And all of this has been done through the churches, and God be praised for those that have given of their means.

At Harper’s Ferry I spent four years and they were years of hard labor, but they were just as sweet as they could well be, for the Lord went with me and I found favor with all of the teachers.  When I had spent the first eight months there I learned to have the greatest love for my beloved teachers, and when the time came for me to leave the teachers I thought that my poor heart would break.  Though I was coming to my own people in Brooklyn, I felt that I was leaving my best friends on the earth and so did all of the students.

Well, now the Summer had passed and gone and the Fall came when God permitted all of the loving ones to come together once more to take up the cares of studies again.  So the time of the winter season was always a blessing to all, and some found it the happiest time of their lives, for they found Jesus precious to their souls and could study so much better than they could before.

CHAPTER IV

There were sometimes as many as sixty or seventy brought to the knowledge of the Truth, and sometimes we had to go out of the class-room into the prayer-room, for the Lord was among us in the Spirit’s power.

When in 1886 I went out for good, that I might be of some use to my own people I started in the strength of the Lord, and He did give me the greatest victory as a school teacher, for all of the people sought me to take their children in my school and give them a start.  I had my hands full of work, but I let them come in for the Board always sent them to me find out if I could find room and time, and I always made the time for when scholars find that a teacher loves them they will do any amount of hard studying.

And so the time rolled on, with everything to make me feel like hard work, in the strength of the blessed Lord.

I was three years old when I was leaving my own dear mother’s home to go to my new mother’s home, or I should say to my white mother’s home, to live with her, and I left my mother’s as happy as any child could leave her own home, for this lovely lady was always at my mother’s to see me ever since I could remember anything, and she was the joy of my little life and I seemed to be all the joy of her sweet life.  She had learned to love me from the time that I came into the world.

She had watched me in my cradle and longed for the day to come when I should be able to walk, for she knew that I would follow her everywhere she should go.  She said to all of the friends around that if I should live to remember her that would be all that she would ask.

And so she read her blessed Bible and prayed until she saw her prayers answered, and then she went to her home in glory, where she has watched and waited and longed to see the good old ships of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.