _Globe._ A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. PROVERBS. Laugh and the world laughs with you. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. SHAKESPEARE. A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the best of men. ANONYMOUS. The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one. J. C. HARE. Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he. GOLDSMITH. If ever there were lost, or omitted, a well-turned joke or a bit of humor by the various members of the Barton family it was clearly an accident. CLARA BARTON. Joking decides great things stronger and better of’t than earnest can. MILTON-HORACE. [Illustration: THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, MAIN STREET, OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS Where Clara Barton attended church. Oldest Universalist Church in the world, built 1792. Society second oldest. Organized April 27, 1785. Denomination organized here, September 14, 1785. ] [Illustration: SUMMER HOME OF CLARA BARTON, OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS Arrow points towards the window of the room where Clara Barton was bed-ridden for several months, through her last fatal illness, in the latter part of 1911. ] “SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION” LAID TO CLARA BARTON A timid child is invariably the butt of jokes. Clara Barton, in her youth, was not an exception. As a little girl she had learned to weave, working in a North Oxford satinet mill. She had not been it work there very long when the mill took fire and burned down. Then, as no satisfactory explanation of the cause could be given by the members of the Barton family, the fire was attributed to spontaneous combustion, brought on because Clara had worked so fast as to set the mill on fire. Clara Barton did not object to, but rather enjoyed, a joke on herself. She used to tell her friends of this joke and said that in her own town and among her playmates that joke was “told on me for many years.” VI Forget not Christmas. HENRY _IV._ of England. At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal, And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small. TUSSER. Those who at Christmas do repine, And would fain hence despatch him, May they with old Duke Humphry dine, Or else may ‘Squire Ketch catch him.’ POOR ROBIN’S ALMANAC, 1684.