Had she but known it, a Red Cross Society had actually been formed in the United States in 1866, but had died without securing national recognition or attracting public attention. Of that organization we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. It was called “The American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields.” Information concerning it is preserved in a letter of the Reverend Henry W. Bellows, D.D., President, to Monsieur J. Henri Dunant, Secrétaire du “Comité International de Secours aux Militaires Blessés.” The few people who knew of this organization in 1866 had very nearly forgotten about it by 1869, and its great-hearted organizer, Dr. Bellows, had become completely discouraged with respect to any recognition of the movement in America. How Clara Barton came into touch with this organization as it existed abroad she told in a lecture which she prepared and delivered in a number of places on her return from Europe at the close of the Franco-Prussian War. As during this period her health was so poor that her diary was kept with great irregularity, this lecture gives us our best account of her journey and succeeding events: Most of you, I presume, know of me only as connected with our own war, and probably little of that, and, unless I give a word of explanation, it will remain a mystery to you how I ever came near a war in another country, and, in military parlance, we must connect the two by a “pontoon bridge,” and get ourselves across on it. Our war closed in the spring of ’65. Almost four years longer I worked among the débris, gathering up the wrecks, and sometimes, during the lecture season, telling a few simple war-stories to the people over the country, in their halls and churches. One early winter evening in ’68 I stood on the platform of one of the finest new opera houses in the East, filled to repletion, it seemed to me, with the most charming audience I had ever beheld,--plumed and jeweled ladies, stalwart youths, reverend white-haired men. Gradually, and to my horror, I felt my voice giving out, leaving me; the next moment I opened my mouth, but no sound followed. Again, and again, and again I attempted it, with no result. It was finished! Nervous prostration had declared itself. I went to my home in Washington, lay helpless all winter. Finally, by my physicians I was ordered to Europe, and in early September, ’69, I was able to go. I came in time to Geneva, when, while we were waiting, anticipating and settling ourselves, one day there was announced a visit from a body of Geneva gentlemen, having some business with me.