ccount of the
number and quality of its educational institutions, has come to be
called the Athens of the South. Its first students consisted of those
who had actually been slaves; and the earnestness of most of the
students had to bear the test of having to earn their own livelihood
while receiving their education. Outside aid was given in the hope that
an endowment would be provided. The college, including its Jubilee Hall
and Livingstone Hall, occupies a healthy site, and has grounds of
twenty-five acres. The negroes are in a minority at Nashville; but it is
there that one may profitably study their characteristic traits and
capacities, and thus form some tolerably correct estimate of what the
vast national gain would be if the entire coloured race were raised by
adequate education and industrial training.

In aiming at what he does in founding and carrying on his great
institution at Tuskegee, is Booker Washington warranted by the past
successes of those who have worked to raise and train negroes for the
best service of which they are capable, in harbouring the sanguine
anticipations he does for more perfect achievements in the future? As he
is happily only one, though the chief, worker among many, it will be
necessary, while proceeding with our story, to give convincing testimony
from outsiders concerning the reasonableness and practicableness of his
aims and hopes. In giving some interesting and striking illustrations by
way of proof that he is no visionary, but a cool-headed, hard-working
calculator who well knows that the capital he is working with will yield
a high percentage, we may have to tell of what is in progress in
Nashville itself.

CHAPTER V

UPS AND DOWNS--PROGRESS AS A STUDENT--BEGINNING TO TEACH

Probably one reason why youths who are educated in such a school as the
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute so commonly turn out to be of
use to themselves and to others in the world is, that only young people
of mettle and perseverance would endure the labour and hardship which
form part of the discipline. What was done for the students was not
altogether gratuitous; they were supposed either to have means or to be
able to earn money, and to be too hard driven to be able to pay the
merest trifle may often have been an experience which might have damped
the ardour of any save enthusiasts of the most dogged perseverance.
Among the large company of poor students,