It was the
ideal of "book-learning"; the curiosity, born of compulsory
ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters
of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to
have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer
than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged,
but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.
Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily,
doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering
feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark
pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously,
this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold
statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there,
noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some
one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever
dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim
and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal,
no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey
at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it
changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning
self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect.
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