I entered the high school with my class, and still continued my study of the piano, the pipe organ, and the theory of music.  I had to drop out of the boys’ choir on account of a changing voice; this I regretted very much.  As I grew older, my love for reading grew stronger.  I read with studious interest everything I could find relating to colored men who had gained prominence.  My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor.  When I learned that Alexandre Dumas was a colored man, I re-read Monte Cristo and The Three Guardsmen with magnified pleasure.  I lived between my music and books, on the whole a rather unwholesome life for a boy to lead.  I dwelt in a world of imagination, of dreams and air castles—­the kind of atmosphere that sometimes nourishes a genius, more often men unfitted for the practical struggles of life.  I never played a game of ball, never went fishing or learned to swim; in fact, the only outdoor exercise in which I took any interest was skating.  Nevertheless, though slender, I grew well formed and in perfect health.  After I entered the high school, I began to notice the change in my mother’s health, which I suppose had been going on for some years.  She began to complain a little and to cough a great deal; she tried several remedies, and finally went to see a doctor; but though she was failing in health, she kept her spirits up.  She still did a great deal of sewing, and in the busy seasons hired two women to help her.  The purpose she had formed of having me go through college without financial worries kept her at work when she was not fit for it.  I was so fortunate as to be able to organize a class of eight or ten beginners on the piano, and so start a separate little fund of my own.  As the time for my graduation from the high school grew nearer, the plans for my college career became the chief subject of our talks.  I sent for catalogues of all the prominent schools in the East and eagerly gathered all the information I could concerning them from different sources.  My mother told me that my father wanted me to go to Harvard or Yale; she herself had a half desire for me to go to Atlanta University, and even had me write for a catalogue of that school.  There were two reasons, however, that inclined her to my father’s choice; the first, that at Harvard or Yale I should be near her; the second, that my father had promised to pay for a part of my college education.

Both “Shiny” and “Red” came to my house quite often of evenings, and we used to talk over our plans and prospects for the future.  Sometimes I would play for them, and they seemed to enjoy the music very much.  My mother often prepared sundry Southern dishes for them, which I am not sure but that they enjoyed more.  “Shiny” had an uncle in Amherst, Mass., and he expected to live with him and work his way through Amherst College.  “Red” declared that he had enough of school and that after he got his high school diploma, he would get a position in a bank.  It was his ambition to become a banker and he felt sure of getting the opportunity through certain members of his family.