Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures by George W. Bain
page 28 of 234 (11%)
page 28 of 234 (11%)
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it."
Against this trait of selfishness I place the most beautiful of all traits--sympathy. I would rather have the record of Clara Barton in the great reckoning day than that of any statesman whose portrait hangs in a hall of fame. During our Civil War she went from battlefield to battlefield, and was just as kind to the boy in gray as she was to the boy in blue. After the Civil War Queen Victoria desired to communicate with Clara Barton regarding the same mission of mercy for the German army, where the Queen's daughter was then engaged. But Clara Barton was already on the ocean, and soon after was in the war zone with the German army. She was with the first who climbed the defenses of Strassburg, where she ministered to the wounded and dying. At the close of her work there she took ten thousand garments with her to France. There she waited till the Commune fell and again she was with the first to reach the suffering. In our own war with Spain she went to Cuba, and though then past sixty years of age, she stood among the cots of our wounded and sick soldiers, soothing their sufferings and cheering their hearts. Still later on in storm-swept Galveston, Texas, she fell at her post of duty and was borne back by loving hands to her home, where she recovered and again resumed her work of love and mercy, to carry it on to the end of her long and useful life. No wonder the King and court of Germany bestowed upon her medals of remembrance; no wonder the Grand Duchess of Baden placed upon her the |
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