“How?” asked I.
“Oh, we will try to raise enough on the two acres to live on.”
“You cannot raise enough to live on very soon; have you no other resource?”
“I have not.”
“Is there any school in Wytheville in which to educate your boys?”
“No, sir.”
“You think they ought to be educated, don't you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have been very profuse in your thanks to me for what I have done,” said I. “I wish you would put your expressions in writing, and write them as well as you can. I am going out to be gone ten or fifteen minutes, and will see you when I return.”
I came back after a little time, and she handed me the note very nicely and quite clerkly written. “Well,” I said, “I think I may be able to do something for you. Come back day after to-morrow and I will see what I can do.”
The next day I called upon the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and asked him if he had a vacancy for a woman who wrote a good hand and spelled well and was fully educated up to that class of duties.
“I am a good deal pressed,” he said, “but possibly I can make an appointment.”
“Well,” I said, “Mr. Commissioner, mine is a very special case and I want you, if possible, to do it.” I then told him the story and said: “You see I do not care to have a recommendation from me to go upon your files. She will keep her own name and that had better not be connected with mine so as to draw observation.”
“Very well,” he said, “her place will be a nine hundred dollar position. Send her with your card and she shall have it, and if she deserves it she shall hold it.”
She rented her house in Wytheville and took a small house in Washington. I saw her once in about six months or a year after that. She turned out to be a very good clerk, and was not disturbed
