It seemed to many to be far from an ideal home for her; it was a bare, barnlike sort of place with two tiers of rooms, the upper tier opening into a gallery as in the cabin of a steamboat. It was erected with reference to use as a possible storehouse and emergency hospital, as well as a central office building for the organization and a shelter for herself and her assistants. One might have expected that a woman who was at heart a tidy housekeeper would have preferred to put her warehouse and office building under one sufficiently ample roof, and to have erected for herself a little cottage adjacent; but Clara Barton lived and died surrounded by all that went into the daily performance of her work. [Illustration: CLARA BARTON’S SUMMER HOUSE AT OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS] The author of this volume confesses to a certain chill and sinking of heart when he first saw the interior of the Glen Echo home. He wanted to take Clara Barton out of it and house her in a cozy little place of her own, where for a few hours of the day she could forget the Red Cross and all its cares. But Clara Barton gloried in those undecorated board walls as if they had been palatial. There she hung her diplomas and testimonials from foreign Governments as proudly as though they had been backed by glorious tapestry of cloth of gold. Her sitting-room was at the south of the house, overlooking the Potomac Canal; there she worked late at night and watched the moon as it rode over the tree-tops and reflected itself in the water. From the windows of her bedroom just above, she habitually witnessed the sunrise. Her narrow bed was a soldier’s cot, and beside it was a little table with a candle, a pad of paper and a pencil. If, as often happened, she lay awake in the night, she did not fret over her insomnia, but lighted her candle, propped herself in bed, wrote down the good thoughts that came to her, and then blew out the candle and went to sleep, and was refreshed for work at five o’clock the next morning. But there was a certain appropriateness in the construction of the Glen Echo home. One might look down from the bare walls that had seen service in Johnstown to find his feet on a rug presented by a Turkish Pasha; he searched the room in vain for relics, as such, for Clara Barton had no fondness for dust-gathering mementoes, but he could not fail to see about him inconspicuous trophies from hard-won fields of service. There was no luxury, but there was a simple, homely comfort in the air of the place. The main hall of the building was two stories high, with a gallery around the upper tier of rooms. It was a place for service, and that service was the joy and glory of her life.