dren passing to and from school mornings and afternoons.
Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn
something, anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever
to the mastering of what was in the "blue-back" speller.

My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
learn. After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher
to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was done. These
night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more at night
than the other children did during the day. My own experiences in the
night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in
after years, I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee. But my boyish
heart was still set upon going to the day-school, and I let no
opportunity slip to push my case. Finally I won, and was permitted to go
to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding that
I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine
o'clock, and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for
at least two more hours of work.

The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to work
till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself in
a difficulty. 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 clock 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 in 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 the other children w