ed
Miss Davidson was handed a check for fifty dollars. For some time before
our marriage, and also after it, Miss Davidson kept up the work of
securing money in the North and in the South by interesting people by
personal visits and through correspondence. At the same time she kept in
close touch with the work at Tuskegee, as lady principal and classroom
teacher. In addition to this, she worked among the older people in and
near Tuskegee, and taught a Sunday school class in the town. She was
never very strong, but never seemed happy unless she was giving all
of her strength to the cause which she loved. Often, at night, after
spending the day in going from door to door trying to interest persons
in the work at Tuskegee, she would be so exhausted that she could not
undress herself. A lady upon whom she called, in Boston, afterward told
me that at one time when Miss Davidson called her to see and send up her
card the lady was detained a little before she could see Miss Davidson,
and when she entered the parlour she found Miss Davidson so exhausted
that she had fallen asleep.

While putting up our first building, which was named Porter Hall, after
Mr. A.H. Porter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gave a generous sum toward
its erection, the need for money became acute. I had given one of our
creditors a promise that upon a certain day he should be paid four
hundred dollars. On the morning of that day we did not have a dollar.
The mail arrived at the school at ten o'clock, and in this mail there
was a check sent by Miss Davidson for exactly four hundred dollars.
I could relate many instances of almost the same character. This four
hundred dollars was given by two ladies in Boston. Two years later, when
the work at Tuskegee had grown considerably, and when we were in the
midst of a season when we were so much in need of money that the future
looked doubtful and gloomy, the same two Boston ladies sent us
six thousand dollars. Words cannot describe our surprise, or the
encouragement that the gift brought to us. Perhaps I might add here that
for fourteen years these same friends have sent us six thousand dollars
a year.

As soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the students began
digging out the earth where the foundations were to be laid, working
after the regular classes were over. They had not fully outgrown the
idea that it was hardly the proper thing for them to use their hands,
since they had come there, as one of th