Farewell to Miss Barton
How shall we thank Miss Clara Barton and the Red Cross for the help they have given us? It cannot be done; and if it could, Miss Barton does not want our thanks. She has simply done her duty as she saw it and received her pay—the consciousness of a duty performed to the best of her ability. To see us upon our feet, struggling forward, helping ourselves, caring for the sick and infirm and impoverished—that is enough for Miss Barton. Her idea has been fully worked out, all her plans accomplished. What more could such a woman wish?
We cannot thank Miss Barton in words. Hunt the dictionaries of all languages through and you will not find the signs to express our appreciation of her and her work. Try to describe the sunshine. Try to describe the starlight. Words fail, and in dumbness and silence we bow to the idea which brought her here. God and humanity! Never were they more closely linked than in stricken Johnstown.
Men are brothers! Yes, and sisters, too, if Miss Barton pleases. The first to come, the last to go, she has indeed been an elder sister to us—nursing, soothing, tending, caring for the stricken ones through a season of distress such as no other people ever knew—such as, God grant, no other people may ever know. The idea crystallized, put into practice. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” “Even as ye have done it unto the least of these, so also have ye done it unto Me!” Christianity applied, Nature appeased and satisfied. This has been Miss Barton’s work, and nobly has she done it.
Picture the sunlight or the starlight, and then try to say good-bye to Miss Barton. As well try to escape from yourself by running to the mountains. “I go, but I return” is as true of her as of Him who said it. There is really no parting. She is with us, she will be with us always—the spirit of her work even after she has passed away.
But we can say God bless you, and we do say it, Miss Barton, from the bottom of our hearts, one and all.
Some bard, whose name I do not know, but whose sad, lovely words frequently recur to me, has commemorated the disaster of the Conemaugh in the following beautiful poem, which, I think, is worthy of preservation:
“THE DREAD CONEMAUGH.”
I tarried in Conemaugh Valley
One beautiful morning in spring,
And loveliness mantled the mountains,
The meadows and everything.
The breezes were laden with odor
Akin to the blossoming rose,
And happiness brightened the faces
Of people refreshed by repose.
But death, the remorseless destroyer,
Looked down on the valley, so green,
Beheld the quaint homes on the hillsides,
The towns nestled snugly between,
And, hungry for awful disaster,
For grief, lamentation and tears,
Death paused where a lake in the mountains
Had shimmered untroubled for years.
The water grew dark in his presence,
Grew dark in the presence of death,
And shrank from the terrible visage,
Away from his poisonous breath.
A tempest came forth in its fury
And soon with an ominous flow
The overcharged lake in the mountains
Plunged into the valley below.
A rumble, a roar, and destruction
Came down with the pitiless flood
To stifle the cry of the wicked
To silence the prayer of the good;
Like straws in a bubbling cauldron
These homes in the valley were tossed
Away on the hurrying waters,
Along with the dying and lost.
There brother was taken from brother,
The false were destroyed with the true.
There lovers were torn from each other
With never a parting adieu.
Confusion wrought havoc so wanton
That mercy grew deaf for a while,
And beings, half demon, made merry
On Conemaugh’s funeral pile.
But Heaven will surely remember
The names of the noble who died
To rescue their perishing brothers
From death in that horrible tide.
For some of the noblest heroes
That ever calamity saw,
Repose uninterred in the valley
Where wanders the dread Conemaugh.
The incidents attending a field of relief—some pathetic and sorrowful, others laughable and ludicrous—so loom up in the memory when the subject is opened, as almost to encumber the pen as one writes. Referring to our landlady at Locust Street Hotel, Mrs. Henrie, one recalls her wonderful experience during the night of the flood. By some means, entirely alone, she floated down the stream, not only through Johnstown, but miles below in the darkness of the night, until some time next day perhaps she managed to stay herself in a tree-top, where she clung among the branches, her clothing torn from her in shreds during her struggle for life, until discovered and taken away.
The family of Mr. John Tittle, one of the oldest, most respected and beloved in the town, floated clinging to the top of their house, without knowing that they were moving, but thought others were moving as they passed them; until at length, fearing that Mrs. Tittle’s strength and courage would fail, her husband joined hands with her firmly over the ridge-pole, and thus they hung on opposite sides of the roof through the long night. The courage and strength did often fail, and her pleading went out to her husband: “Oh, let us let go and end it, John! We cannot escape! I cannot endure it longer!” to be answered by his words of hope and cheer and a tightened grasp on the aching wrists. At length, near morning, having reached the vicinity of Kernville, the house struck the bridge and remained stationary. One by one the inmates slid onto the bridge and gained the land on the Kernville side.
They had left within the house, unable to be gotten out, the old, decrepit black mammy of a lifetime, the great silky-haired setter, “Rob,” and the poll-parrot hanging in her cage. All had been transferred, as the water rose, to the topmost peak of the attic, where they were left to their fate. The great bread-wagons of Pittsburg, with their sturdy policemen, were already there; the dead and the living were being picked up together as they floated down. Some consciousness began to return to the dazed survivors, and at length it was thought safe to attempt an entrance to the Tittle mansion, still floating at the bridge.
On gaining the attic, this picture as described at the time, presented itself: the water had never quite reached it; Poor, old mammy sat in the highest corner, with hands clasped, her chin resting on her knees, and her lips muttering her woes and her prayers; long-eared, silky-haired “Rob,” no longer a “setter” at least, bounding and roaring a welcome that required physical strength to resist; and “poll,” her cage topsy-turvy, striding about the floor, with an air of offended dignity, hungry and cross, said “she had had a devil of a time.”
During one of the early days Mr. K., a citizen of the town, came into my tent, bringing with him another man—tall, firmly knit, dark visaged, with hair tangled and matted, and still the bearing of a man if not a gentleman. On introducing his companion, Mr. K. said that he had been exceedingly unfortunate, and he had brought him to me to see if anything could be done for him. “I hoped so,” and turned to inquire what was most needed. “Had he a family; did they want food, or clothing? Had he little children?” His face grew darker still and his frown deeper, as at length, in a tone approaching contempt, he replied: “No; I don’t want anything you can give; you have nothing for me.” I had still the courage to persevere, and added, “What would you have me do, if I could do it?” Again a silence and a mental struggle that shook his whole frame, as he half hissed between clenched teeth, “Let me look on the face of one dead child;” and rushing from the tent, he disappeared from me forever.
He had had five motherless children, for whom he toiled early and late in the great Cambria Iron Mills. The flood swept his little home before he could reach it, and every child was lost. He had wandered about the river banks, watched the receding waters, dug in the sands for the little bodies hidden beneath, until reason had given way—till even God seemed cruel and mankind weak idiots.