“I wish you’d explain just what you mean by that, Mr. Drury,” J.W. said.  “I don’t seem to get it.”

“I mean,” said Mr. Drury, “that as soon as our church had decided to do something for the emancipated slaves, it began to work out a scheme of Negro education.  That was before Tuskegee, and even before Hampton Institute.  Maybe we never thought of the Booker Washington idea, or purely industrial education, but at any rate we went on the theory that the Negro deserved and in time could take as good an education as any other American.  So we started academies and colleges and even universities for him, and a medical school and a theological seminary.”

“I can see myself that there’s a difference between that and the industrial idea,” said J.W.

“Decidedly, there is,” answered the minister; “all the difference which has helped to bring this new day I’m talking about, and to produce such Negro leaders as William Hightower.  You see, J.W., it’s this way:  Booker Washington believed that after the Negro had been taught to read and write and cipher, his next and greatest educational need was to learn to make a living.”

“Well, what’s the matter with that?” retorted J.W.  “Seems to me it’s common sense.”

“Possibly,” Mr. Drury answered, dryly.  “But what would you say was the first thing needed in the fight against the almost total illiteracy of the freedmen?”

“Why, teachers, I suppose,” said J.W.  “And it would sure take a lot of teachers, even to make a start.”

Mr. Drury said, “That’s exactly the fact.  It has called for so many that to this day there isn’t anything like enough teachers, although some of our schools and those of other churches have been at work for fifty years.  And, remember, that practically all of these teachers, except in a few advanced schools, must be black teachers, themselves brought up out of ignorance.”

“Well,” said J.W., “that’s my point.  The quicker we could teach the teachers, the sooner they would be ready to teach others.”

“That is to say,” Mr. Drury interpreted, “the less we taught them, the better?  Seems to me I heard something of a small revolt in your time at Cartwright because it seemed necessary that a young tutor should be temporarily assigned to the class in sophomore English.”

J.W. chuckled.  “It was my class.  Why, that fellow was never more than two jumps ahead of the daily work.  We knew he had to study his own lesson assignments before he could hear a recitation.  We weren’t getting anything out of it except the bare text.  So some of the boys made things lively for a few days, and he asked to be relieved.”

“Quite so.  Your class had every imaginable advantage over the colored boys and girls in our schools—­just one teacher below par.  And yet you think it would be all right to have all colored teachers no more than two jumps ahead of their pupils.”

“Well, yes, I see,” J.W. said, with a touch of thoughtfulness.  “I suppose a good teacher needs more than the minimum text-book knowledge.  Is that the Methodist theory?”