to be
that of Booker Washington at Tuskegee to-day.

In some instances the pioneer teachers had to carry on their service
amid the lowest depths of squalor and wretchedness, even more repellent
than ragged-school work in the worst quarters of a great town. Thus, Mrs
Haviland, in her autobiography, tells how Dr Emily P. Newcomb, who was
said to come of a family of educators, bravely founded a station at
Kansas City, and herself superintended the work:--

"At this point there is massed a large population of exceedingly
ignorant, destitute and superstitious people of every colour and
condition--men, women and children--crowded together in rickety hovels,
where stagnant water stood the year round, the very air impregnated with
the heavy sickening odour of the packing-houses. No tongue or pen can
describe the wretchedness that existed in that locality, known and
appropriately designated as Hell's Half Acre, which embraced a large
area on either side of the State line. At that time no mission work had
been attempted or suggested for the elevation of this seething mass by
either Church or State."

For bravery in her work and devotion, we find Emily Newcomb, M.D.,
compared to a general on the battlefield. From such a woman's working
experience, as well as from that of others who were like-minded, we can
in some measure estimate the magnitude of the work which required to be
done. The suddenness of their emancipation, and the consequent
disorganisation of their social life, could not but involve a good deal
of suffering. In regard to the general condition of the coloured people
at the time in question, Mr F. J. Loudin says: "They were homeless,
penniless, ignorant, improvident--unprepared in every way for the
dangers as well as the duties of freedom. Self-reliance they had never
had the opportunity to learn, and, suddenly left to shift for
themselves, they were at the mercy of the knaves who were everywhere so
ready to cheat them out of their honest earnings." They were a people
who were too often despised on the one hand, and yet as often showing
extraordinary traits of character on the other. There were gems of the
first water among them; and now and then an individual, showing in one
person the best attributes of both races, came to the front. It became
more and more evident that the chief kind of aid which these people
wanted was being taught how to help themselves. One of the mettle of
Booker Washington could push his wa