796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



brass buttons, is dear to his heart. His feet keep step instinctive- 

 ly to the tap of the drum, and the flag behind which he marches 

 is a perpetual reminder to him that he is an integral part of a 

 great nation which expects something from him in return for the 

 freedom and citizenship which it has bestowed. This military 

 drill has a still more far-reaching influence in stimulating that 

 ability for organization which is one of the latest developments of 

 civilization. Here the negro is manifestly deficient. He fights 

 and works well under the command and oversight of his superior, 

 just as the Sepoys have been found in India to need not only 

 English officers but a few English regulars to supply the back- 

 bone as well as the brains — literally, the sinews of war. This 

 mental and moral muscle is just what Hampton is supplying, 

 teaching the negro first to help himself and then to lend a hand 

 to others, to organize, to teach, and to command. 



The normal school is the highest grade in the Hampton Insti- 

 tute. It has four classes — the intermediate, the junior, the middle, 

 and the senior. At the end of the middle year the students who 

 desire to make teaching their life work are sent away for a year 

 of practice, from which they return with a more adequate notion 

 of the needs of their people and the advantages open to them at 

 Hampton. So much insisted on is this duty of missionary work 

 of instruction in the Black Belt and other strongholds of igno- 

 rance in the South, that the teachers say that the graduates whom 

 they meet in New York and other Northern cities occupying 

 positions of ease and profit are so ashamed of shirking their duties 

 that they cross the street and strive to avoid encountering their 

 old instructors, whose just expectations they have thus disap- 

 pointed. 



Every institution, some one has said, is the shadow of one man, 

 and Hampton is the shadow of General Armstrong. He has been 

 not alone the founder, but the upbuilder. It is his eloquence 

 which has drawn forth the gold from the pockets of the rich and 

 transformed it into brick and mortar and books and models for 

 the benefit of his experiment. 



Phillips Brooks, whose great heart went out to all greatness, 

 said of General Armstrong : " He has touched the fountains of 

 generosity in stingy men. He has taught men the glory and the 

 beauty and the happiness of being stewards of the Lord. He has 

 made men feel as they never dreamed of feeling. Such has been 

 the power of his speech that the frozen streams have melted and 

 the currents have flowed joyously, singing as they went, and men 

 have thanked him for teaching them to be generous." But no 

 one man, however eloquent or however able, could have created 

 that industrial village at Hampton. It is the product of organ- 

 ized enthusiasm. Individual enthusiasm is the old flint and 



