where birds sang to her beautiful songs, and where flourished sweetest scented flowers. Within that house on the Potomac, Clara Barton received from President McKinley the command: “Go to the starving Cubans with your relief ship, and distribute as only you know how.” In haste to carry out that command, when nearing the point of service, she begged that she might have the right of way. “Not so,” said the Admiral of the Navy; “I am here to keep the supplies out of Cuba; I go first.” Clara Barton replied: “I know my place is not to precede you. When you make an opening, I will go in. You will go and do the horrible deed; I will follow you, and out of the human wreckage restore what I can.” Having herself achieved a place in unusual fields of public service, in this war timely the advice of Clara Barton: “Woman, there is a place for thee, my hitherto timid, shrinking child; go forth and fill it, that in thee mankind may be doubly blessed.” Following the precedent of him who was “first in war, first in peace,” in war and in peace at her own expense and without salary, Clara Barton served her country. Hers was the patriotism of a Washington, “What is money without a country.” In the early days of the Civil War, as to the probable capture of the City of Washington by the Confederates, she exclaimed: “If it must be, let it come, and when there is no longer a soldier’s arm to raise the Stars and Stripes above the Capitol, may God give strength to mine.” In defiance of sentiment as to the propriety for a “lone-woman” to go with the soldiers on the battlefield, she conformed to her father’s patriot-sentiment, “Go, if it is your duty to go.” Through the thousands of years of Pagan and Christian history there had existed the sentiment “Humanity in war must stand aside.” Among men, war-trained and war-sacrificed, rare the word of pity that reached the Most High for the wounded soldier. On the battlefield there had been seen no angel of mercy until was seen the angel nurse, with the candles of her charity lighting up the gloom of suffering and death. At the second Bull Run, in August, 1862, with a tallow candle in her hand through the darkness, in tears the ministering angel moved gently among the suffering thousands, putting socks and slippers on the wounded, feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty. Her own life then in peril, while on that field of carnage there came from her lips the heroic words: “I should never leave a wounded man, if I were taken prisoner forty times.” Was hers patriotism to country? Greater than patriotism. Was hers woman’s love—woman’s love for her friend? It was love divine, a woman’s love for all mankind. On, on to Chantilly, mid darkness and gloom, Fire, thunder and lightning, guns boom upon boom.