lessons not at all catalogued that
go into character-forming--all of these I found most helpful and
invaluable, in making me a man who "thinks and feels." I should be
tempted to eulogy should I try to tell how much I owe to Dr. Washington,
to his teachers, and to all of the influences that assist the student at
Tuskegee.

XIV

A DRUGGIST'S STORY

BY DAVID L. JOHNSTON

Shortly after the smoke had cleared away from the battle-fields of the
Civil War, I was ushered into the world in a one-room log cabin in
Alabama, county of Macon, and near the little town of Tuskegee,
afterward made famous by virtue of the fact that there was established
near it, by Booker T. Washington, July 4, 1881, the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute. That I have the honor of being an alumnus of that
school is one of the best things of which I can boast.

Because I have said that I was born in a one-room log cabin, the reader
will readily imagine that my parentage was humble. My mother and father
both have gone to the Great Beyond. I bless and revere their memory, for
two more noble souls never lived, hampered as they were by slavery and
its terrible environments.

My parents continued to live in the one-room cabin until three other
children, making nine in all, had come to them. Another room was added
about this time. The biting poverty of it all led my father, with his
family, to move to one of the famous cotton plantations of Dallas
County, Ala. I seem to recall taking an interest in the world about me
quite early. Especially do I recall, as one of my earliest
recollections, the death of Garfield, so cruelly slain by the madman
Guiteau. My father was greatly distressed, I remember, by his death.

For five successive years my life was spent working each year on the
farms for and with my aged father and other members of the family, and
spending the time, when not so employed, in near-by public schools,
which at that time, as is true in large part now, were conducted only
about three months in each year. After having acquired a slight
knowledge of mathematics, it was a great pleasure to me to go up each
fall to the market at Selma, Ala., with my father, to dispose of the
products of the farm. On one occasion there was an apparent interest
manifested in me by one of the commission merchants, a white man. He
persuaded me to return to Selma, after I had accompanied my father home,
and to accept a position with him as office-boy.