was, at her own request, transferred to the railroad division of the General Land Office.  Her duties were to copy railroad decisions, and the work being merely routine clerical work, she took up typewriting, hoping to advance herself thereby.  This caused her to be transferred to the contest division, and later she was assigned to a desk requiring original work, and her duties were to promulgate decisions of the Department.  From this time on the grade of her work was raised until she was promoted to $1,400, by which time she had become familiar with the entire work of the division.  She soon found that a knowledge of the law of Congress disposing of the public domain and familiarity with the rules of practice and decisions of the General Land Office and of the Department alone were not sufficient to enable her to perform her work in a manner satisfactory to herself, however satisfactory to the Department, and she therefore took up a regular four years’ law course and graduated with credit to herself and her college.

How satisfactorily she does her work is shown by the fact that out of sixty appeals from her decisions rendered during a period of six months, decisions involving thousands of dollars, only one was reversed and one modified, and this because of new matter being filed after the decisions were rendered by her.

Mrs. ——­ also enjoys the distinction of holding a law desk in the General Land Office, having been transferred to it from the Census Office, where she had been dealing with mathematical problems.  It was found that a $1,600 clerk was back in his work with 300 cases which it was necessary to have adjudicated.  The bringing this work up to date was assigned to her.  Prior to this she had written a few decisions.  She was at first appalled at the decree, but went bravely to work with a determination to succeed.  How well she succeeded can be ascertained by the records of the office.  Later she was transferred at her own request from the public land division to the contest or law division.  Her experience gained in the Land Office taught her how to adjudicate contest cases, and she was often required to bring up work of the principal law examiners when in arrears.

Miss ——­ was assigned to duty on Board of Pension Appeals to typewrite decisions for signature of the Assistant Secretary and act as his stenographer.  Afterwards transferred to patents and miscellaneous division of the Secretary’s Office.  Duties:  Stenographer and typewriting; indexing; in charge of issuing authorities for open market purchases to the Geological Survey and to Howard University, and issuance of permits for admission to the Government Hospital for the Insane, and to Freedmen’s Hospital and Asylum; assistant in abstracting various reports to be embodied in the Secretary’s annual report to the President.  A knowledge of law was of considerable assistance in the work of the division, and after entering