H. Wilson SENATOR HENRY WILSON’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN] Senator Wilson was still interested in what she wanted to do, but was preoccupied. “He had labored all night on Miss B.’s bill.” In fact Clara Barton read the probable fate of her own endeavor. Senator Wilson had given himself with such ardor to the cause of her guest that he had no time to help her. She had borrowed a set of furs to wear when she went to the President. She took them back that afternoon and wrote in her diary: “Very tired; could not reconcile my poor success; I find that some hand above mine rules and restrains my progress; I cannot understand, but try to be patient, but still it is hard. I was never more tempted to break down with disappointment.” On Thursday, March 2, two days before the inauguration, she went again to see the President. Just as she reached the White House in the rain, she saw Secretary Stanton go in. She waited until 5.15, and Stanton did not come out. She returned home “still more and more discouraged.” Her guest, also, had been out in the rain, but was overjoyed. Her bill had passed the Senate without opposition, and would go to the House next day, if not that very night. Miss Barton wrote in her diary: “I do not tell her how much I am inconvenienced by her using all my power. I have no helper left, and I am discouraged. I could not restrain the tears, and gave up to it.” It is hardly to be wondered that she almost repented of her generosity in loaning Senator Wilson to her friend when she herself had so much need of him. Nor need she be blamed for lying awake and crying while her guest slept happily on the pillow beside her. She did not often cry. Just at this time she was doubly anxious, for Stephen, her brother, was nearing his end, and Irving Vassall, her nephew, was having hemorrhages and not long for this world, and her day’s journal shows a multiplicity of cares crowding each day. Stephen died Friday, March 10. She was with him when he died and mourned for her “dear, noble brother.” She believed he had gone to meet the loved ones on the other side, and she wondered whether her mother was not the first to welcome him. His body was embalmed, and a service was held in Washington, and another in Oxford. Between the time of Stephen’s death and her departure with his body, she received her papers with the President’s endorsement. General Hitchcock presented them to her. She wrote: We had a most delightful interview. He aided me in drawing up a proper article to be published; said it would be hard, but I should be sustained through such a work, he felt, and that no person in the United States would oppose me in my work; he would stand between me and all harm. The President was there, too. I told him I could not commence just yet, and why, and he said, “Go bury your dead, and then care for others.” How kind he was!