“Then wake and call me early, Call me early, mother dear,” For that will be the veriest day “Of all the glad New Year.” CHAPTER VIII LEAVES FROM HER UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHY When Clara Barton began to teach school, she was only a little girl. To her family, she seemed even younger and more tiny than she was. But she had taken the words of Dr. Fowler to heart, and she determined to teach and to teach successfully. Mrs. Stafford, formerly Mamie Barton, remembers hearing her mother tell how seriously Clara took the edict of the phrenologist. To her it was nothing less than predestination and prophecy. In her own mind she was already a teacher, but she realized that in the mind of her household she was still a child. She stood beside the large stone fireplace, looking very slender and very small, and with dignity asked, “But what am I to do with only two little old waifish dresses?” [Illustration: CLARA BARTON AT EIGHTEEN] Julia, David Barton’s young bride, was first to discern the pertinence of the question. If Clara was to teach school, she must have apparel suitable for her vocation. The “two little old waifish dresses,” which had been deemed adequate for her home and school life, were replaced by new frocks that fell below her shoe-tops, and Clara Barton began her work. She was a quick-tempered little teacher, dignified and self-possessed. Little and young though she was, she was not to be trifled with. She flogged, and on occasion expelled, but she won respect at the outset and very soon affection. Then floggings ceased almost altogether. At first she was teacher only of the spring and autumn school nearest her home; then she taught in districts in Oxford farther away; then came the incontrovertible certificate of success in her invitation to teach the winter school, which according to precedent must be managed by a man capable of whipping the entire group of big boys. And in all this experience of teaching she succeeded. In 1908 she wrote the second installment of her autobiography, and in that she related how she finished her teaching in Oxford and went for further education to Clinton Institute: