From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my best friends.  When she found that she could trust me she did so implicitly.  During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to teach me.  Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts to get an education.  It was while living with her that I began to get together my first library.  I secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called it my “library.”

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.  Some of these older people would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a handkerchief.

Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton.  I had only a small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing I could get.  My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health.  I hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more sad.  She, however, was very brave through it all.  At that time there were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with eastern Virginia.  Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches.