s
to combine their capital and launch enterprises that would make it
possible for their people to rise in keeping with the claims of merit,
unhampered by the fact of their color. She felt that the infusion of
hope in the industrial world, the breaking of the bands that hopelessly
chained the Negroes to the lower forms of labor was a question of far
reaching consequence, and in every way possible she brought the question
home to the hearts of the people.

To do this work the more successfully, Tiara took the lecture platform
and traveled from city to city, pleading her cause. She also took an
active interest in the question of local option, seeking to suppress the
liquor traffic wherever local sentiment could be educated to the point
that made such a course possible. This work of temperance brought her
very often before audiences in which there were white people and
Negroes, and sometimes she spoke to audiences in which there were white
people only.

It may be said with truth that Tiara was deeply concerned in all these
matters and sometimes felt that it was perhaps destiny's way of forcing
her out of a reserve that had hitherto denied the world the
benefit of some of her powers. But while her heart was in this work, it
must also be confessed that she never faced an audience but that her
beautiful eyes surveyed it with eagerness, ever in search of some one
woman face.

Her correspondence grew to be very large, and each batch of letters,
before being opened, was looked over hurriedly in the hope of finding a
certain woman's handwriting. A close student of countenances could have
discerned over and over the signs of disappointment that her weary heart
would often register upon her beautiful face. Days and months and then
years dragged their way slowly along.

At last one day Tiara's patient waiting seemed about to be rewarded. An
exclamation of joy, a happy little laugh, a beautiful face that told of
a weary heart at last made glad, indicated that the letter which Tiara
had long hoped for had come.

Tiara took the next train for Goldsboro, Mississippi, a small town in
the interior of the state. It was not until the next morning that her
train pulled up to her stopping place.

"Can you tell me where the Hon. Q. A. Johnson lives?"

"To be shuah, ma'am," said the Negro lad to whom Tiara had spoken. "Ef
you'll git right in heah, you'll be dah befoh yer know it, ma'am," said
he giving a Chesterfieldian bow.

As Tiara