Page:Contending Forces by Pauline Hopkins.djvu/281

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CHAPTER.
275

LANGLEY CONSULTS MADAM FRANCES. 275

voted such a tremendous success at the fair which had just closed. John believed that the seeress could help him, and he was not so polished and refined as to hesitate to use such means to accomplish an end.

When he reached the office he noticed that an invitation to a dinner given that very even- ing by the Canterbury Club lay upon the desk; in his absorption in other things he had for- eotten the dinner. He pushed his work at the Court House to a quick finish and retraced his steps to the office, and telling the boy that he would not return before three o'clock, hurried toward the quarter of the city in which the fortune-teller lived.

J. Street is in the very heart of what is called the “ Negro quarter” of the West End; it is also popularly known among colored people as “the Hill.” Here Madam Frances lived in a small ten-foot wooden building which she hired.

“ The Hill” has been the scene of many stir- ring incidents in the peculiar history of the colored people. On the J. Street side the old St. Paul’s Baptist Church is situated. This historic old building was the first church the colored people owned in Massachusetts. There were five brothers — black men — bear- ing the name of Paul, who were educated in

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