class pre-eminently belongs Miss Clara Harlowe Barton.

Quiet, modest, and unassuming in manner and appearance, there is beneath
this quiet exterior an intense energy, a comprehensive intellect, a
resolute will, and an executive force, which is found in few of the
stronger sex, and which mingled with the tenderness and grace of refined
womanhood eminently qualifies her to become an independent power.

Miss Barton was born in North Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts.
Her father, Stephen Barton, Sr., was a man highly esteemed in the
community in which he dwelt, and by which his worth was most thoroughly
known. In early youth he had served as a soldier in the West under
General Wayne, the "Mad Anthony" of the early days of the Republic, and
his boyish eyes had witnessed the evacuation of Detroit by the British
in 1796. "His military training may have contributed to the sterling
uprightness, the inflexible will, and the devotion to law and order and
rightful authority for which he was distinguished." The little Clara was
the youngest by several years in a family of two brothers and three
sisters. She was early taught that primeval benediction, miscalled a
curse, which requires mankind to earn their bread. Besides domestic
duties and a very thorough public school training she learned the
general rules of business by acting as clerk and book-keeper for her
eldest brother. Next she betook herself to the district school, the
usual stepping-stone for all aspiring men and women in New England. She
taught for several years, commencing when very young, in various places
in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The large circle of friends thus formed
was not without its influence in determining her military career. So
many of her pupils volunteered in the first years of the war that at the
second battle of Bull Run she found seven of them, each of whom had lost
an arm or a leg.

"One example will show her character as a teacher. She went to
Bordentown, N. J., in 1853, where there was not, and never had been, a
public school. Three or four unsuccessful attempts had been made, and
the idea had been abandoned as not adapted to that latitude. The
brightest boys in the town ran untaught in the streets. She offered to
teach a free school for three months at her own expense, to convince the
citizens that it could be done; and she was laughed at as a visionary.
Six weeks of waiting and debating induced the authorities to fit up an
unoccupie