a centre of polite
society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment
between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment
which forms the secret of civilization. Such an institution the South
of to-day sorely needs. She has religion, earnest, bigoted:--religion
that on both sides the Veil often omits the sixth, seventh, and eighth
commandments, but substitutes a dozen supplementary ones. She has, as
Atlanta shows, growing thrift and love of toil; but she lacks that
broad knowledge of what the world knows and knew of human living and
doing, which she may apply to the thousand problems of real life to-day
confronting her. The need of the South is knowledge and culture,--not
in dainty limited quantity, as before the war, but in broad busy
abundance in the world of work; and until she has this, not all the
Apples of Hesperides, be they golden and bejewelled, can save her from
the curse of the Boeotian lovers.

The Wings of Atalanta are the coming universities of the South. They
alone can bear the maiden past the temptation of golden fruit. They
will not guide her flying feet away from the cotton and gold; for--ah,
thoughtful Hippomenes!--do not the apples lie in the very Way of Life?
But they will guide her over and beyond them, and leave her kneeling in
the Sanctuary of Truth and Freedom and broad Humanity, virgin and
undefiled. Sadly did the Old South err in human education, despising
the education of the masses, and niggardly in the support of colleges.
Her ancient university foundations dwindled and withered under the foul
breath of slavery; and even since the war they have fought a failing
fight for life in the tainted air of social unrest and commercial
selfishness, stunted by the death of criticism, and starving for lack
of broadly cultured men. And if this is the white South's need and
danger, how much heavier the danger and need of the freedmen's sons!
how pressing here the need of broad ideals and true culture, the
conservation of soul from sordid aims and petty passions! Let us build
the Southern university--William and Mary, Trinity, Georgia, Texas,
Tulane, Vanderbilt, and the others--fit to live; let us build, too, the
Negro universities:--Fisk, whose foundation was ever broad; Howard, at
the heart of the Nation; Atlanta at Atlanta, whose ideal of scholarship
has been held above the temptation of numbers. Why not here, and
perhaps elsewhere, plant deeply and for all time