future for the race with which she was identified, and felt the grandeur of a divine commission to labor for its uplifting.
As Dr. Gresham was parting with Robert, he said: "This meeting has been a very unexpected pleasure. I have spent a delightful evening. I only regret that I had not others to share it with me. A doctor from the South, a regular Bourbon, is stopping at the hotel. I wish he could have been here to-night. Come down to the Concordia, Mr. Johnson, to-morrow night. If you know any colored man who is a strong champion of equal rights, bring him along. Good-night. I shall look for you," said the doctor, as he left the door.
When Robert returned to the parlor he said to Iola: "Dr. Gresham has invited me to come to his hotel tomorrow night, and to bring some wide-awake colored man with me. There is a Southerner whom he wishes me to meet. I suppose he wants to discuss the negro problem, as they call it. He wants some one who can do justice to the subject. I wonder whom I can take with me?"
"I will tell you who, I think, will be a capital one to take with you, and I believe he would go," said Iola.
"Who?" asked Robert.
"Rev. Carmicle, your pastor."
"He is just the one," said Robert, "courteous in his manner and very scholarly in his attainments. He is a man whom if everybody hated him no one could despise him."
