Awake? With the "Rat-a-tat Quir-r-k, tat-tat" of the great
crimson-crested woodpecker hammering just for noisy fun on the wide
cornice of the "mansion," with the summer sun shining in through the
window, and the five o'clock bell pealing sharply from Strieby Hall, the
seven sleepers would have to be awake and doing at Tougaloo University.

The mercury is passing the 72° point at sunrise; but the morning, as the
sunshine sparkles on the dewy grass between the wide-spreading live-oaks
of the grove, seems as cool as a morning on the Berkshire hills. The
wide-rolling plantation fields to the west give no hint of the long hot
mid-day hours when the cotton revels in a heat that sends all animate
nature to the deepest coverts.

The Tougaloo grounds are a paradise for all feathered life. The quail
with their cheery "Bob White" whistle in the kitchen garden, following
in plain sight the boys hoeing out the "grass." The blue-jays, martins
and mocking birds render a trip to the Paris Exposition entirely
unnecessary, if one wishes to hear all parties talk at the same moment
and in unintelligible syllables. Curious, is'nt it, that these shy
denizens of field and forest are so bold, in term as well as vacation
time, where these colored lads and lasses congregate, for people of a
low, brutal nature, incapable of any spark of generosity or ambition,
are no friends to innocent nature. The papers that characterize the
Negro as such, a creature unfit to live in a white man's country, cannot
be blinded by prejudice!

What of the human life at Tougaloo? College is out; the teachers are in
the far North. Miss Emerson, Preceptress of the Girl's Hall; Mr.
Hitchcock, Treasurer; Mr. Klein, Superintendent of the Farm; and Mr.
Kennedy, Superintendent of Carpentry; and Mr. McKibban, borrowed from