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
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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
In the autumn of her life when war scenes were a misty memory, on a
public occasion, she again comments: “In all the world none is so dear
to me as the Old Guard who toiled by my side years ago.” As she is not
here to speak for herself, kindly permit me to echo her sentiments in
the very words the late daughter expressed to you at a former annual
reunion:
Ye have met to remember, may ye ever thus meet,
So long as two comrades can rise to their feet;
May their withered hands join, and clear to the last
May they live o’er again the great deeds of the past
Till summoned in victory, honor and love,
To stand in the ranks that are waiting above,
And on their cleared vision God’s glory shall burst,
Re-united in Heaven, the old Twenty-first.
The meek brown-eyed little maiden who, in 1836, left the scenes of her
childhood at the age of fifteen had returned crowned with laurel, in
1912, then seventy-six years a veteran in the service of humanity.
Impressive in its simplicity is that home coming which occurred at
Oxford. In Memorial Hall had assembled gray-haired men and women who had
known her from her youth. In that hall were the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of the playmates of her childhood. The hall had
been decorated by loving hands; flowers of rare beauty gently had been
placed near the temporary altar. By her request her beloved pastor was
there to invoke Him who was highest in service to humanity; to speak
words of cheer and to bespeak immortality. Songs were sung, prayers were
said, eulogies of her real character pronounced, and the long line of
personal friends accompanied her to the Silent Home of her ancestors.
Still clad as from youth in her fair robes of charity, there she lives
and sleeps and sleeps and lives.
The Cradle and the Tomb
Alas! so nigh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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