this broad land of shade and shine in Alabama to teach black folks.

It had been a hard beginning with suspicion and squalor around; with
poverty within and without the first white walls of the new school home.
Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and
disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but
little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment
to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls,
the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to
come. In her imagination the significance of these half dozen gleaming
buildings perched aloft seemed portentous--big with the destiny not
simply of a county and a State, but of a race--a nation--a world. It was
God's own cause, and yet--

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" again went the hard knuckles down there at the
front.

Miss Smith slowly arose, shivering a bit and wondering who could
possibly be rapping at that time in the morning. She sniffed the
chilling air and was sure she caught some lingering perfume from Mrs.
Vanderpool's gown. She had brought this rich and rare-apparelled lady up
here yesterday, because it was more private, and here she had poured
forth her needs. She had talked long and in deadly earnest. She had not
spoken of the endowment for which she had hoped so desperately during a
quarter of a century--no, only for the five thousand dollars to buy the
long needed new land. It was so little--so little beside what this woman
squandered--

The insistent knocking was repeated louder than before.