Clara Barton stands as the complete refutation of the spirit of the age that either great wealth, social position or political power is necessary to the achievement of success. _The Universalist Leader_ (Boston). Life is giving one’s self to save others. CLARA BARTON. Grace was in all her steps, heav’n in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. MILTON. OPEN HOUSE—COST OF FAME, SELF-SACRIFICE—BEST IN WOMAN Clara Barton kept “open house.” She was “in” to everybody. One had but to knock and enter. Expressive of her welcome, on one occasion she says: “You will begin to feel the strings of welcome tugging at your footsteps when you leave the cars, and will know that it is fastened firmly to the knob of the door, pulling only the harder as the door swings wide open.” At one time her Glen Echo home was filled with indigent, homeless soldiers. About this time “Bessie Beech” was heard to say: “Clara Barton really needs a guardian; she gives away everything she has and almost starves herself. Recently she gave to her soldier friends in distress, $800.00—all the money she had and is “strapped.” A well known millionaire gave, fearing he might die _rich_; Clara Barton gave, knowing that she must die _poor_. Giving,—that was Clara Barton’s whole existence.” “All the world,” she says, “expects me to give something every time it can get through the door or get a letter to me.” “To pay respects” is a convenient excuse for imposing on good nature. To pay respects to America’s humanitarian became a fad. She not only personally answered 3,700 letters annually, besides her foreign correspondence, but thousands of people every year called, on her “to pay their respects.” On one occasion it would be for her to entertain the First Lady of the Land, representatives of the Army, the Navy, the Military, the Members of the Cabinet, the Members of Congress, the Officers of the Bureau of Education—“Official Washington.” On another occasion it was for her to entertain 600 members of the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by the President Susan B. Anthony. It was for her almost daily to receive delegation after delegation, titled men from Europe, “globe trotters,” “sight-seers,” “prominent officials”—and to receive the “people who want something” all the time. If “the greatest of all sacrifices is the sacrifice of time,” for others, Clara Barton made a sacrifice theretofore without precedent,—“the sacrifice of half a century.”