s, too, and parents were anxious to see what the wonderful
little bright-eyed, friendly woman could do for their children. At the
end of five weeks the building was too small for her scholars, and the
roll-call had almost six hundred names on it. To a triumphant teacher
who had volunteered her services to try an experiment, a regular
salary was now offered and an assistant given her. And so Clara Barton
again proved her talent for teaching.

But Bordentown was her last school. When she had been there for two
years and perfected the public-school system, her voice gave out as a
result of constant use, and she went to Washington for a rest. But it
did not take her long to recuperate, and soon she was eagerly looking
out for some new avenue of opportunity to take the place of teaching.
Government work interested her, and she heard rumors of scandals in
the Patent Office, where some dishonest clerks had been copying and
selling the ideas of inventors who had filed patents. This roused her
anger, for she felt the inventors were defrauded and undefended
individuals who needed a protector. As her brother's bookkeeper, she
had developed a clear, copper-plate handwriting, which would aid her
in trying to get the position she determined to try for. Through a
relative in Congress she secured a position in the Patent Office, and
when it was proved that she was acceptable there, although she was the
first woman ever appointed independently to a clerkship in the
department, she was given charge of a confidential desk, where she had
the care of such papers as had not been carefully enough guarded
before. Her salary of $1,400 a year was as much as was received by the
men in the department, which created much jealousy, and she had many
sneers and snubs and much disagreeable treatment from the other
clerks; but she went serenely on her way, doing her duty and enjoying
the new line of work with its chances for observation of the
government and its working.

War clouds were now beginning to gather over both North and South, and
signs of an approaching conflict were ominously clear in Washington,
where slavery sentiments swayed all departments. Clara Barton saw with
keen mental vision all the signs of the times, and there was much to
worry her, for from the first she was clearly and uncompromisingly on
the unpopular side of the disturbing question, and believed with
Charles Sumner that "Freedom is national; slavery is sectional." She
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