Not only so, but, when the work in a particular field was over, there were always those who had come as volunteer workers who insisted on bestowing themselves upon Clara Barton to make Red Cross work their life-work. Some of them were competent, and she was glad of them. But in the course of her years of experience she accumulated a series of misfit volunteer assistants, some of whom it was not easy afterward to get rid of. She had little love of music. She did not sing or play any musical instrument. When traveling abroad, if forced to attend the opera, she saved the time from utter waste by writing a home letter while singers of world-wide repute performed and sang before her. Having a low and soft voice, she disliked the high notes of women’s voices. Good, melodious quartet music she heard with mild enjoyment, and if she can be said to have liked any music it was that of male voices. A chorus of men always pleased her. Some of the war songs always thrilled her, though more for the associations than the music. There was one song, popular during the later years of the Civil War, which she never heard often enough. It was the song of an old slave, who, dying years before the war, had believed that he would rise on the day when freedom came to his race. The author also remembers it, as it was taught to him almost before he could walk: Nicodemus the slave was of African birth, He was bought for a bagful of gold; He was reckoned as part of the salt of the earth, And he died years ago, very old. ’Twas the last word he said as we laid him away In the stump of an old hollow tree,-- “Wake me up,” was his charge, “at the first break of day, Wake me up for the great jubilee.” _Chorus_: Then run and tell Elijah to hurry up, Pomp, To meet us at the gum-tree down in the swamp, To wake Nicodemus to-day. It was sung at the minstrel shows after the Emancipation Proclamation; but it was not as a minstrel show song that Clara Barton enjoyed it. There was a solemn dignity about the old slave’s faith that inspired her; and the authoritative tones of the words “Wake Nicodemus” thrilled her through and through.