"I was in the rooms of several girls to-day. I had been in these rooms before. Some of the rooms are always clean and attractive. You will find a number of little, delicate, home-like touches about them. You have only to go into another room, and you will feel as if you wanted to go out as soon as possible. This latter room has possibly two or three girls in it, and they are always full of excuses, always explaining. They can stand for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and reel off excuses by the yard. Those girls, unless they change, will never get ahead very far, I fear.
"The habit of making excuses, of giving explanations, instead of achieving results, grows from year to year upon one, until finally it gets such a hold that I think the victim finds himself almost as well satisfied with a good, long-drawn-out excuse, as he does with real tangible achievement. The schoolboy and girl must be taught such lessons in every moment of routine duty, and there are no "little things," to be carelessly overlooked, without danger that repetition will breed bad habit. The student may think these things are little, but permanent injury to character is the price paid for indifference and carelessness. The price is paid in permanent injury to character.
"Every dollar received at Tuskegee comes through hard work on the part of some one. Every dollar is placed with us because the donor feels that perhaps it will accomplish more good here than elsewhere. It is always a question for them to choose between giving a dollar here or to some other institution. The attitude of every student, if he wishes to be honest, must be that he has no right to ask persons to support the school if a dollar goes into the hands of an individual who is not doing his very best to earn the worth of it, every moment of every day, from rising bell to "taps" on the bugle at the boy's hall."
Looking at education from this view-point, every detail of the work and administration of a community of sixteen hundred people, with their great variety of activities, becomes vitally important, a part toward the complete whole.
This doctrine of "small things" finds expression in an infinite number of channels. One of the despised but abundant products of the Southern farms has been the cowpea. It is used extensively as a fodder plant, and as a fertiliser by plowing it under. The cowpea is also one of the most nutritious of foods, when properly cooked, but while it has been growing at their doors the coloured people have neglected it as a part of their diet. The Tuskegee agricultural expert investigated the cowpea. He found that it was as valuable for food as the far-famed "Boston bean," and prepared his table of analyses to prove it. Then he worked out no less than eighteen different appetising recipes for cooking the humble cowpea, and made practical demonstration, in a booth of his own making, during one of the Negro Conference gatherings.
THE PAINT SHOP
These recipes he had printed for distribution in a neat and attractive pamphlet, and in this way he opened in defense of the cowpea a successful crusade, which has had direct results. It was a small thing, but it was not too small to be overlooked in the effort to make the best of the resources close at hand.