Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking me into a new world.  The matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new to me.

I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath.  I learned there for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue.  In all my travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always in some way sought my daily bath.  To get it sometimes when I have been the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods.  I have always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should be a part of every house.

For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I might wear them again the next morning.

The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month.  I was expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder.  To meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents when I reached the institution.  Aside from a very few dollars that my brother John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with which to pay my board.  I was determined from the first to make my work as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable.  This I succeeded in doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work.  The cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year.  This, of course, was wholly beyond my ability to provide.  If I had been compelled to pay the seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school.  General Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time that I was at Hampton.  After I finished the course at Hampton and had entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Morgan several times.

After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty because I did not have books and clothing.  Usually, however, I got around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more fortunate than myself.  As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had practically nothing.  Everything that I possessed was in a small hand satchel.  My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in ranks, to see that their clothes were clean.  Shoes had to be polished, there must