A worthy Christian woman brings the scheme. It is laid upon the
mountains of East Tennessee, thrust up into notoriety by the writing
of Charles Egbert Craddock. A lady of faith and hope and energy, {153}
proposes to build up an industrial farm-school of high quality for the
neglected girls of that mountain district. She has already been
teaching a common-school among them. She comes up to a city of New
England. She lays her plan before some of the noble women there. They
take it up without further inquiry as to the feasibility of the
undertaking. With their first contributions an old worn-out farm is
bought in the lady's name, and in the cheap farm-house a small school
is opened. The location is in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, three or
four miles from the little, old, tumble-down county seat. Now a fine
building is to be secured. The lady patrons raise their offerings up
to six thousand dollars. Fine architectural plans are devised at the
North. Meantime, speculators on the ground, who for a few cents an
acre have bought up a great quantity of land adjoining and would be
glad to sell it at a dollar an acre, have donated a hundred acres,
more or less, to the school. On this tract the building is located and
goes forward. The frame is put up and pretty much enclosed. For want
of money the enterprise comes to a stand, and now for these four years
the stranded structure has been taking damage from the storms.

The place has been visited repeatedly by the superintendents of the
A.M.A., to find the state of the case and to see if anything could be
done to utilize the partial plant. The pastor of the lady donors
became interested to save the investment through the A.M.A., or to
stop the pouring of more funds into the venture, but after all his
correspondence and personal conference, he found that, if the whole
property were to be offered to the Association, it could not afford to