tted to the privileges of the schoolroom. It was not
surprising that the whole race tried to go to school, and it need not
surprise us if, in the enthusiasm for book-learning, from which the
race had been so strictly debarred, too much stress may have been
placed on mere book learning and too much confidence placed in the
formal processes of the schoolroom. But, better even this exaggerated
enthusiasm than indifference to all education of the schoolroom. The
race would soon learn that the blue-back Webster's Speller was not the
magic wand that would turn all troubles and difficulties into success
and prosperity; that the ability to spell B-a-Ba, k-e-r-ker, baker,
would buy no bread of the baker; while the power to read, "Do we go up
by it!" with painful praiseworthy effort, would help the ex-slave but
little as he strove to "go up by" the dangers ahead of him.

But they went to school, all of them at first, or all that could
possibly do so, either by day or by night. It is not recorded that
the chickens of that time had rest, but it must be that they did, for
verily, in the first mad rush of letters, even chickens must have been
forgotten by a race whose predilection for them has furnished the
point for many a joke, as well as the occasion for painful if not
indignant regret on the part of those whose fowls may have been
abstracted. And it is a hopeful sign for the future of the Negro that
while his first wild enthusiasm for the school-house has been
moderated, his real desire for educational improvement continues
strong and steady. He will go to school--the public school--when he
can, and the higher institutions for his race are all filled to their
capacity and are expanding. Will not this thirst for knowledge on the
part of a so lately savage race bear good fruit both for the Negro and
for humanity?

But who were to teach these black fanatics, seeking initiation for the
first time, in the long and gloomy history of their race, into the
mysteries, elusinian, of a modern, and, to them, totally foreign cult?
A faithful band of Christian missionary white women gave answer by
coming in the face of an inevitable social ostracism to light the
torch of thought in a region hitherto unblessed by a single ray of
education's light. The first Negro schools were taught by these white
ladies at Charleston, at Atlanta, at Montgomery, at New Orleans, at
Austin, and at the other great centers of the South's Negro
population. The succ