ed a few miles from the city, and needed
immediate assistance. She was requested by the Secretary of the
Commission to "visit the camps, make observations, inquire into their
needs, and report to the Commission." She reached the camp through
almost impassable roads, and was received by the officers with respect
and consideration, upon announcing the object of her visit. She made
calls upon the men in hospitals and quarters, returned to Washington,
reported "two hundred sick, tents and streets needing police, small pox
breaking out, men discouraged, and officers unable to procure the
necessary aid, that she had distributed a few jellies to the sick,
checker boards to a few of the tents, and made a requisition for
supplies to meet the pressing want." This little effort was the means of
affording speedy relief to many suffering men. She did not however feel
at liberty to abandon her hospital service, as we learn from a note in
her diary, that "this outside work does not seem to be my mission. I
have become thoroughly interested in my daily rounds at the city
hospitals, particularly at Georgetown Seminary, where my heart and
energies are fully enlisted." She passed several weeks in this service,
going from bed to bed with her little stores, which she dispensed under
instructions from the surgeon, without being known by name to the many
recipients of her attention and care.

The stores of the Commission were not then as ample as they afterward
became, when its noble aims had become more fully understood, and its
grand mission of benevolence more widely known, and the sick and wounded
were in need of many things not obtainable from either this source or
the Government supplies. Mrs. Parrish determined, therefore, to return
to her northern home and endeavor to interest the people of her
neighborhood in the cause she had so much at heart. She found the people
ready to respond liberally to her appeals, and soon returned to
Washington well satisfied with the success of her efforts.

She felt now that her time, and if need be her life, must be
consecrated to this work, and as her diary expresses it, she "could not
remain at home," and that if she could be of service in her new sphere
of labor she "must return."

After her brief absence, she re-entered the Georgetown Seminary
Hospital. Death had removed some of her former patients, others had
returned to duty, but others whom she left there welcomed her with
enthusiasm as the "o