I never could understand how he knew just where to draw the colour
line, since the Indian and I were of about the same complexion. The
steward, however, seemed to be an expert in this manner. I had been
directed by the authorities at Hampton to stop at a certain hotel in
Washington with my charge, but when I went to this hotel the clerk
stated that he would be glad to receive the Indian into the house, but
said that he could not accommodate me.

An illustration of something of this same feeling came under my
observation afterward. I happened to find myself in a town in which
so much excitement and indignation were being expressed that it seemed
likely for a time that there would be a lynching. The occasion of the
trouble was that a dark-skinned man had stopped at the local hotel.
Investigation, however, developed the fact that this individual was a
citizen of Morocco, and that while travelling in this country he spoke
the English language. As soon as it was learned that he was not an
American Negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared. The man who
was the innocent cause of the excitement, though, found it prudent after
that not to speak English.

At the end of my first year with the Indians there came another opening
for me at Hampton, which, as I look back over my life now, seems to
have come providentially, to help to prepare me for my work at Tuskegee
later. General Armstrong had found out that there was quite a number of
young coloured men and women who were intensely in earnest in wishing to
get an education, but who were prevented from entering Hampton Institute
because they were too poor to be able to pay any portion of the cost of
their board, or even to supply themselves with books. He conceived the
idea of starting a night-school in connection with the Institute, into
which a limited number of the most promising of these young men and
women would be received, on condition that they were to work for ten
hours during the day, and attend school for two hours at night. They
were to be paid something above the cost of their board for their work.
The greater part of their earnings was to be reserved in the school's
treasury as a fund to be drawn on to pay their board when they had
become students in the day-school, after they had spent one or two years
in the night-school. In this way they would obtain a start in their
books and a knowledge of some trade or industry, in addition to the
other far-reaching benef