Beacons of Light: The Education of the Afro-Texan
Sketch from Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities
by Monroe Alphus Majors
MRS.
N. A. R. LESLIE Pianist Music Teacher. The biography of Mrs.
Leslie would necessitate a lengthy, but pleasing account of her busy life
oven in the realm of music. It is not our purpose to make the least
attempt to say half that might be said in her favor. For many years she
has figured very conspicuously among the very best musicians of the race,
in fact her field of usefulness takes in a wide scope of country not only
many of the Southern States, but Indian Territory. She is now located at
Corpus Christ!, Texas, where she has started a musical conservatory
wherein our ladies may pursue to completion the lyric art.
For many years those of our race that were musically inclined were almost compelled to leave the State, travel over a wide stretch of country and under great expenses, in order to so fit themselves suffer the disadvantage of absence from the home circle. Mrs. Leslie finally concluded that Corpus Christi would be a good field for her activities, it being the home of her brother, Prof. Cole that erudite scholar from the classic Halls of Yale College, and hence moved there from Muscogee Indian Territory 1892. Since there her practical life has added much to the social status of our race, and in molding public sentiment from the standpoint of music. Words seem indeed very dull when we attempt to give the slightest hint of the good she has accomplished. What Prof. Cole is, as a scholar, she is, as a musician. It has always been the disposition of this talented lady to excel in music, and those who have been under her painstaking instruction, or those who have had the pleasure of giving themselves up to listen to the plaintive notes under her mellifluous execution, join in the universal verdict that the spell o'er cast is not only delightful, but entrancing.
Music indeed though termed easy of accomplishment, and considered not a task, is really one of the finest arts which if acquired becomes for the scholar one of the divinest arts, and made more noticeable in proportion to the complication of it. It has long been sorely abused especially when we consider the rude appellation applied to us as a musical race — Musical in the rough. Why not musical in the fine?
Mrs. Leslie is demonstrating wonderfully and well in a peculiar section of country, what our women can do in the art and science of music. She is not only talented as a render and performer of her art, but is a composer of some prominence.
Her fort however lies in the imparting to her pupil with ease, what she does and knows.
Aside from music, she is scholarly, gifted with force of character and the impress of her genius leaves the germ of ambition wherever it is stamped.
Hence the race, which has produced other great minds to shine forth proclaiming progress in various walks of life may feel proud of Mrs. Leslie who along with many more of her sex. is doing what she can to explode the doctrine of inferior music and the appellation, musical race in the rough Much is accomplished with hard labor, and nothing without. With our subject as with all who succeed it is labor omnia vinccl.