through long months, she was the member of the
family whose entire thought and care was centered in the invalid.
David was very sick for such a long time that it seemed as if he could
never rally, and his one great comfort was having Clara near him. Hour
after hour, and day after day, she sat by his bedside, his thin hand
clasped in her strong one, with the patience of a much older, wiser
nurse. She practically shut herself up in that sick-room for two whole
years, and it seemed as if there was nothing too hard for her to do
well and quickly, if in any way it would make David more comfortable.
Finally a new kind of bath was tried with success. David was cured,
and Clara Barton had served her earliest apprenticeship as a nurse.

Let us look back and see what went into the making of an
eleven-year-old child who would give two years of her life to a task
like that.

On Christmas Day of the year 1821, Clarissa Harlowe, as she was named,
or "Clara" Barton, as she was always called, was born in her father's
home near the town of Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Her
oldest sister Dorothy was seventeen at that time, and her oldest
brother Stephen, fifteen, while David was thirteen and Sally ten years
old; so it was a long time since there had been a baby in the family,
and all were so delighted over the event that Clara Barton says in her
_Recollections_, "I am told the family jubilation upon the occasion
was so great that the entire dinner and tea sets had to be changed for
the serving of the noble guests who gathered."

The house in which the Christmas child was born was a simple
farm-house on a hill-top, and inside nearly everything was home-made,
even the crib in which the baby was cradled. Outside, the flat
flagstone in front of the door was marked by the hand tools of the
father. Stephen Barton, or Captain Barton as he was called, was a man
of marked military tastes, who had served under "Mad Anthony" Wayne
in campaigns against the Indians. In his youngest daughter Clara he
found a real comrade, and, perched on his knee, she early gained a
passionate love of her country and a child's simple knowledge of its
history through the thrilling tales he told her. In speaking of those
days she says:

"I listened breathlessly to his war stories. Illustrations were called
for, and we made battles and fought them. Every shade of military
etiquette was regarded. Colonels, captains, and sergeants were given
their proper p