On mountain and valley, in home and school, I met men and women as I had never met them before.  Slowly they became, not white folks, but folks.  The unity beneath all life clutched me.  I was not less fanatically a Negro, but “Negro” meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and world-fellowship.  I felt myself standing, not against the world, but simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the greater, finer world at my back urging me on.

I builded great castles in Spain and lived therein.  I dreamed and loved and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, I dropped suddenly back into “nigger"-hating America!

My Days of Disillusion were not disappointing enough to discourage me.  I was still upheld by that fund of infinite faith, although dimly about me I saw the shadow of disaster.  I began to realize how much of what I had called Will and Ability was sheer Luck! Suppose my good mother had preferred a steady income from my child labor rather than bank on the precarious dividend of my higher training? Suppose that pompous old village judge, whose dignity we often ruffled and whose apples we stole, had had his way and sent me while a child to a “reform” school to learn a “trade”? Suppose Principal Hosmer had been born with no faith in “darkies,” and instead of giving me Greek and Latin had taught me carpentry and the making of tin pans? Suppose I had missed a Harvard scholarship? Suppose the Slater Board had then, as now, distinct ideas as to where the education of Negroes should stop?  Suppose and suppose!  As I sat down calmly on flat earth and looked at my life a certain great fear seized me.  Was I the masterful captain or the pawn of laughing sprites?  Who was I to fight a world of color prejudice?  I raise my hat to myself when I remember that, even with these thoughts, I did not hesitate or waver; but just went doggedly to work, and therein lay whatever salvation I have achieved.

First came the task of earning a living.  I was not nice or hard to please.  I just got down on my knees and begged for work, anything and anywhere.  I wrote to Hampton, Tuskegee, and a dozen other places.  They politely declined, with many regrets.  The trustees of a backwoods Tennessee town considered me, but were eventually afraid.  Then, suddenly, Wilberforce offered to let me teach Latin and Greek at $750 a year.  I was overjoyed!

I did not know anything about Latin and Greek, but I did know of Wilberforce.  The breath of that great name had swept the water and dropped into southern Ohio, where Southerners had taken their cure at Tawawa Springs and where white Methodists had planted a school; then came the little bishop, Daniel Payne, who made it a school of the African Methodists.  This was the school that called me, and when re-considered offers from Tuskegee and Jefferson City followed, I refused; I was so thankful for that first offer.