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, 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