the students as "old man
John," put all students who offered to work for their education, only
the fittest, and the fittest of the fit at that, survived.

I was assigned work with the resident physician, a very efficient woman
doctor from Philadelphia; and I have a recollection, by no means dim,
that when this good woman made her monthly report to the treasurer, she
could write, "Health Department to Isaac Fisher, Dr., $12.50--value
received." Every morning before breakfast it was my duty to go to the
rooms of six hundred young men to see if any were ill, have those who
were, carried to the hospital, report all such to four departments, take
meals to those confined in the hospital, attend to all their wants, keep
their building heated and supplied with fuel, and-- But space will not
permit the full catalogue of duties. At the end of such a day's work I
would attend the night-school during its session of two hours.

Desiring to learn a trade, I asked permission to enter the
printing-office for the next year. This was not granted until it was
found that I would not leave the school during the summer, but would
remain and work until the beginning of the next school year.
Accordingly, when my second year began I entered the printing-office as
an apprentice. During that year I suffered actual want and privation in
the matter of shoes and clothes; but later came under the notice of Mrs.
Booker T. Washington, who made arrangements by which I could procure
some of the second-hand clothes and shoes sent from the North to the
school for just such cases. At the end of this year my health, as a
result of my work in the office, was so poor that the resident physician
recommended my removal therefrom. To the surprise of Mr. J. H.
Washington, I asked to be transferred to the farm; and I think I proved
while working on the school-farm that I was sincere when I said that I
would work wherever I was placed.

It was during this summer that Mr. Booker T. Washington showed me that I
had come favorably under his notice. At one of the weekly
prayer-meetings, conducted by the chaplain, Mr. Penney, and at which Mr.
Washington was present, I made some remarks relative to the agnosticism
of the late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The following day Mr. Washington
sent for me, inquired my age and class in the school, and then said some
very kind things about the talk which I had made in the prayer-meeting,
and made me a conditional promise of his fri