The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (Vol. 2 of 2)Barton, William E. (William Eleazar)
History
The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (Vol. 2 of 2)
Barton, William E. (William Eleazar)
American National Red Cross -- Biography; Barton, Clara, 1821-1912; Nurses -- United States -- Biography
I hear of you in the most trying heat at home. It is just warm in
England some days, but to-day, for instance, ladies are generally
clothed in wool suits and a shawl. I went out just now for a few
minutes with Mamie, while our rooms were put in order, and came back
because I was too cold, and it is never very bright in London. I
suppose this has its due influence on one’s nervous system, and I
would have been glad at any time within the last month to be made
ready and go over to France or Germany. I think it would be better,
but I could not get strong enough to _get ready_ and go. You wonder
what “getting ready” means. It seems to you that it requires little
preparation to put up a bag or small trunk of things and cross the
Channel, and so it does, but it is summer, and I have several trunks
of mainly woolen things for this cool climate. My little strength
since I have been in Europe has made it necessary to have them, of
course, unpacked, and in a state of utter confusion, for some trunks
I have not had my hand in for months and months, but to others I
constantly go, and in haste. The _moths_ in London are like flies in
abundance. It wouldn’t mend my nerves to know I had gone off traveling
and left all I have to be devoured, and I have been made worse several
times by simply attempting to get a dress or some little article from
a trunk. My weak chest will not admit of the least labor of the arms
yet. Let Mamie do it? Mamie is only a weak little girl, and until
lately could not have packed her own trunk without harm to herself. So
I wait for strength as an army waits for quartermaster and commissary
supplies before it can march. I made one little trial or two, to see
what I could do. Papa Holmes (with whose family I went to Italy) came
one day to ask me if I could go to Liverpool where he was going, and
over into Wales, and pass a week. It was about the time Colonel Hinton
was going to sail, and I thought, with so many good friends on the
road, I might try it. So I went as far as Stratford-on-Avon, but I
grew so tired I gave out and let the party go on and I came home. It
wasn’t much of a journey,--only a few hours,--but I found it quite
sufficient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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