Page:Women of distinction.djvu/365

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
291

having spent three years there, during which she supported herself by teaching, etc.

Returning to Brooklyn, she remained awhile and then went to Newbern, N. C. It was while at this town (last named) she was called upon by a committee to read the poem on emancipation celebration day. She accepted the invitation, but afterwards remembering that she had not a decent dress to wear. what to do was the Question. Finally she succeeded in borrowing a dress of a friend. This necessity so humiliated the girl of tender years that she resolved that since she was compelled by necessity to read in a borrowed dress she would not (as was the custom) read a borrowed poem. She set to work and made a poem from her own original brain and read it upon the occasion mentioned. It so stirred the people that it yet lives in the memory of many who heard it.

Some time was spent in teaching school throughout North Carolina at various points. She then came to Raleigh, N. C., and was married to Mr. William R. Harris, to whom she had been engaged for six or seven years, and who was, at the time of marriage, a teacher in St. Augustine Normal School. Just eight months after this happy union she was left a widow.

After the death of her husband she taught one year in St. Augustine Normal School, and from there accepted a position in the city graded schools of Raleigh, and at the same time edited the "Woman's Column' in the Outlook. Now health at this time fails, and a hospital operation is the only very slight hope. Death stares her in the face, for the chances were that she