telling about Emerson Institute, a school of the American Missionary Association, and the commencement exercises soon to occur there.  The school had been in Mobile for several years, but I had heard nothing of it till now.  As soon as I read of these exercises, I determined to see them, for I had never heard of such exercises before.  When the time came, I went one night, accompanied by a few of my fellow night-school students.  We were well pleased with what we saw, and I said to them that I meant to enter that school when it opened the next fall, and that I meant to be an educated man if I could.  I soon began to carry out my purpose, for in a few weeks I left my employment in that family and went back into the country, from whence I had gone to Mobile, and took the examination and began teaching public school.  By this means, I earned money enough to go back to Mobile and become a pupil of Emerson Institute, not in the fall of 1873, as I had hoped to do, but in the spring of 1874.  I shall ever feel grateful to the man who threw over the fence for me the article from which I learned about that good school, for I am sure I am quite a different man to-day from what I would have been but for reading that article.  Precious to me is the memory of those days during which I took tuition in the night-school, where the key was put into my hand and the door of knowledge was opened to me.

Next to God I am grateful to the American Missionary Association for having received training in a Christian school, where I was led to Christ and felt called to the Christian ministry.  When I lived on the plantation, before I went to Mobile and received instruction in the Christian school, I had heard the uneducated colored ministers preach and they had endeavored to lead me to Christ, but I could not accept Christ in the way they had presented Him to me.  I remember well how they told us that in order to find Christ we must fast and pray for a number of days.  I remember, too, the unsuccessful attempt which I made to give myself to Jesus in this way.  I was a farm boy and was plowing hard every day, and it was hard work for a boy of my age to follow the mule all day in the tough grass, and I always felt like eating when meal time came, but still I tried to become a Christian by doing as the minister said I must, and so for a few days I ate no breakfast, no dinner, and no supper, though I worked on.  They told us, also, that we must not go to bed at night, for if we did the wicked one would make us sleep all night and we would fail to pray through the night, and they said we must pray all night.  For several nights I did not go to bed at all, but would lie down upon the doorstep that I might get up often through the night and go down the hill to pray, for we were instructed to “go down in the valley.”  Of course after a few days I became tired, sleepy and discouraged, and gave up.  I did not make another attempt till I became a student in Emerson Institute.  One of the lady teachers in that school became interested in my soul’s salvation.  She read the Bible to me, talked to me, and prayed for me, and made the way of life and salvation seem so plain and simple that it was not long before I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour.