llen had her triumph at the end of seven months, when all the pupils of
the school took part in the spring exhibition, from five-year-old
Samantha Johnson who recited an evening hymn, to twenty-year-old
Ebenezer, a half-witted youth and former laughing-stock, who displayed a
beautifully woven basket that had already been sold for two dollars to
some Rockefeller of the north, ("and the school is to have one dollar of
it for books," the teacher said emphatically). The Negro parent is
ambitious for his children, he looks forward with unfaltering hope to
the recognition of merit that shall come when his boy enters the world
and acquits himself like a man. And though the recognition be never
accorded, though to the average American the Negro who is not performing
humble tasks is a cross between an impudent upstart and a "nigger"
minstrel dude, the parent hopes on until death comes and his son, like
himself, turns for his hope to his offspring. Ellen had builded on this
firm foundation of parental ambition, and after the first year she
received the cooperation of the people among whom she had come to give
her life. A few evil spirits mocked, but they did not affect the success
of the Merryvale school. And indeed marvels can be accomplished in a
small community where, day and night, one may keep watch over one's
charges, and where the county superintendent is too indifferent or too
lazy to interfere with suggestion or criticism. So Ellen, a modern in
educational methods, with the zealot's untiring energy, taught her
children to keep clean and decent, to work steadily and to relate their
study to their daily life. As they learned to write they indited letters
to absent uncles and aunts, and (the teacher was judiciously blind to
this) begged stamps from old Mr. Merryvale. They did number work,
counting their chickens and multiplying their eggs with sober
intentness. When readers grew scarce they got the discarded newspapers
from the great house, and the older boys and girls began to watch the
happenings in the outer world. They dug in the school garden and planted
vegetables in gardens of their own. They even learned to cook and
introduced new dishes into the limited regimen of their homes.

It would not have been possible for Ellen to have carried her school to
the final triumph of the spring exhibition had she not been in touch
with the college, as it was somewhat grandiosely called, at which she
had received her education. Gif