Clara Barton was as proud of her skill with the needle as was Lucretia with the spinning wheel, or Florence Nightingale in the art of nursing. In a western town a lady was discredited, and shunned, because she had been a sewing girl. Appreciating the situation, and ambitious socially, she made her home the center of fashionable sewing circles. She taught fancy crochet, and embroidery stitches; in a very short time she had the aristocratic women at her feet, and became the social leader. The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art. Clara Barton’s apparel was her personal care, and not the care of a _modiste_. While in charge of relief work on a field of disaster, she said I have no clothing, and couldn’t attend to it if I had.” She fully appreciated also that “rags are royal raiment when worn for virtue’s sake.” She would sew on her own buttons, mend, clean, stitch and hemstitch, make and remake, her own clothes,—not only as a matter of economy but as a matter of personal pride. [Illustration: W. R. SHAFTER No governmental red tape system could possibly be as effective as were Clara Barton’s sensible business methods in Cuba. W. R. SHAFTER. Brigadier-General Civil War; Major-General Commanding the American Army in the Spanish-American War. General Shafter, the kind and courteous officer and gentleman. CLARA BARTON. ] Clara Barton received no one until she had donned the, to her, becoming apparel,—the proper bow at the neck, the proper bow in her hair. Everything about her dress must be, to her, _au fait_. Propriety of dress had been a part of her education. She recognized that a tramp seldom gets by the barking dog at the gate, while the door of the palace opens wide to the person well-dressed. And possibly also she entertained the sentiment of Emerson, “The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.” She agreed with Walt Whitman that only personal qualities endure, and dress bespeaks personal qualities. That she succeeded in the art of dress—that her personal qualities were at all times in the ascendancy, is attested by the fact that the press reporter overlooked her dress, in describing the “ladies’ costumes.” He would describe her very dark, bright eyes, her face as the ideal one which conforms to her character, her raven black hair worn in the fashion of our mothers and grandmothers; or “her hair, black as the raven’s wing, does not follow fashion’s ways but is dressed like Longfellow’s Evangeline, low down on either side of her forehead,” and then possibly dismiss her with the simple statement: “Miss Barton was attired in black silk.” XXXIX Clara Barton—her brilliancy and bravery won her a European reputation; she was decorated with several honorary orders in recognition of her exploits. Raleigh (N. C.) _Times_.