It occurs to me that it may not be entirely necessary to introduce myself to you. Even after a lapse of almost a decade you will not quite have forgotten that there was once a woman by the name of Clara Barton who, in common with the rest of the moving world, gave you more or less trouble. However faint these traces remain in your memory, that cannot dim the brightness which gilds her recollection of the uncounted favors you so kindly and generously meted out to her in the hard, busy days when she tried, with little strength and less power, to carry heavy burdens, and accomplish hard things. Through all these years the grateful memory of these kindnesses has never waned, and it so presses itself upon me that I cannot resist the desire to pick up my pen, far away in this quiet nook of the country, and tell you how glad I am, and have been, to know you are back again at your old post, which you ought never to have left, and how thankful I am to our _good President_ for having recalled you. My first impulse was to thank him directly, but unfortunately he does not know of my existence, and could never have found an excuse for my boldness, but you, my good and honored friend, will excuse it and will not call it even bold that a hard-worked woman has remembered the strong, kind hands that helped her on, and after long years has ventured to speak of it. Physically these intervening years have not been easy years for me, four of them with broken health and a wanderer in foreign lands, two of them in the Franco-Prussian War and its devastations, four more a helpless invalid in my own country, and this year for the first, once more on my feet walking about like other persons, but up to the present never leaving my home even for a short journey. I think of you all in that busy capital and wonder if it is true that I too was once a part of it, and stood erect amid its jostling and excitement. Thank God He has given you strength to endure to the end! Lest I give a wrong impression, let me add that it was _physically only_ that I referred to my life as hard. Socially and pecuniarily it is and has been easy and beautiful. I have all the world for friends and no unsatisfied wants, no necessities, no regrets except that I am not strong enough to do the work around me which the world needs to have done. Until now it has not in five long years dared ask of me the smallest service. Lately the European people have laid upon my hands an international matter pertaining to humanity for which it seems proper that I see the President. If I should be able to go to Washington for this purpose after his return, would you think it probable I could see and speak with him?