expenses. But it had been given up,--the women students were taxed
beyond their strength; the farmers complained that the boys were
thinking of their books, and the teachers said their pupils came with
half strength to their lessons. But Armstrong knew the material he was
dealing with, and how different from the nervous, high-strung pupils of
Oberlin and Mount Holyoke was the vigorous, sensuous material he was to
mold.

He began in April, 1868, with small things,--a matron, a teacher,
fifteen pupils and buildings worth $15,000. In a month there were thirty
pupils. Things moved straight on,--they were moved by the assiduity, the
enthusiasm, the inspiration, of Armstrong, and the answering temper
which he woke in pupils, teachers, contributors, observers. Presently a
special effort, an appeal to friends, solicitude, students zealously
making bricks and laying them, help from General Howard--and so, in
1870, a noble building, Academic Hall, and presently again, Virginia
Hall,--and the school kept growing.

Its moral success was promptly won. The subject answered to the
experiment,--those dark-skinned boys and girls came eager to learn. No
one had believed in them, and they had not believed in themselves, but
they speedily learned self-respect and gained the respect of others.
They did what was asked of them, earned most of their support, showed
good workmanship and scholarship, were blameless in morals, caught the
spirit of the place, and went out to carry light into the dark places.
No holiday task was set them. There was a working day of twelve hours,
between the class-room, the work-shop, the drill-ground and the field,
with rare and brief snatches of recreation. They met the demand with a
resource inherited from their ancestors' long years of patient labor.
The hard toil was a moral safeguard. The African race is sensuous, and
co-education might seem perilous. The danger was completely averted by
the influence of labor, strenuous and constant, but diversified and
interesting. The essentials of character,--industry, chastity, truth and
honesty, serviceable good-will,--were the aim and result of the Hampton
training; and all ran back to the homely root that man should be trained
to earn intelligently and faithfully his daily bread.

The story of Hampton is a theme not for a chapter but for a volume. How
its founder won favor and friendship by his tact and large-mindedness;
how he established good relations with the Vi