hen there was a community hearse in a country
neighborhood, and carpenters made the coffins, a young man, who was
ashamed of the old worn-out hearse, went about soliciting money to
purchase a new one. Presenting the purpose to an old man of means, he
received from this selfish citizen the reply:

"I won't give you a dollar. I helped to buy the old hearse twenty
years ago, and neither me nor my family have ever had any benefit from
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
"Red Cross of Geneva;" and in the great day of reward, He who bore the
cross for us all will place upon Clara Barton the crown of eternal
life.

When my wife was president of the House of Mercy, in Lexington,
Kentucky, a home for the rescue of fallen girls, she went in her
carriage to a dentist with one of the unfortunate inmates.

Soon after a business man of the city said to me: "I hardly see how
you can give your consent to have your wife do such work. I saw her
recently in her carriage with