School would always be begun before I reached it, and
sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded to
a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but since
it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the power
and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently gained
by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little office in the
furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended
upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day's work. I got
the idea that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the hands
from half-past eight up to the nine o'clock mark. This I found myself
doing morning after morning, till the furnace 'boss' discovered that
something was wrong, and locked the clock in a case. I did not mean to
inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse on time.

When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first place, I
found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on their heads, and
I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that, up to the time
of going to school, I had ever worn any kind of covering upon my head, nor
do I recall that either I or anybody else had even thought anything about
the need of covering for my head. But, of course, when I saw how all the
other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite uncomfortable. As usual, I
put the case before my mother, and she explained to me that she had no
money with which to buy a 'store hat,' which was a rather new institution
at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the
thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me
out of the difficulty. She accordingly got two pieces of 'homespun'
(jeans) and sewed them together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my
first cap.

My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather, a name. From
the time when I could remember anything I had been called simply 'Booker.'
Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or
appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the school roll
called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and
some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having
three. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew the teacher would d