When dying President Garfield murmured: “The great heart of the nation will not let a soldier die,” I prayed God to hasten the time when every wounded soldier would be sustained by that sweet assurance. CLARA BARTON. My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men. CLARA BARTON. I am so sorry for the _necessity_, so glad for the _opportunity_, of ministering with my own hand and strength to the dying wants of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine. CLARA BARTON. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress, or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing of a political movement. CLARA BARTON. I make gruel, not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses. CLARA BARTON. You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it. CLARA BARTON. If it has been granted to me to be ever so little service to those about me, in need of my help, He alone who granted me the privilege knows how grateful I am for it. CLARA BARTON. BULLETHOLE—AMPUTATED LIMBS LIKE CORDWOOD—GOD GIVES STRENGTH The valley of Antietam lies in Maryland. In September, 1862, on the night of the 16th, the Federals were on one ridge of the valley; the Confederates, on the opposite ridge. Somber night was hushed to stillness. Within the fog that arose from the valley and the smoke of the campfires there gleamed the stacked bayonets and the properly placed cannon which portend the fateful tomorrow. On the tomorrow Antietam was to be the harvest field, death and suffering the harvest. In the early morning were heard the bugle notes which call to battle. The fight to death was on—possibly the fight that would unmake a nation, or make a new nation. A little lone woman had flanked the cannon at midnight and, in the early sunlight, stood beside the artillery. Terrifying the sharp crack of the musketry, deafening the boom of the cannon. The earth quaked; the sun, obscured. Over her head were shells bursting or, passing, buried themselves in the hills beyond. Her tongue was dried by the sulphurous powder smoke; her lips parched to bleeding. Such the scene of the conflict in which Clara Barton said she had the most terrible experiences of her life.