In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the
toothbrush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of
civilization that are more far-reaching.

There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
men and women, who had to work in the daytime but still were craving an
opportunity for some education, that I soon opened a night school.
From the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as
the school that I taught in the day. The efforts of some of the men
and women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn,
were in some cases very pathetic.

My day- and night-school work was not all that I undertook. I
established a small reading-room and a debating society. On Sundays I
taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
Malden. In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute. Without
regard to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who
wanted to learn, anything that I could teach him. I was supremely
happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else. I did
receive, however, a small salary from the public fund for my work as a
public school teacher. . . .

In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night
school at Hampton Institute, in a way that I had not dared expect, the
opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work. One night in the
chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong
referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen