ost
perplexing question was where to find a teacher. The young man from
Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his age was
against him. In the midst of the discussion about a teacher, another
young coloured man from Ohio, who had been a soldier, in some way found
his way into town. It was soon learned that he possessed considerable
education, and he was engaged by the coloured people to teach their
first school. As yet no free schools had been started for coloured
people in that section, hence each family agreed to pay a certain
amount per month, with the understanding that the teacher was to "board
'round"--that is, spend a day with each family. This was not bad for the
teacher, for each family tried to provide the very best on the day the
teacher was to be its guest. I recall that I looked forward with an
anxious appetite to the "teacher's day" at our little cabin.

This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the
first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever
occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who
were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the
intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. As
I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too
young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as any
kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but
night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try
to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view men
and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found
in the night-school. Some day-schools were formed soon after
freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school was the
spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, Sunday-school, were always
crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room.

The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley, however, brought to me
one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been
working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school opened,
he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed
to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made all the more
severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see
the happy chil