The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled through the country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were reaching, to only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom we wanted to lift up through the medium of the students whom we should educate and send out as leaders.
The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they would not have to work any longer with their hands.
This is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in Alabama, who, one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: "O Lawd, de cotton am so grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat I b'lieve dis darky am called to preach!" About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated about a mile from the town of Tuskegee.

The mansion house--or "big house," as it would have been called--which had been occupied by the owners during slavery, had been burned.

After making a careful examination of the place, it seemed to be just the location that we wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent.
But how were we to get it?
The price asked for it was very little--only five hundred dollars--but we had no money, and we were strangers in the town and had no credit.

The owner of the land agreed to let us occupy the place if we could make a payment of two hundred and fifty dollars down, with the understanding that the remaining two hundred and fifty dollars must be paid within a year.

Although five hundred dollars was cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did not have any part of it.
In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and wrote to my friend General J.F.B.Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal responsibility.
Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he had no authority to lend me the money belonging to the Hampton Institute, but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his own personal funds.
I confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification.