en you're ready to report, come and see me, or write
to me, if I am not here."

The result was the setting in motion of a stagnant pool. Who can
measure the force of hope? The town had been neglected by mission
boards. No able or ambitious Negro had risen from its midst to found
an institution and find a career. The coloured school received a
grudging dole from the public funds, and was left entirely to the
supervision of the coloured people. It would have been surprising had
the money always been expended to the best advantage.

The fact that a white man, in some sense a local man, who had yet come
from the far North, the land of plenty, with feelings friendly to
their advancement, had taken a personal interest in their welfare and
proved it by his presence among them, gave them hope and inspiration
for the future. They had long been familiar with the friendship that
curbed, restricted and restrained, and concerned itself mainly with
their limitations. They were almost hysterically eager to welcome the
co-operation of a friend who, in seeking to lift them up, was obsessed
by no fear of pulling himself down or of narrowing in some degree the
gulf that separated them--who was willing not only to help them, but
to help them to a condition in which they might be in less need of
help. The colonel touched the reserves of loyalty in the Negro nature,
exemplified in old Peter and such as he. Who knows, had these reserves
been reached sooner by strict justice and patient kindness, that they
might not long since have helped to heal the wounds of slavery?

"And now, Laura," said the colonel, "when we have improved the schools
and educated the people, we must give them something to occupy their
minds. We must have a library, a public library."

"That will be splendid!" she replied with enthusiasm.

"A public library," continued the colonel, "housed in a beautiful
building, in a conspicuous place, and decorated in an artistic
manner--a shrine of intellect and taste, at which all the people, rich
and poor, black and white, may worship."

Miss Laura was silent for a moment, and thoughtful.

"But, Henry," she said with some hesitation, "do you mean that
coloured people should use the library?"

"Why not?" he asked. "Do they not need it most? Perhaps not many of
them might wish to use it; but to those who do, should we deny the
opportunity? Consider their teachers--if the blind lead the blind,
shall they not both fall into the