Something must be said about her habit of economy, and it must be said with some care lest it give a very wrong impression. Clara Barton was economical to a very marked degree. If a list of her actual economies were here given, it would produce on many minds the impression that she was stingy. This would be wide of the truth. If a valid distinction may be made between two words that are nearly synonymous, she was parsimonious, but was not penurious. She was reared in a community and in a family where want was unknown, but where money was earned by hard work, and capital was accumulated by thrift and economy. It was part of her birthright and of her being. There was about her nothing that inclined her to waste or even extravagance. She entered into life early as a teacher, at first at a small salary. She had opportunity to save, and she did save. Her necessary expenses were small, and she began at the outset to save money. She continued to save money. She had good business judgment, and, excepting for a few times when she permitted her sympathies or her friendships to get the better of that judgment, her investments, conservatively made, were remunerative. When she first went abroad in 1869, she knew that she had money enough to support her as long as she lived. If she recovered her health, the lecture platform was still open to her, and she could earn and save above all expenses from four thousand dollars to six thousand dollars a year. If she returned an invalid, she had the income on about thirty thousand dollars, which was more than she needed. In no year of her life, probably, did she spend upon herself as much as eighteen hundred dollars. Even when she traveled abroad, her expenses were moderate, and she never drew on her principal for her own support. But eighteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars a year, which was about what her investments brought her, did not invite reckless extravagance, She knew that she must exercise reasonable economy, and her tastes were such that this was no hardship. When, therefore, she sat up at night rather than take a sleeping-car, it was not wholly that she was unwilling to pay for the price of the berth. She had been accustomed to doing so until an attempt was made to rob her, after which she was greatly disinclined to the use of the sleeper. Her prime reason for sitting up was that she disliked sleepers after that night. But she was not at all averse to saving two dollars. She slept few hours in the night, and was accustomed to sleeping under unfavorable conditions. She thought she rested quite as well sitting in a corner of her seat as lying in a stuffy and dark berth.