A.H. Porter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gave a generous sum
toward its erection, the need for money became acute. I had given
one of our creditors a promise that upon a certain day he should
be paid four hundred dollars. On the morning of that day we did
not have a dollar. The mail arrived at the school at ten o'clock,
and in this mail there was a check sent by Miss Davidson for
exactly four hundred dollars. I could relate many instances of
almost the same character. This four hundred dollars was given by
two ladies in Boston. Two years later, when the work at Tuskegee
had grown considerably, and when we were in the midst of a season
when we were so much in need of money that the future looked
doubtful and gloomy, the same two Boston ladies sent us six
thousand dollars. Words cannot describe our surprise, or the
encouragement that the gift brought to us. Perhaps I might add
here that for fourteen years these same friends have sent us six
thousand dollars a year.
As soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the
students began digging out the earth where the foundations were
to be laid, working after the regular classes were over. They had
not fully outgrown the idea that it was hardly the proper thing
for them to use their hands, since they had come there, as one of
them expressed it, "to be educated, and not to work.
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