Strenuous were the years of Miss Barton’s administration of the American Red Cross. There was upon an average practically one disaster a year which called her organization into the field. In some instances the active work of the Red Cross upon the ground lasted only a few weeks; in other cases, as in the matter of the South Carolina Sea Islands, it consumed almost a year. The intervals between disasters were occupied by correspondence, addresses, articles for the press, and attendance to the many duties brought on by a widened acquaintance and a constantly growing interest in the work. They were years, too, in which Miss Barton was sometimes personally short of money. In no other period, as in this, do her diaries so clearly show the necessity which she felt for personal economy for the sake of the work. She declined the four-thousand-dollar salary which was suggested for her; she vetoed every proposal looking toward a Government appropriation for her personal benefit or for the work of the Red Cross. If during this long period she ever thought of the Red Cross in terms of a possible financial advantage to herself, her diaries betray no hint of it. If she ever thought of the possibility that Congress might take care of her, the innumerable letters which passed between her and the members of the two houses of Congress afford no indication of it. The adhesion of the United States to the Treaty of Geneva did, however, take her abroad a number of times, once or more at Government expense, as one of the three official representatives of the United States at certain international congresses. The appropriations to cover the expenses of a delegate were never very large; generally two thousand dollars for the expense of three delegates. In connection with one of these journeys an interesting correspondence developed in which one of the delegates exceeded in expenditure his none too ample allowance of less than seven hundred dollars. He wrote a long letter explaining why it had been necessary for him to expend more, and desired Clara Barton to approve his request for an increase. This she declined to do either for herself or for either of the others. For her simple tastes the appropriation was ample; she lived within it and her associates had to do the same or make up the balance out of their own pockets. Miss Barton had just returned from her arduous labor on behalf of the flood sufferers on the Ohio and Mississippi in the summer of 1884, when Secretary of State Frelinghuysen appointed her one of the three delegates to the International Conference at Geneva. Her associates were her friends Judge Joseph Sheldon, of Connecticut, and Mr. A. S. Sullivan, vice-president of the American Red Cross.