All the women who went to the battle-front and were worth their carfare were women of strong will. Mother Bickerdyke, in her rough and great-hearted way, was a lady; but when she faced an incompetent surgeon and drove him out of the hospital and he appealed to General Sherman, the General confessed himself powerless: “She ranks me,” he said. Dorothea Dix was a lady to the very depth of her sensitive soul, a devoted, consecrated Christian lady; but she could be very properly disagreeable on occasion, and she brooked no interference with her authority. Florence Nightingale was a lady, born and bred; but vitriol was mild compared to some of her outbursts. Clara Barton was a lady to her very finger-tips; and she had had enough of experience in Washington among officials and men of influence so that she knew how on occasion to be much more diplomatic and gracious than most other women with her responsibilities. Moreover, she shrank from giving pain, and was careful of her words. But she had as strong a will as had Florence Nightingale, and, while she was as a rule more amiable than that lady in her more violent moods, she got things done. People sometimes found her arbitrary, impatient, and obstinate; had she been less so, it had gone hard with the interests which she cherished. She was capable of being arbitrary, impatient, and obstinate, and the same is true of each of the other women whom her name calls to mind. But among them she was not the least gentle, considerate, and self-forgetful. She required that things should move, and move in the direction of her decision; but she was at heart, and on most occasions in her demeanor, quiet, gentle, affectionate, and calm. Clara Barton had many devoted and loyal friends. They were held by her in warm and enduring affection; and some of them, for her sake and her work’s sake, made generous sacrifices. She had other friends who came to her in bursts of generous enthusiasm. These also were in good part sincere, and if some of them found her habits so simple and her task so heavy as to afford them smaller share than they had hoped in personal association with her, they were none the less generally firm in their friendship. It was not to be expected that every one could live permanently on her high plane of single-mindedness. Some of her friends were a trial to her, for it was not easy for her to understand why, when they once knew the task she was working at, they did not manifest stability of purpose and perseverance in well-doing. But these she counted her friends. When one of these left her roof because the fare was too plain, Clara Barton said, “She is not willing to wash herself seven times in Jordan.”