which to pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work
as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I
succeeded in doing to such extent that I was soon informed that I would
be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. The cost
of tuition was seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly
beyond my ability to provide. If I had been compelled to pay the
seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I
would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school. General
Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New
Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time
that I was at Hampton. . . .

After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty
because I did not have books and clothing. Usually, however, I got
around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more
fortunate than myself. As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had
practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand
satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact
that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in
ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished,
there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. To
wear one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the
schoolroom, and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard
problem for me to solve. In some way I managed to get on till the
teachers learned that I was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then
some of them were kind enough to see that I was partly supplied with
second-hand clothing that had been sent in barrels from the North.
These barrels proved a blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving
students. Without them I question whether I should ever have gotten
through Hampton. . . .