At
this school I found the students, in most cases, had more money, were
better dressed, wore the latest style of all manner of clothing, and
in some cases were more brilliant mentally. At Hampton it was a
standing rule that, while the institution would be responsible for
securing some one to pay the tuition for the students, the men and
women themselves must provide for their own board, books, clothing,
and room wholly by work, or partly by work and partly in cash. At the
institution at which I now was, I found that a large portion of the
students by some means had their personal expenses paid for them. At
Hampton the student was constantly making the effort through the
industries to help himself, and that very effort was of immense value
in character-building. The students at the other school seemed to be
less self-dependent. They seemed to give more attention to mere
outward appearances. In a word, they did not appear to me to be
beginning at the bottom, on a real, solid foundation, to the extent
that they were at Hampton. They knew more about Latin and Greek when
they left school, but they seemed to know less about life and its
conditions as they would meet it at their homes. Having lived for a
number of years in the midst of comfortable surroundings, they were
not as much inclined as the Hampton students to go into the country
districts of the South, where there was little of comfort, to take up
work for our people, and they were more inclined to yield to the
temptation to become hotel waiters and Pullman-car porters as their
life-work.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95