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 them expressed it,
"to be education, and not to work.
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