Page:Women of distinction.djvu/200

146 "the valley of the shadow of death" that through a bloody war the nation might rise to freedom, and these voung people determined to dedicate themselves to the service of their people and the strict performance of every duty, the young wife and mother even giving her consent to the urgent request of the husband to let him go to the front with the afterwards famous Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, but when he presented himself as a volunteer he was rejected because of chronic near-sightedness. They afterwards became active members of that home guard who, through the medium of the Sanitary Commission, worked incessantly at home and at church, making, mending and praying for the soldiers at the front.

With the return of peace and prosperity came the opportunity to devote themselves to the making of their own and their children's lives an example and a stimulus to others; it was then (at the close of the Civil War) that Mr. Ruffin entered the Howard Law School, and at the same time such education of their children was begun as would enable them (the children) to compete for and hold an honorable place in the moral, intellectual and industrial life of their native city. The father lived just long enough to see his children all started on their different careers, and died one year after he had been made Judge of the Charlestown Court. Five years after the death of the husband and father the eldest born followed.

During the life of her husband Mrs. Rufifin's interests were so identified with his that the history of one is