among the people of both races for
direct gifts of money, and most of those applied to gave small sums. It
was often pathetic to note the gifts of the older coloured people, most
of whom had spent their best days in slavery. Sometimes they would give
five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. Sometimes the contribution was
a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. I recall one old coloured women who
was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising
money to pay for the farm. She hobbled into the room where I was,
leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; but they were clean. She said:
"Mr. Washin'ton, God knows I spent de bes' days of my life in slavery.
God knows I's ignorant an' poor; but," she added, "I knows what you an'
Miss Davidson is tryin' to do. I knows you is tryin' to make better men
an' better women for de coloured race. I ain't got no money, but I wants
you to take dese six eggs, what I's been savin' up, an' I wants you to
put dese six eggs into the eddication of dese boys an' gals."

Since the work at Tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive
many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, I think,
that touched me so deeply as this one.

Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights

The coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama,
gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of
the people. The first thing that reminded us that Christmas had arrived
was the "foreday" visits of scores of children rapping at our doors,
asking for "Chris'mus gifts! Chris'mus gifts!" Between the hours of two
o'clock and five o'clock in the morning I presume that we must have had
a half-hundred such calls. This custom prevails throughout this portion
of the South to-day.

During the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed
throughout all the Southern states to give the coloured people a week of
holiday at Christmas, or to allow the holiday to continue as long as the
"yule log" lasted. The male members of the race, and often the female
members, were expected to get drunk. We found that for a whole week
the coloured people in and around Tuskegee dropped work the day before
Christmas, and that it was difficult for any one to perform any service
from the time they stopped work until after the New Year. Persons who at
other times did not use strong drink thought it quite the proper thing
to indulge in it rather freely during th