Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/627

Rh farming. These men and women are the parents of the generation which is at school at Tuskegee and similar institutions. These fathers and mothers lived "too soon" to be able to profit by such advantages. Few of them can read or write, and nearly all of them know by experience what slavery was. They see their children learning so much which was unattainable for them that they ask, "Is there no chance for us?" The conference is Tuskegee's attempt to answer that cry. As one grizzled old negro preacher, whom I heard make the opening prayer one year, said, "O Lawd,



we wants ter tank de for dis, our one day ob schoolin' in de whole year."

Beginning with this year the conferences will be held in the new church, which will comfortably seat all the delegates. Until this church was completed, though, there was no audience room at the institute which would begin to accommodate all who came, and the sessions were held in. a rude temporary building, which was alsa utilized for chapel and graduation exercises. Convenient as the new church is in every way, I shall always miss the unique gathering in that old pavilion. Imagine a broad, low building of also boards, its floor the earth, and its seats backless benches