eived hundreds of
letters from anxious parents asking for news of their boys. There were
eighty thousand missing men whose families had no knowledge whether
they were alive or dead. In despair, and believing that Clara Barton
had more information of the soldiers than any one else to whom he
could turn, the President requested her to take up the task, and the
army nurse's tender heart was touched by the thought of helping so
many mothers who had no news of their boys, and she went to work,
aided by the hospital and burial lists she had compiled when on the
field of action.

For four years she did this work, and it was a touching scene when she
was called before the Committee on Investigation to tell of its
results. With quiet simplicity she stood before the row of men and
reported, "Over thirty thousand men, living and dead, already traced.
No available funds for the necessary investigation; in consequence,
over eight thousand dollars of my own income spent in the search."

As the men confronting her heard the words of the bright-eyed woman
who was looked on as a sister by the soldiers from Maine to Virginia,
whose name was a household one throughout the land, not one of them
was ashamed to wipe the tears from his eyes! Later the government paid
her back in part the money she had spent in her work; but she gave her
time without charge as well as many a dollar which was never returned,
counting it enough reward to read the joyful letters from happy,
reunited families.

While doing this work she gave over three hundred lectures through the
East and West, and as a speaker she held her audiences as if by magic,
for she spoke glowingly about the work nearest to her heart, giving
the proceeds of her lectures to the continuance of that work. One
evening in the winter of 1868, when speaking in one of the finest
opera-houses in the East, before one of the most brilliant assemblages
she had ever faced, her voice suddenly gave out, as it had in the days
when she was teaching. The heroic army nurse and worker for the
soldiers was worn out in body and nerves. As soon as she was able to
travel the doctor commanded that she take three years of absolute
rest. Obeying the order, she sailed for Europe, and in peaceful
Switzerland with its natural beauty hoped to regain normal strength;
for her own country had emerged from the black shadow of war, and she
felt that her life work had been accomplished, that rest could
henceforth be her