past for emancipation. She was busy with her hands, busier with her brain, and her spiritual nature was like a spring of sweet waters, overflowing in bounteous blessing on all around. Of the great painter Leonardo da Vinci, his biographer says: "He always saw four things he wanted to do at once." Our friend always saw many more. Her mind was teeming not only with ideals as beautiful as those of the great artist, but with practical plans to educate the ignorant, and lift them to self-support and self-protection. Her being was instinct with constructive and spiritual force.
It would be hard to find any sphere of woman's activity in which she had not been leader. Believing that "the manifest intention of nature is the perfection of man," she faithfully did her part. In the laborious and the menial she served the colored poor, while she neglected no opportunity to open their spiritual vision. She fed, warmed, and clothed them; ministered to the sick; attended the dying; procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the hymns at their funerals. She instructed them in their Sunday meetings, and gained release for those in prison for petty offences, or for those unjustly accused. Soldiers often appealed to her to assist and aid them. Her work at the jails was very wearing, for the poor creatures, not unfrequently the mother of an infant left at home, arrested for an imaginary offense, or for stealing bread to avert starvation, would plead so hard for her to get them released, and had such full faith that she could, that it was a constant tax upon her sympathy and strength, as was all her work connected with them.
Josephine Griffing had to deal too much with the realities of life and death to make many records of her work, save those required in the routine of her office. These were mostly kept by her daughter Emma, her official assistant. But the substance of what was done in these years may be found in the archives of the Government. On the calendar of both Houses of Congress, in the Congressional Globe, in the War Office, in the Freedman's Bureau, in the offices of District Government and District Courts, and perhaps in the prisons, the future historian may find abundant records of the patient and humane labors of this merciful, vigilant, and untiring woman. Whether he finds them in her name is not so certain!
Mrs. Griffing not only devoted to these people the six days of the week allotted to labor, but her Sundays were given to public ministrations as well as private visits to the distant and aged, unable to come to the Relief rooms during the week. But for a real picture of the condition of these people, nothing can be more graphic or
