STUDENT AID.
To help a needy and worthy student is a delightful way of doing good. Men eminent for usefulness in all parts of the land acknowledge their indebtedness to aid given them when in want and discouraged. Without such aid they never would have gained the training which now is bearing blessed and abundant fruit. The experiences of the past are repeated in the South, and promising youths, weighted by the entailments of slavery, must have help or they will never reach their greatest possibilities and largest usefulness.
In this beneficence, however, there is need of abundant wisdom; for there is a risk, lest in helping, self-help may be repressed and thus harm be done rather than good. It is one thing to carry a child till he is grown and then lay down at the highway of life one large enough and old enough to be a man, but still a baby; and another, to so hold the hand in difficult places as to develop the ankle bones and finally send into the world a man who can not only stand alone, but also help others. The wolf’s milk seems still necessary to make a Roman, but the modern Romulus does not cry for it. Indeed, he often cries when it is given him. There are risks in helping, just as surely as it is wrong not to help at all. Tramps are numerous where warm breakfasts are given to any who come to the door; and aid too easily or too abundantly obtained lessens self-reliance, makes muscle flabby, bone cartilage, and heart pusillanimous. Where, however, aid received is earned by work, when it is given so sparingly as to allow no surplus for jewelry, or for clothing other than the plainest, the results of its bestowal are good, and only good. Such giving is always to be encouraged.
But it should be remembered that a semi-tropical climate has its liabilities, and that where the north wind seldom cuts, men dread the storm and love to be coddled. “Excelsior” is oftenest found on banners planted amid snow and ice. Besides, slavery pricked the ham-strings of endeavor, and naturally the young among the freed people are not inclined to say, “I will either find a way or make one.” Hence the need of tonics, and tonics are proverbially bitter. In general, it is better to give plain cloth to a girl and teach her to make her clothing, than to send her stitched and embroidered apparel; better to equip a workshop than to pay a student’s board bill; better, for instance, to give a plough to our Talladega farm and put a boy at the handle, than to set before him cooked rations. It is a wiser benevolence to furnish industrial appliances, or to support a self-denying teacher, hardened in adversity and skilled to harden others, than to profusely aid the student whom only work and self-denial can make heroic. The petted are apt to be spoiled, and those helped the most are usually foremost in fault-finding.
H. S. DE FOREST.