her first contribution to the public press was made to The Virginia Star, then the only colored organ in the state. This article was entitled 'A Talk About Church Fairs,' and was a protest against selling wine at entertainments given by church members for the benefit of the church. It elicited much favorable comment; and from that time on, Miss Turpin continued to. write at intervals for the newspapers, always finding ready welcome and generous encouragement from the press and people."
With an irrepressible desire to continue her literary work, she has written for The Virginia Star, Industrial Herald, Planet, New York Globe, New York Freeman, Christian Recorder, and also for The A. M. E. Church Review, and is still a contributor to some of them and other journals.
Concerning some of her best contributions to the press, Mrs. Mossell, the gifted writer, says: "Her subjects have been various,—educational, moral, social, racial, and purely literary. Among her most popular productions are probably the following: A series of descriptive papers written to The Industrial Herald, of Richmond, during a six-weeks' stay in New York and Boston, in the summer of 1883; "Paul's Trade and the Use he Made of it," read before the Baptist Sunday-school Union of Washington, D. C., and afterwards published in The Christian Recorder; "Notes to Girls," a series of letters in The People's Advocate; "Higher Education for Women," an oration before the Young Ladies' Literary Society of Howard University, at their public meeting in 1885, and subsequently printed in The People's Advocate; "The Hero of Harper's Ferry," delivered at the junior exhibition of the class of 1886 of Howard University, of which she was a member; a reply in The New York Freeman to Annie Porter, who had published in The Independent a vigorous onslaught against the negroes; "The Remedy for War,"—her graduating oration, since given to the public in
