Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/381

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OUR WOMEN IN JOURNALIMS.
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Association in 1887. On this subject she is not a loud clamorer for "Rights," but, nevertheless, she quietly and tenaciously demands all that is due her.

Her newspaper work began in 1886, and she was then introduced to journalism and the fellowship of the fraternity. Her contribution, "Nothing but Leaves," in The American Baptist, is indeed one of her ablest efforts. The following strong sentences are worthy of note: "We are pointed to great men who have made themselves famous in this world. Some are praised for their oratory, some for their fine learning, some for their benevolence and various other qualities, which are all good enough; but they, within themselves, are nothing but leaves, which fall to the ground in their autumnal days and return to dust. True fruit is holiness of heart, and clusters, ripened by the grace of God, be they found in persons ever so lowly, hang higher than all the growth of the intellectual powers. Fruit is the evidence of culture. Leaves grow with little care, and they, with all their beauty, are not the essential part of the plant; but the chief aim of a plant, and the object for which it spends its whole life, is to bear fruit. So the highest aim of God's creation is our fruit-bearing."

Having been converted in 1876, she herein shows the character of a developed spirituality. She is a noble-hearted woman, full of blessings and love; a woman with a soul deeply divine.

In 1887 she edited a column of The South Carolina Tribune. At the same time she controlled a column in The American Baptist. She writes under the name of Grace Ermine. She is a strong, graceful, vigorous writer, and tends to the argumentative, pointed, terse style. One understands what she means when she speaks. When writing concerning the outrages in the South, she said: "White faces seem to think it their heaven-born right to practice civil war on negroes, to