LIFE AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE.
After my mother and brother John had secured me a few extra garments,
with what I could provide for myself, I started for Hampton about the
first of October, 1872. How long I was on this journey I have at this
time no very definite idea. Part of the way I went by railroad and part
in a stage and part on foot. I remember that, when I got as far as
Richmond, Virginia, I was completely out of money and knew not a single
person in the city. Besides, I had never been in a city before. I think
it was about nine o’clock at night that I reached Richmond. I was
hungry, tired and dirty, and had no where to go. I wandered about the
streets until about midnight, when I felt completely exhausted.
By chance I came to a street that had a plank sidewalk, and I crept
under this sidewalk and spent the night. The next morning I felt very
much rested, but was still quite hungry, as it had been some time since
I had a good meal. When I awoke, I noticed some ships not far from where
I had spent the night. I went to one of these vessels and asked the
captain to permit me to
[Illustration: BOOKER STARTING FOR HAMPTON INSTITUTE.]
work for him, so that I could earn some money to get some food. The
captain very kindly gave me work, which was that of helping to unload
pig iron from the vessel. In my rather weak and hungry condition I found
this very hard work, but I stuck to it, and was given enough money to
buy a little food. My work seemed to have pleased the master of the
vessel so much that he furnished me with work for several days, but I
continued to sleep under the sidewalk each night, for I was very anxious
to save enough money to pay my passage to Hampton.
After working on this vessel for some days I started again for Hampton
and arrived there in a day or two, with a surplus of fifty cents in my
pocket. I did not let any one know how forlorn my condition was. I
feared that if I did, I would be rejected as one that was altogether too
unpromising. The first person I saw after reaching the Hampton Institute
was Miss Mary F. Mackie, the Lady Principal. After she had asked me a
good many searching questions, with a good deal of doubt and hesitation
in her manner, I was assigned to a room. She remarked at the same time
that it would be decided later whether I could be admitted as a student.
I shall not soon forget the impression that the sight of a good, clean,
comfortable room and bed made upon me, for I had not slept in a bed
since I left my home in West Virginia. Within a few hours I presented
myself again before Miss Mackie to hear my fate, but she still seemed to
be undecided. Instead of telling me whether or not I could remain, I
remember, she showed me a large recitation room and told me to sweep. I
felt at once that the sweeping of that room would decide my case. I knew
I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had taught me that art well. I think
that I must have swept that room over as many as three times and dusted
it the same number of times. After awhile she came into the room and
rubbed her handkerchief over the tables and benches to see if I had left
any dust, but not a particle could she find. She remarked with a smile,
“I guess we will try you as a student.” At that moment I think I was the
happiest individual that ever entered the Hampton Institute.
After I had been at the Hampton Institute a day or two I saw General
Armstrong, the Principal, and he made an impression upon me of being the
most perfect specimen of man, physically, mentally and spiritually, that
I had ever seen, and I have never had occasion to change my first
impression. In fact, as the years went by and as I came to know him
better, the feeling grew. I have never seen a man in whom I had such
confidence. It never occurred to me that it was possible for him to
fail in anything that he undertook to accomplish. I have sometimes
thought that the best part of my education at Hampton was obtained by
being permitted to look upon General Armstrong day by day. He was a man
who could not endure for a minute hypocrisy or want of truth in any one.
This moral lesson he impressed upon every one who came in contact with
him.
After I had succeeded in passing my “sweeping examination,” I was
assigned by Miss Mackie to the position of assistant janitor. This
position, with the exception of working on the farm for awhile, I held
during the time I was a student at Hampton. I took care of four or five
class rooms; that is, I swept and dusted them and built the fires when
needed. A great portion of the time I had to rise at four o’clock in the
morning in order to do my work and find time to prepare my lessons.
Everything was very crude at Hampton when I first went there. There were
about two hundred students. There was but one substantial building,
together with some old government barracks. There were no table cloths
on the meal tables, and that which was called tea or coffee was served
to us in yellow bowls. Corn bread was our chief food. Once a week we got
a taste of white bread.
[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON REHEARSING HIS GRADUATING ORATION AT
HAMPTON. HIS FIRST SPEECH.]
While taking the regular literary and industrial courses at Hampton,
next to my regular studies I was most fond of the debating societies, of
which there were two or three. The first subject that I debated in
public was whether or not the execution of Maj. Andre was justifiable.
After I had been at Hampton a few months I helped to organize the “After
Supper Club.” I noticed that the students usually had about twenty
minutes after tea when no special duty called them; so, about
twenty-five of us agreed to come together each evening and spend those
twenty minutes in the discussion of some important subject. These
meetings were a constant source of delight and were most valuable in
preparing us for public speaking.
While at Hampton my best friends did not know how badly off I was for
clothing during a large part of the time, but I did not fret about that.
I always had the feeling that if I could get knowledge in my head the
matter of clothing would take care of itself afterwards. At one time I
was reduced to a single ragged pair of cheap socks. These socks I had to
wash over night and put them on the next morning.
After I had remained at Hampton for two years I went back to West
Virginia to spend my four months of vacation. Soon after my return to
Malden my mother, who was never strong, died. I do not remember how old
I was at this time, but I do remember that it was during my vacation
from Hampton. I had been without work for some time and had been off
several miles looking for work. On returning home at night I was very
tired and stopped in the boiler-room of one of the engines used to pump
salt water into the salt furnace near my home. I was so tired that I
soon fell asleep. About two or three o’clock in the morning some one, my
brother John, I think, found me and told me that our mother was dead. It
has always been a source of indescribable pain to me that I was not
present when she passed away, but the lessons of truth, honor and thrift
which she implanted in me while she lived have remained with me, and I
consider them among my most precious possessions. She seemed never to
tire of planning ways for me and the other children to get an education
and to make true men and women of us, although she herself was without
education. This was the severest trial I had ever experienced, because
she always sympathized with me deeply in every effort that I made to
secure an education. My sister Amanda was too young to know how to take
care of the house, and my step-father was too poor to hire anyone.
Sometimes we had food cooked for our meals and sometimes we had not.
During the whole of the summer, after the death of my mother, I do not
think there was a time when the whole family sat down to a meal
together. By working for Mrs. Ruffner and others, and by the aid of my
brother John, I obtained money enough to return to Hampton in the fall,
and graduated in the regular course in the summer of 1875.
Aside from Gen. Armstrong, Gen. Marshall and Miss Mackie, the persons
who made the deepest impression upon me at Hampton were Miss Nathalie
Lord and Miss Elizabeth Brewer, two teachers from New England. I am
especially indebted to these two for being helped in my spiritual life
and led to love and understand the Bible. Largely by reason of their
teaching, I find that a day rarely, if ever, passes when I am at home,
that I do not read the Bible. Miss Lord was the teacher of reading, and
she kindly consented to give me many extra lessons in elocution. These
lessons I have since found most valuable to me.
Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; it was constantly
taking me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours,
of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and
of the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all
new to me.
I sometimes feel that the most valuable lesson I learned at the Hampton
Institute was in the use of the bath. I learned there for the first time
some of its value, not only keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring
self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my travels in the South and
elsewhere, since leaving Hampton, I have always in some way sought my
daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been the guest of my own
people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been easy to do, except
by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have always tried to
teach my people that some provision for bathing should be a part of
every house.
After finishing the course at Hampton, I went to Saratoga Springs, in
New York, and was a waiter during the summer at the United States Hotel,
the same hotel at which I have several times since been a guest upon the
invitation of friends.
[Illustration: WARREN LOGAN, Treasurer.
TEACHERS AT TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE.]
[Illustration: EMMETT J. SCOTT, Mr. Washington’s Private Secretary.
A BRILLIANT TRIO OF COLORED AMERICANS. ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORTERS OF MR.
WASHINGTON.]