258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



his class why it was and how it was that the children of Is- 

 rael were able to cross through the water without getting 

 ■drowned, and why it was that when Pharaoh and his party 

 came along they were rather unfortunate and got into the 

 water. The old minister said: " T'was this way: when 

 the first party came along it was early in the morning, and 

 cold, and the ice was hard and thick, and they had no trouble 

 in crossing over dry-shod on the ice. But when the next 

 party came along it was twelve o'clock in the day, and the 

 sun had been shining hot on the ice, and it had melted, 

 and it broke, and they went in and got drowned." He had 

 in his class a young man who had been going to school a 

 good deal, and he said : " Mr. Minister, I don't understand 

 that kind of explanation. I have been going to school and 

 I have been studying all these kind of things, and my geog- 

 raphy teaches me that ice doesn't freeze within a certain 

 distance of the equator." The old minister said : "I have 

 been expecting something just like that. There is always 

 some fools always ready to spoil all the theology. The 

 time I was talking about was before they had any geogra- 

 phies or equator either." That old minister in his humble 

 manner was simply trying to brush aside all the artificiality, 

 and get down to bed-rock or common sense. That is what 

 we have got to do in our efforts to lift the people up at the 

 south. 



In the beginning of our work at Tuskegee we found these 

 people needed to know how to make their living intelli- 

 gently and skilfully out of the soil upon which the}- were 

 living. They needed to be taught how to get hold of de- 

 cent shelter, of homes, and how to clothe themselves. Then 

 we said: "If this is a school, we believe that the school 

 should not only be a place where an individual can learn to 

 study about things through the medium of books, but we 

 believe that in a large degree it should be a place where 

 people can study not only about things, but actually study 

 the things themselves." And we said, further, that "We 

 believe that this institution can be a place where people can 

 not only study things, but actually learn to do things." 



