from
several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition
among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
would not have to work any longer with their hands.

This is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in Alabama, who,
one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly
stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: "O Lawd, de cotton am
so grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat I b'lieve dis
darky am called to preach!"

About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time when
we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into market
for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated about a
mile from the town of Tuskegee. The mansion house--or "big house," as
it would have been called--which had been occupied by the owners during
slavery, had been burned. After making a careful examination of the
place, it seemed to be just the location that we wanted in order to make
our work effective and permanent.

But how were we to get it? The price asked for it was very little--only
five hundred dollars--but we had no money, and we were strangers in the
town and had no credit. The owner of the land agreed to let us occupy
the place if we could make a payment of two hundred and fifty dollars
down, with the understanding that the remaining two hundred and fifty
dollars must be paid within a year. Although five hundred dollars was
cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did not have any part of
it.

In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
wrote to my friend General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton
Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him to lend
me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal responsibility.
Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he had no authority to
lend me the money belonging to the Hampton Institute, but that he would
gladly lend me the amount needed from his own personal funds.

I confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great
surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification. Up to that time I
never had had in my possession so much money as one hundred dollars at
a time, and the loan which I had asked General Marshall for seemed a
tremendously large sum to me. The fact of my being responsible for the
repaying of such a large amount of money weighed very heavily upon me.

I