en weeks. The negro seems to have received in the first years of the
new regime a fair share of the school money, but that share was not
large. The reaction from Reconstruction extravagance was long-continued,
and perhaps has not disappeared today.

Though the South was unable properly to support one efficient system, it
now attempted to maintain two, one for whites and the other for blacks.
Necessarily both systems were inadequate. The usual country school was only
a rude frame or log building, sometimes without glass windows, in which one
untrained teacher, without apparatus or the simplest conveniences,
attempted to give instruction in at least half a dozen subjects to a group
of children of all ages during a period of ten to fifteen weeks a year.
Often even this meager period was divided into a summer and winter term, on
the plea that the older children could not be spared from the farms for the
whole time or that bad roads and stormy weather prevented the youngest from
attending during the winter.

Though it seems almost incredible under such conditions, something was
nevertheless accomplished. Many children, it is true, learned little or
nothing and gave up the pretense of attending school. Others, however,
found something to feed their hungry minds and, when they had exhausted
what their neighborhood school had to offer, they attended the academies
which had been reestablished or had sprung up in the villages nearby or
at the countyseat. Between 1875 and 1890, it was not at all uncommon to
find in such academies grown men and women studying the regular high school
subjects. Some had previously taught rural schools and now sought further
instruction; and others had worked on the farms or had been in business.
Men of twenty-five or thirty sat in classes with town children of fifteen
or sixteen, but made such a large proportion of the total attendance that
they did not feel embarrassed by the contrast in ages.

In the eighties there were scores of these academies, institutes, and
seminaries in the towns of the South. They were not well graded; the
teachers may never have heard of pedagogy. Their libraries were small or
altogether lacking, and their apparatus was scanty; but in spite of
these drawbacks an unusually large proportion of the students were
desirous to learn. Many teachers loved mathematics or Latin, and some of
the students gained a thorough if narrow preparation for college. An
examination of college r