Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
History
Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
A few days after the consultation at Oxford she rallied, and on a
Pullman was taken to her Glen Echo home. Seriously ill and thinking this
would be her last ride, she expressed the wish to have for the party of
three, consisting of her physician, her nephew and herself, the Pullman
exclusively. The cost for the use of the car would be three hundred
dollars. This having been made known to her she protested the seeming
extravagance whereupon a friend, after having been refused such tender
by the Pullman office in New York, himself made the tender of the car,
without cost to her. Characteristic of her, she declined to accept the
courtesy, but said she would have accepted such courtesy from the
Pullman Company. She accepted, instead, a drawing room—to save the
proposed expense, even by another. Early on the way to Glen Echo, she is
reported to have said to those accompanying her: If he were here now I
would not leave the car until I shall have reached California, where I
would make my home with my friend as long as I live, thereby accepting
his invitation to become his guest permanently—in his home nearby and
overlooking the Pacific ocean.
She stood the journey so well, says her physician, that again she said
to us just before reaching Washington that she would be glad to remain
on the train and continue on to California, emphasizing “That’s what I’d
like to do.” The physician further comments: “Her faith in her friend’s
loyalty would have been sufficient tonic to make the journey easy and a
delight, and I feel sure now that had she taken the journey then, as she
expressed the wish, the end of the journey would have found her in an
_improved condition_, with constant-increasing physical strength.”
In the author’s diary for October 20, 1911, is found the following:
At ten A.M. visited Calumet Place. Mrs. John A. Logan and I then went
to Glen Echo on the street car. Visited Miss Clara Barton, who was in
a chair awaiting our presence. Spent an hour or so with her. She was
in good spirits, happy and much improved in health. Mrs. Logan and she
talked over personal matters. She received me most cordially, and said
she was most happy to see me; also said she would like to go to
California with me. Mrs. Logan, Dr. Hubbell, Stephen E. Barton and I
had a talk in the room downstairs on matters of personal interest to
Miss Barton, formulating a plan for her vindication.
FORECASTING THE BIOGRAPHY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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