n which I shall never forget.
Miss Mackie was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured families
of the North, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side cleaning
windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not. She felt
that things would not be in condition for the opening of school unless
every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the greatest
satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. The work which I have
described she did every year that I was at Hampton.

It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her
education and social standing could take such delight in performing such
service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate race.
Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in
the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

During my last year at Hampton every minute of my time that was not
occupied with my duties as janitor was devoted to hard study. I was
determined, if possible, to make such a record in my class as would
cause me to be placed on the "honour roll" of Commencement speakers.
This I was successful in doing. It was June of 1875 when I finished the
regular course of study at Hampton. The greatest benefits that I got out
of my my life at the Hampton Institute, perhaps, may be classified under
two heads:--

First was contact with a great man, General S.C. Armstrong, who, I
repeat, was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful
character that it has ever been my privilege to meet.

Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was
expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal
of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an
education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for
manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace
to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial
value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and
self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants
done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant
to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the
happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and
happy.

I was completely out of money when I graduated. In company with other
Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel