EARLY LIFE


She was not a strong child, and being the youngest of a large
family naturally received much attention, which in after years she
concluded was not good for her. She once described herself as a
puny little thing who wanted everything she saw and thought she
ought to have it. "I had a will of my own," she said, "and my
mother found it necessary to be very firm with me at times. Once I
was very rude to her when she did not give me what I wanted, and I
shall never forget how grieved she was, how lovingly she explained
to me the necessity for controlling myself if I would be loved by
those around me." She was six years old when this naughtiness
occurred. "I promised my mother then," she said, "that I would be
a good girl, and that I would ask God not to let me be naughty
again."

She and her sister Hattie, not quite two years her elder, loved
out of doors a great deal. They were very fond of flowers and
animals, and, hand in hand, would wander up and down the street to
stop and admire the flowers in the neighboring gardens, always
mindful of their mother's injunction never to take a flower
without permission. Happy indeed were they when they could bring
home a handful of wild flowers to their mother. "God's flowers"
they called them, because they did not grow in anyone's garden.

Clara's love for animals led her to pat every dog she met, and
more than once she caught a stray cat and took it home to pet it.
A story is told that seeing a lame chicken she wrapped it in her
apron and took it home and bandaged its leg neatly, tending it