"Oh," said he, "that's nothing. A colored woman after the battle gathered and sold so many that she was able to purchase a cow with the money, and now that cow supports her family."
I left Chattanooga the nest morning, and thought no more of the incident for a dozen years. A short time since, however, I was spending the night in a small village in one of the mountain towns of Tennessee. At nightfall, looking out from my hotel, I observed a company of colored people ambling along towards a low wooden meeting-house, and time hanging heavily on my hands, I decided to join the dusky worshipers. I slipped in, therefore, when the meeting was a little under way, and allowed myself to be ushered up to the front seat, directly under the eye of an intelligent looking young man who proved to be the preacher for the occasion. After a few opening services, which embraced the usual variety in ordinary churches, the minister took for his text the passage, "Ask, and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you."
"Now," said he, when he had gotten on well with his introduction, "you must not believe you will surely receive precisely the thing you ask for in just the way you might like it. Let me give you an illustration from my personal experience. When a little boy, I lived with my mother on the southern slope of Lookout Mountain, and remember well the day that Gen. Hooker fought his great battle up there and how he and his soldiers marched bravely away. For a long time the children and the grown people searched the battle-fields over, day after day, hoping to find things of value. My mother made it her business to hunt for bullets, and at length the number she gathered herself and took from us boys was so great that she was able to purchase a cow with the money they brought.
"A benevolent gentleman living in New York at this time soon after secured the Government buildings on the top of the mountain that had been used for the sick soldiers, and fitted them up nicely for Northern teachers, who opened a boarding-school for white students. I took milk to the institution from our cow, every morning, and how I wished that I might gain admittance to the school and procure an education! One day I heard the scholars reciting in concert, 'Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' It came over me most powerfully and I repeated it again and again. I said it to my mother, and inquired of her what it meant, and why it impressed me so, and who it was that said it.
"She replied, 'I dunno. I reckon I'se heard dem words afore. 'Pears like dey was spoke by the bressed Lord.'
"The more I thought of it, the more undecided I was what I could do, or what my mother could do for me, I knew, however, that the Lord could do everything.
"Well, the nest time I met the good-natured teacher who managed the school, I made bold to ask him to allow me to tell him all about it, and this was his reply. 'Our Lord made that promise long before the discovery of America and the establishment of the peculiar institutions of this country. If he had lived at this day, I reckon,' he continued with a look of drollery, 'he would have said "Ask and ye shall receive—if you aint a nigger." I can't take you into my school because you are black, but I'll send you down to the American Missionary school at Chattanooga. You can ask and receive there whether you are black or white.'
"So, shortly after he told my experience to the teacher in the town, who arranged that my mother should take me and the cow to a little farm just out of the city, giving me an opportunity to attend his school regularly until I was fitted to enter an institution of a higher grade. I then went away and pursued a course of study for six years, teaching during the summer and receiving aid from my mother, who kept the cow all the while for her own support and my assistance. I asked, I received, but not just in the way I hoped."
When he had finished speaking, I took him heartily by the hand, told him of my early visit to the mountain and the bullet still in my possession. I talked with him about his teachers, his struggles for self-help, his aim to work for the progress of the church and his consecration to the duties of the Christian ministry. I conversed with him in reference to others of his acquaintance and believe that his experience serves to illustrate the ingenuity of the colored people in seeking their own advancement.
"They climb like corals, grave on grave,