But don’t tell us they are not determined--just fighting mad; they had just one Worcester “Spy” of the 22d, and all were so anxious to know the contents that they begged me to read it aloud to them, which I did. You would have smiled to see _me_ and my _audience_ in the Senate Chamber of the United States. Oh! but it was better attention than I have been accustomed to see there in the old time. “Ber” writes his mother that Oxford is raising a company. God bless her, and the noble fellows who may leave their quiet, happy homes to come at the call of their country! So far as our poor efforts can reach, they shall never lack a kindly hand or a sister’s sympathy if they come. In my opinion this city will be attacked within the next sixty days. If it must be, let it come; and when there is no longer a soldier’s arm to raise the Stars and Stripes above our Capitol, may God give strength to mine. Write us and tell our friends to write and I will answer when I can. Love to all. C. H. BARTON Several things are of interest in this letter. One is the place where her work for the soldiers began. It was the Government’s poverty in the matter of tents and barracks which caused the soldiers to be quartered in the Capitol, but it was certainly an interesting and significant thing that her great work had its beginning there. Washington was still expecting to be attacked; she believed that the attack would occur shortly. It was rather a fine sentence with which her letter closed,--“If it must be, let it come; and when there is no longer a soldier’s arm to raise the Stars and Stripes above our Capitol, may God give strength to mine.” She was still signing her formal letters Clara H. Barton She was no longer Clarissa, and before very long she dropped the middle name and letter entirely, and, from the Civil War on, was simply Clara Barton. This letter which deals entirely with her military experiences is the first of many of this general character. To a large extent personal matters from this time on dropped out of sight. It will be of interest to go back a few weeks and quote one of her letters to her brother David, in which there is no mention of political or military matters. It is a letter of no great importance in itself, but shows her concern for her father, who had partially recovered from his serious illness, for her niece Ida, her nephew Bub, as she still called Stephen E., though he was now a lad of some size, and for home affairs generally. For her father she had adopted the name given him by her nephews and nieces, and called him “Grandpa”: Feb. 2nd, 1861 DEAR BROTHER: