"
Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner's I did not give up the
idea of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I
determined to make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated,
I had no definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of
what it would cost to go there. I do not think that any one
thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless
it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was
starting out on a "wild-goose chase." At any rate, I got only a half-
hearted consent from her that I might start. The small amount of
money that I had earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the
remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and
so I had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling
expenses. My brother John helped me all that he could, but of course
that was not a great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he
did not earn much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction
of paying the household expenses.
Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection
with my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older
coloured people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of
their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time
when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a
boarding-school.
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