"Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren."


They made their mistakes, those who planted Fisk and
Howard and Atlanta before the smoke of battle had lifted; they
made their mistakes, but those mistakes were not the things at
which we lately laughed somewhat uproariously. They were
right when they sought to found a new educational system
upon the University: where, forsooth, shall we ground knowl-
edge save on the broadest and deepest knowledge? The roots
of the tree, rather than the leaves, are the sources of its life;
and from the dawn of history, from Academus to Cambridge,
the culture of the University has been the broad foundation-
stone on which is built the kindergarten's A B C.

But these builders did make a mistake in minimizing the
gravity of the problem before them; in thinking it a matter of
years and decades; in therefore building quickly and laying
their foundation carelessly, and lowering the standard of know-
ing, until they had scattered haphazard through the South
some dozen poorly equipped high schools and miscalled them
universities. They forgot, too, just as their successors are
forgetting, the rule of inequality:--that of the million black
youth, some were fitted to know and some to dig; that some
had the talent and capacity of university men, and some the
talent and capacity of blacksmiths; and that true training
meant neither that all should be college men nor all artisans,
but that the one should be made a missionary of culture to an
untaught people, and the other a free workman among serfs.
And to seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is almost as