He saw that Negroes would only build and occupy an office when the white man refused to rent him anything but the attic--and not even that sometimes. So, with a flare, a blaze and a roar, out came _The Independent_, and said that the AAASSSSBBBBGG lodge had decided to erect an office building of its own. It was to be six stories in height, of brick, with stone cornices, and what not. Moreover, a picture of it completed appeared on the front page of _The Independent_. That finished it! They prepared to send him to the mad-house, and forthwith gathered for that purpose, which was what Dickson wanted. They arrived in twos, threes and fours, and then in droves. To the tune and number of thousands they came and were met (?) by a brass band! And away went the music: "Ta-ra--ta--ta-ti-rip-i-ta-ta-ta-tu!" It got into the Negro blood. Music, of all things, always has effect. Before they were aware of it, they were cake-walkin' and doin' the grizzly bear, and it has also been whispered confidentially, that two preachers, high and mighty in the order, "balled the jack." The music stopped for a spell. Through the crowd--the black crowd--came a cry, "Arrah! Arrah! for the Negro, the greatest race since the coming of Christ!" And it was answered: "Arrah! Arrah! So we is. Who said we wasn't!" "The white man!" came back the reply. "He's a liah!" went back the words heatedly. "If so, then," came back, "why do we continue to do our business in his attic? Why?" This was a shock. But before recovery, sayeth the cry: "$50,000 odd we have in the treasury to care for the sick and bury the dead! With $60,000 more we can have a building all our own, with elevators and mirrors and a thousand things, with our own girls to tickle the type and scratch on the books." A wild dream flitted across the minds of these black men, the underdogs, the slaves for a thousand years; their wives, the cooks and the scrub women; their daughters, the lust of the beast. And then from somewhere came another cry. It was soft and low, but firm and regular. It came from a body of women, black women. "With our hands, from the white people's pot, we will give unto thee thousands, and back again to the pots we will go and slave, until our old bones can slave no more, and pay, and pay until a mighty building, the picture of which we have seen, shall stand as a monument to the effort of BLACK PEOPLE!" And now there was a scramble to the front! It was a scramble as had never been seen in Attalia before! $60,000 was fairly thrown over the heads of one another to B.J. DICKSON, the grand secretary. * * * * *