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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6), by
+Various, Edited by Asa Don Dickinson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6)
+       Orators and Reformers
+
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Asa Don Dickinson
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2006  [eBook #18597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III
+(OF 6)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
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+      See 18597-h.htm or 18597-h.zip:
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+
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+
+
+
+STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III
+
+Orators and Reformers
+
+Edited by
+
+ASA DON DICKINSON
+
+Orators and Reformers
+
+ DESMOSTHENES
+ ELIHU BURRITT
+ JOHN B. GOUGH
+ FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+ HENRY WARD BEECHER
+ BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+ BEN. B. LINDSEY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Henry Ward Beecher]
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City ---- New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1925
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+In the preparation of this volume the publishers have received from
+several houses and authors generous permissions to reprint copyright
+material.  For this they wish to express their cordial gratitude.  In
+particular, acknowledgments are due to the Houghton Mifflin Company for
+the extract concerning Elihu Burritt; to George W. Jacobs & Co. for the
+extract from Booker T. Washington's "Frederick Douglass"; to P. B.
+Bromfield for permission to use passages from "The Biography of Henry
+Ward Beecher"; to the late Booker T. Washington for permission to
+reprint extracts from "Up From Slavery"; to Judge Ben. B. Lindsey for
+permission to reprint from "The Beast."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ORATORS AND REFORMERS
+
+DEMOSTHENES
+  The Orator Who Stammered
+
+ELIHU BURRITT
+  "The Learned Blacksmith"
+
+JOHN B. GOUGH
+  The Conquest of a Bad Habit
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+  The Slave Who Stole Freedom
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER
+  The Boy Who Half-heartedly Joined the Church
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+  The Boy Who Slept Under the Sidewalk
+
+BEN. B. LINDSEY
+  The Man Who Fights the Beast
+
+
+
+
+DEMOSTHENES
+
+(384-322 B. C.)
+
+THE ORATOR WHO STAMMERED
+
+Modern critics are fond of discriminating between talent and genius.
+The fire of _genius_, it seems, will flame resplendent even in spite of
+an unworthy possessor's neglect.  But the man with _talent_ which must
+be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by
+its help--that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in
+sympathy.  Every schoolboy knows that Demosthenes practised declamation
+on the seashore, with his mouth full of pebbles.  This description of
+the unlovely old Athenian with the compelling tongue is Plutarch's
+contribution to the literature of self-help.
+
+
+From Plutarch's "Lives of Illustrious Men."
+
+The orator Callistratus was to plead in the cause which the city of
+Oropus had depending; and the expectation of the public was greatly
+raised, both by the powers of the orator, which were then in the
+highest repute, and by the importance of the trial.  Demosthenes,
+hearing the governors and tutors agree among themselves to attend the
+trial, with much importunity prevailed on his master to take him to
+hear the pleadings.  The master, having some acquaintance with the
+officers who opened the court, got his young pupil a seat where he
+could hear the orators without being seen.  Callistratus had great
+success, and his abilities were extremely admired.  Demosthenes was
+fired with a spirit of emulation.  When he saw with what distinction
+the orator was conducted home, and complimented by the people, he was
+struck still more with the power of that commanding eloquence which
+could carry all before it.  From this time, therefore, he bade adieu to
+the other studies and exercises in which boys are engaged, and applied
+himself with great assiduity to declaiming, in hopes of being one day
+numbered among the orators.  Isaeus was the man he made use of as his
+preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was
+that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten
+_minae_, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he
+preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more fit for public
+use.
+
+Hermippus says he met with an account in certain anonymous memoirs that
+Demosthenes likewise studied under Plato, and received great assistance
+from him in preparing to speak in public.  He adds, that Ctesibius used
+to say that Demosthenes was privately supplied by Callias the Syracusan
+and some others, with the systems of rhetoric taught by Isocrates and
+Alcidamus, and made his advantage of them.
+
+When his minority was expired, he called his guardians to account at
+law, and wrote orations against them.  As they found many methods of
+chicane and delay, he had great opportunity, as Thucydides says, to
+exercise his talent for the bar.  It was not without much pain and some
+risk that he gained his cause; and, at last, it was but a very small
+part of his patrimony that he could recover.  By this means, however,
+he acquired a proper assurance and some experience; and having tasted
+the honour and power that go in the train of eloquence, he attempted to
+speak in the public debates, and take a share in the administration.
+As it is said of Laomedon the Orchomenian, that, by the advice of his
+physicians, in some disorder of the spleen, he applied himself to
+running, and continued it constantly a great length of way, till he had
+gained such excellent health and breath that he tried for the crown at
+the public games, and distinguished himself in the long course; so it
+happened to Demosthenes, that he first appeared at the bar for the
+recovery of his own fortune, which had been so much embezzled; and
+having acquired in that cause a persuasive and powerful manner of
+speaking, he contested the crown, as I may call it, with the other
+orators before the general assembly.
+
+In his first address to the people he was laughed at and interrupted by
+their clamours, for the violence of his manner threw him into a
+confusion of periods and a distortion of his argument; besides he had a
+weakness and a stammering in his voice, and a want of breath, which
+caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for
+the audience to understand him.  At last, upon his quitting the
+assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him
+wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him to
+set him right.  "You," said he, "have a manner of speaking very like
+that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and
+cowardice.  You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular
+assembly nor prepare your body by exercise for the labour of the
+rostrum, but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and
+indolence."
+
+Another time, we are told, when his speeches had been ill-received, and
+he was going home with his head covered, and in the greatest distress,
+Satyrus, the player, who was an acquaintance of his, followed and went
+in with him.  Demosthenes lamented to him, "That though he was the most
+laborious of all the orators, and had almost sacrificed his health to
+that application, yet he could gain no favour with the people; but
+drunken seamen and other unlettered persons were heard, and kept the
+rostrum, while he was entirely disregarded."  "You say true," answered
+Satyrus, "but I will soon provide a remedy, if you will repeat to me
+some speech in Euripides or Sophocles."  When Demosthenes had done,
+Satyrus pronounced the same speech; and he did it with such propriety
+of action, and so much in character, that it appeared to the orator
+quite a different passage.  He now understood so well how much grace
+and dignity action adds to the best oration that he thought it a small
+matter to premeditate and compose, though with the utmost care, if the
+pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not attended to.  Upon this
+he built himself a subterraneous study which remained to our times.
+Thither he repaired every day to form his action and exercise his
+voice; and he would often stay there for two or three months together,
+shaving one side of his head, that, if he should happen to be ever so
+desirous of going abroad, the shame of appearing in that condition
+might keep him in.
+
+When he did go out on a visit, or received one, he would take something
+that passed in conversation, some business or fact that was reported to
+him, for a subject to exercise himself upon.  As soon as he had parted
+from his friends, he went to his study, where he repeated the matter in
+order as it passed, together with the arguments for and against it.
+The substance of the speeches which he heard he committed to memory,
+and afterward reduced them to regular sentences and periods, meditating
+a variety of corrections and new forms of expression, both of what
+others had said to him, and he had addressed to them.  Hence, it was
+concluded that he was not a man of much genius, and that all his
+eloquence was the effect of labour.  A strong proof of this seemed to
+be that he was seldom heard to speak anything extempore, and though the
+people often called upon him by name, as he sat in the assembly, to
+speak to the point debated, he would not do it unless he came prepared.
+For this many of the orators ridiculed him; and Pytheas, in particular,
+told him, "That all his arguments smelled of the lamp."  Demosthenes
+retorted sharply upon him, "Yes, indeed, but your lamp and mine, my
+friend, are not conscious to the same labours."  To others he did not
+pretend to deny his previous application, but told them, "He either
+wrote the whole of his orations, or spoke not without first committing
+part to writing."  He further affirmed, "That this shewed him a good
+member of a democratic state; for the coming prepared to the rostrum
+was a mark of respect for the people.  Whereas, to be regardless of
+what the people might think of a man's address shewed his inclination
+for oligarchy, and that he had rather gain his point by force than by
+persuasion."  Another proof they gave us of his want of confidence on
+any sudden occasion is, that when he happened to be put into disorder
+by the tumultuary behaviour of the people, Demades often rose up to
+support him in an extempore address, but he never did the same for
+Demades. . . .
+
+Upon the whole it appears that Demosthenes did not take Pericles
+entirely for his model.  He only adopted his action and delivery, and
+his prudent resolutions not to make a practice of speaking from a
+sudden impulse, or on any occasion that might present itself; being
+persuaded that it was to that conduct he owed his greatness.  Yet,
+while he chose not often to trust the success of his powers to fortune,
+he did not absolutely neglect the reputation which may be acquired by
+speaking on a sudden occasion; and if we believe Eratosthenes,
+Demetrius the Phalerean, and the comic poets, there was a greater
+spirit and boldness in his unpremeditated orations than in those he had
+committed to writing.  Eratosthenes says that in his extemporaneous
+harangues he often spoke as from a supernatural impulse; and Demetrius
+tells us that in an address to the people, like a man inspired, he once
+uttered this oath in verse:
+
+  By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods! . . .
+
+As for his personal defects, Demetrius the Phalerean gives us an
+account of the remedies he applied to them; and he says he had it from
+Demosthenes in his old age.  The hesitation and stammering of his
+tongue he corrected by practising to speak with pebbles in his mouth;
+and he strengthened his voice by running or walking uphill, and
+pronouncing some passage in an oration or a poem during the difficulty
+of breath which that caused.  He had, moreover, a looking-glass in his
+house before which he used to declaim and adjust all his motions.
+
+It was said that a man came to him one day, and desired him to be his
+advocate against a person from whom he had suffered by assault.  "Not
+you, indeed," said Demosthenes, "you have suffered no such thing."
+"What," said the man, raising his voice, "have I not received those
+blows?"  "Ay, _now_," replied Demosthenes, "you do speak like a person
+that has been injured."  So much in his opinion do the tone of voice
+and the action contribute to gain the speaker credit in what he affirms.
+
+His action pleased the commonalty much; but people of taste (among whom
+was Demetrius the Phalerean) thought there was something in it low,
+inelegant, and unmanly.  Hermippus acquaints us, Aesion being asked his
+opinion of the ancient orators and those of that time, said, "Whoever
+has heard the orators of former times must admire the decorum and
+dignity with which they spoke.  Yet when we read the orations of
+Demosthenes, we must allow they have more art in the composition and
+greater force."  It is needless to mention that in his written orations
+there was something extremely cutting and severe; but in his sudden
+repartees there was also something of humour. . . .
+
+When a rascal surnamed Chalcus attempted to jest upon his late studies
+and long watchings, he said, "I know my lamp offends thee.  But you
+need not wonder, my countryman, that we have so many robberies, when we
+have thieves of brass [_chalcus_] and walls only of clay."  Though more
+of his sayings might be produced, we shall pass them over, and go on to
+seek the rest of his manners and character in his actions and political
+conduct.
+
+He tells us himself that he entered upon public business in the time of
+the Phocian war, and the same may be collected from his Philippics.
+For some of the last of them were delivered after that war was
+finished; and the former relate to the immediate transactions of it.
+It appears, also, that he was thirty-two years old when he was
+preparing his oration against Midias; and yet at that time he had
+attained no name or power in the administration. . . .
+
+He had a glorious subject for his political ambition to defend the
+cause of Greece against Philip.  He defended it like a champion worthy
+of such a charge, and soon gained great reputation both for eloquence
+and for the bold truths which he spoke.  He was admired in Greece, and
+courted by the king of Persia.  Nay, Philip himself had a much higher
+opinion of him than the other orators; and his enemies acknowledged
+that they had to contend with a great man.  For Aeschines and
+Hyperides, in their very accusations, give him such a character.
+
+I wonder, therefore, how Theopompus could say that he was a man of no
+steadiness, who was never long pleased either with the same persons or
+things.  For, on the contrary, it appears that he abode by the party
+and the measures which he first adopted; and was so far from quitting
+them during his life that he forfeited his life rather than he would
+forsake them. . . .
+
+It must be acknowledged, however, that he excelled all the orators of
+his time, except Phocion, in his life and conversation.  And we find in
+his orations that he told the people the boldest truths, that he
+opposed their inclinations and corrected their errors with the greatest
+spirit and freedom.  Theopompus also acquaints us that when the
+Athenians were for having him manager of a certain impeachment, and
+insisted upon it in a tumultuary manner, he would not comply, but rose
+up and said, "My friends, I will be your counsellor whether you will or
+no; but a false accuser I will not be how much soever you may wish it.
+. . ."
+
+Demosthenes, through the whole course of his political conduct, left
+none of the actions of the kin of Macedon undisparaged.  Even in time
+of peace he laid hold on every opportunity to raise suspicions against
+him among the Athenians, and to excite their resentment.  Hence Philip
+looked upon him as a person of the greatest importance in Athens; and
+when he went with nine other deputies to the court of that prince,
+after having given them all audience, he answered the speech of
+Demosthenes with greater care than the rest.  As to other marks of
+honour and respect, Demosthenes had not an equal share in them; they
+were bestowed principally upon Aeschines and Philocrates.  They,
+therefore, were large in the praise of Philip on all occasions, and
+they insisted, in particular, on his eloquence, his beauty, and even
+his being able to drink a great quantity of liquor.  Demosthenes, who
+could not bear to hear him praised, turned these things off as trifles.
+"The first," he said, "was the property of a sophist, the second of a
+woman, and the third of a sponge; and not one of them could do any
+credit to a king."
+
+Afterward, it appeared that nothing was to be expected but war; for, on
+the one hand, Philip knew not how to sit down in tranquillity; and, on
+the other, Demosthenes inflamed the Athenians.  In this case, the first
+step the orator took was to put the people upon sending an armament to
+Euboea, which was brought under the yoke of Philip by its petty
+tyrants.  Accordingly he drew up an edict, in pursuance of which they
+passed over to that peninsula, and drove out the Macedonians.  His
+second operation was the sending succor to the Byzantians and
+Perinthians, with whom Philip was at war.  He persuaded the people to
+drop their resentment, to forget the faults which both those nations
+had committed in the confederate war, and to send a body of troops to
+their assistance.  They did so, and it saved them from ruin.  After
+this, he went ambassador to the states of Greece; and, by his animating
+address, brought them almost all to join in the league against Philip.
+. . .
+
+Meantime Philip, elated with his success at Amphissa, surprised Elatea,
+and possessed himself of Phocis.  The Athenians were struck with
+astonishment, and none of them durst mount the rostrum; no one knew
+what advice to give; but a melancholy silence reigned the city.  In
+this distress Demosthenes alone stood forth, and proposed that
+application should be made to the Thebans.  He likewise animated the
+people in his usual manner, and inspired them with fresh hopes; in
+consequence of which he was sent ambassador to Thebes, some others
+being joined in commission with him.  Philip, too, on his part, as
+Maryas informs us, sent Anyntus and Clearchus, two Macedonians, Doachus
+the Thessalian, Thrasidaeus the Elean, to answer the Athenian deputies.
+The Thebans were not ignorant what way their true interest pointed, but
+each of them had the evils of war before his eyes; for their Phocian
+wounds were still fresh upon them.  However, the powers of the orator,
+as Theopompus tells us, rekindled their courage and ambition so
+effectually that all other objects were disregarded.  They lost sight
+of fear, of caution, of every prior attachment, and, through the force
+of his eloquence, fell with enthusiastic transports into the path of
+honour.
+
+So powerful, indeed, were the efforts of the orator that Philip
+immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to apply for peace.  Greece
+recovered her spirits, whilst she stood waiting for the event; and not
+only the Athenian generals, but the governors of Boeotia, were ready to
+execute the commands of Demosthenes.  All the assemblies, as well those
+of Thebes as those of Athens, were under his direction: he was equally
+beloved, equally powerful, in both places; and, as Theopompus shows, it
+was no more than his merit claimed.  But the superior power of fortune,
+which seems to have been working at revolution, and drawing the
+liberties of Greece to a period at that time, opposed and baffled all
+the measures that could be taken.  The deity discovered many tokens of
+the approaching event.
+
+
+
+
+ELIHU BURRITT
+
+(1810-1879)
+
+"THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH"
+
+This man's career is the star example of the pursuit of knowledge under
+difficulties.  For years, while earning his living at the forge, he
+denied himself all natural pleasures that he might devote every possible
+minute to cramming his head with seemingly useless scraps of knowledge.
+
+The acquisition of knowledge merely for its own sake is of course
+foolishness, but it is a very rare kind of foolishness.  Nearly always
+the learned man pays his debt to society in full measure, if we but give
+him time enough.  So it was with "The Learned Blacksmith."  From his deep
+learning, Elihu Burritt at last drew the inspiration which made him a
+powerful advocate in the cause of the world's peace.
+
+
+From "Captains of Industry," by James Parton.  Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
+1884.
+
+Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
+Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
+Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford.  He was the
+youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children.  His father
+owned and cultivated a small farm, but spent the winters at the
+shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
+that day.  When Elihu was sixteen years of age his father died, and the
+lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native village.
+
+He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to
+gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which
+contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond.  This
+boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
+thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
+when his parents were going to have company.
+
+As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
+he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship--particularly
+mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
+surveyor.  He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
+forge, but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in doing
+sums in his head.  His biographer gives a specimen of these calculations
+which he wrought out without making a single figure:
+
+"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
+wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it require
+to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how much would
+it all cost at a shilling a yard?"
+
+He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
+and report the results to an elder brother, who had worked his way
+through Williams College.  His brother would perform the calculations
+upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.
+
+When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
+into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance of
+the same elder brother.  In the evenings of one winter he read the Aeneid
+of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few other
+Latin authors, he began Greek.  During the winter months he was obliged
+to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his
+leisure minutes were few and far between.  But he carried his Greek
+grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a
+large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers,
+and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being
+noticed by his fellow-apprentices.
+
+So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
+himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
+studied mathematics, Latin, and other languages.  Then he went back to
+the forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he
+had saved a little money, when he resolved to go to New Haven and spend a
+winter in study.  It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
+to enter Yale College, but he seems to have had an idea that the very
+atmosphere of the college would assist him.  He was still so timid that
+he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
+professor or tutor.
+
+He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
+morning a course of heroic study.  As soon as the fire was made in the
+sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
+took possession, and studied German until breakfast-time, which was
+half-past seven.  When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
+down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
+dictionary to help him.
+
+"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
+gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work.  I
+took a short triumphal walk, in favor of that exploit."
+
+Just before the boarders came back for their dinner he put away all his
+Greek and Latin books and took up a work in Italian, because it was less
+likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd.  After dinner he fell
+again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until bedtime.  In
+this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary student in the
+midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with the grandeurs and
+dignity of the past while eating flapjacks and molasses at a poor tavern.
+
+Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
+academy in a town near by, but he could not bear a life wholly sedentary;
+and at the end of a year abandoned his school and became what is called a
+"runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain.  This business he
+pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age, when, tired of
+wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and provision store,
+in which he invested all the money he had saved.  Soon came the
+commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread ruin.  He
+lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.
+
+He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
+Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
+small handkerchief and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
+hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across the
+ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port.  He could not find a
+berth.  He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he found
+work, and found something else which he liked better.  There is an
+antiquarian society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
+containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied, such
+as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others.  The
+directors of the society placed all their treasures at his command, and
+he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor at
+the forge.  To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or two
+from his private diary he then kept:
+
+"Monday, June 18.  Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64
+pages French; 11 hours forging.
+
+"Tuesday, June 19.  60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages Cuvier; 8
+lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15
+names of stars; 10 hours forging.
+
+"Wednesday, June 20.  25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging."
+
+
+He spent five years at Worcester in such labors as these.  When work at
+his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than
+usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand,
+when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study.
+After a while he began to think that he might perhaps earn his
+subsistence in part by his knowledge of languages, and thus save much
+waste of time and vitality at the forge.  He wrote a letter to William
+Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and encouraged him; and in this
+letter he gave a short history of his life, and asked whether he could
+not find employment in translating some foreign work into English.  Mr.
+Lincoln was so much struck with his letter that he sent it to Edward
+Everett, and he, having occasion soon after to address a convention of
+teachers, read it to his audience as a wonderful instance of the pursuit
+of knowledge under difficulties.  Mr. Everett prefaced it by saying that
+such a resolute purpose of improvement against such obstacles excited his
+admiration, and even his veneration.
+
+"It is enough," he added, "to make one who has good opportunities for
+education hang his head in shame."
+
+All this, including the whole of the letter, was published in the
+newspapers, with eulogistic comments, in which the student was spoken of
+as the "Learned Blacksmith."  The bashful scholar was overwhelmed with
+shame at finding himself suddenly famous.  However, it led to his
+entering upon public life.  Lecturing was then coming into vogue, and he
+was frequently invited to the platform.  Accordingly, he wrote a lecture,
+entitled "Application and Genius," in which he endeavored to show that
+there is no such thing as genius, but that all extraordinary attainments
+are the results of application.  After delivering this lecture sixty
+times in one season, he went back to his forge at Worcester, mingling
+study with labor in the old way.
+
+On sitting down to write a new lecture for the following season, on the
+"Anatomy of the Earth," a certain impression was made upon his mind which
+changed the current of his life.  Studying the globe, he was impressed
+with the need that one nation has of other nations, and one zone of
+another zone; the tropics producing what assuages life in the northern
+latitudes and northern lands furnishing the means of mitigating tropical
+discomforts.  He felt that the earth was made for friendliness and
+coöperation, not for fierce competition and bloody wars.
+
+Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture became an eloquent
+plea for peace, and to this object his after life was chiefly devoted.
+The dispute with England upon the Oregon boundary induced him to go to
+England with the design of travelling on foot from village to village,
+preaching peace, and exposing the horrors and folly of war.  His
+addresses attracting attention, he was invited to speak to larger bodies,
+and, in short, he spent twenty years of his life as a lecturer upon
+peace, organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uniform rates of ocean
+postage, and spreading abroad among the people of Europe the feeling
+which issued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute between the
+United States and Great Britain, an event which posterity will, perhaps,
+consider the most important of this century.  He heard Victor Hugo say at
+the Paris Congress of 1850:
+
+"A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just
+as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a
+thing could ever have been. . . ."
+
+Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life upon a little farm which
+he had contrived to buy in his native town.  He was never married, but
+lived with his sister and her daughters.  He was not so very much richer
+in worldly goods than when he started out for Boston, with his property
+wrapped in a small handkerchief.  He died in March, 1879, aged sixty-nine
+years.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN B. GOUGH
+
+(1817-1886)
+
+THE CONQUEST OF A BAD HABIT
+
+Happily few human beings sink to the depths in which John B. Gough
+found himself at the age of twenty-five years.  By sheer force of will
+he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he
+attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of
+exceptional usefulness to society.
+
+His story, as told in his own vivid words, is one of the most absorbing
+in the annals of self-help.  His example must have helped thousands
+among the myriads whom he thrilled by the dramatic recital of his
+experience.
+
+
+From his "Autobiography."
+
+I boarded in Grand Street at this time, and soon after laid the
+foundation of many of my future sorrows.  I possessed a tolerably good
+voice, and sang pretty well, having also the faculty of imitation
+rather strongly developed; and being well stocked with amusing stories,
+I was introduced into the society of thoughtless and dissipated young
+men, to whom my talents made me welcome.  These companions were what is
+termed respectable, but they drank.  I now began to attend the theatres
+frequently, and felt ambitious of strutting my part upon the stage.  By
+slow but sure degrees I forgot the lessons of wisdom which my mother
+had taught me, lost all relish for the great truths of religion,
+neglected my devotions, and considered an actor's situation to be the
+_ne plus ultra_ of greatness.
+
+During my residence at Newburyport my early serious impressions on one
+occasion in a measure revived, and I felt some stinging of conscience
+for my neglect of the Sabbath and religious observances.  I recommenced
+attending a place of worship, and for a short time I attended the Rev.
+Mr. Campbell's church, by whom, as well as by several of his members, I
+was treated with much Christian kindness.  I was often invited to Mr.
+Campbell's house, as well as to the house of some of his hearers, and
+it seemed as if a favorable turning-point or crisis in my fortunes had
+arrived.  Mr. Campbell was good enough to manifest a very great
+interest in my welfare, and frequently expressed a hope that I should
+be enabled, although late in life, to obtain an education.  And this I
+might have acquired had not my evil genius prevented my making any
+efforts to obtain so desirable an end.  My desire for strong liquors
+and company seemed to present an insuperable barrier to all
+improvement; and after a few weeks every aspiration after better things
+had ceased; every bud of promised comfort was crushed.  Again I grieved
+the spirit that had been striving with my spirit, and ere long became
+even more addicted to the use of the infernal draughts, which had
+already wrought me so much woe, than at any previous period of my
+existence.
+
+And now my circumstances began to be desperate indeed.  In vain were
+all my efforts to obtain work, and at last I became so reduced that at
+times I did not know when one meal was ended, where on the face of the
+broad earth I should find another.  Further mortification awaited me,
+and by slow degrees I became aware of it.  The young men with whom I
+had associated, in barrooms and parlors, and who wore a little better
+clothing than I could afford, one after another began to drop my
+acquaintance.  If I walked in the public streets, I too quickly
+perceived the cold look, the averted eye, the half recognition, and to
+a sensitive spirit such as I possessed such treatment was almost past
+endurance.  To add to the mortification caused by such a state of
+things, it happened that those who had laughed the loudest at my songs
+and stories, and who had been social enough with me in the barroom,
+were the very individuals who seemed most ashamed of my acquaintance.
+I felt that I was shunned by the respectable portion of the community
+also; and once, on asking a lad to accompany me in a walk, he informed
+me that his father had cautioned him against associating with me.  This
+was a cutting reproof, and I felt it more deeply than words can
+express.  And could I wonder at it?  No.  Although I may have used
+bitter words against that parent, my conscience told me that he had
+done no more than his duty in preventing his son being influenced by my
+dissipated habits.  Oh! how often have I lain down and bitterly
+remembered many who had hailed my arrival in their company as a joyous
+event.  Their plaudits would resound in my ears, and peals of laughter
+ring again in my deserted chamber; then would succeed stillness, broken
+only by the beatings of my agonized heart, which felt that the gloss of
+respectability had worn off and exposed my threadbare condition.  To
+drown these reflections, I would drink, not from love of the taste of
+the liquor, but to become so stupefied by its fumes as to steep my
+sorrows in a half oblivion; and from this miserable stupor I would wake
+to a fuller consciousness of my situation, and again would I banish my
+reflections by liquor.
+
+There lived in Newburyport at that time a Mr. Law, who was a rum
+seller, and I had spent many a shilling at his bar; he proposed to me
+that he would purchase some tools, and I could start a bindery on my
+own account, paying him by installments.  He did so; and I thought it
+an act of great kindness then, and for some time afterward, till I
+found he had received pay from me for tools he had never paid for
+himself, and I was dunned for the account he had failed to settle.  He
+even borrowed seventy-five dollars from me after I signed the pledge,
+which has never been repaid.  "Such is life."
+
+Despite all that had occurred, my good name was not so far gone but
+that I might have succeeded, by the aid of common industry and
+attention, in my business.  I was a good workman, and found no
+difficulty in procuring employment, and, I have not the slightest
+doubt, should have succeeded in my endeavor to get on in the world but
+for the unhappy love of stimulating drinks, and my craving for society.
+I was now my own master; all restraint was removed, and, as might be
+expected, I did as I pleased in my own shop.  I became careless, was
+often in the barroom when I should have been at my bindery, and instead
+of spending my evenings at home in reading or conversation, they were
+almost invariably passed in the company of the rum bottle, which became
+almost my sole household deity.  Five months only did I remain in
+business, and during that short period I gradually sunk deeper and
+deeper in the scale of degradation.  I was now the slave of a habit
+which had become completely my master, and which fastened its
+remorseless fangs in my very vitals.  Thought was a torturing thing.
+When I looked back, memory drew fearful pictures, the lines of lurid
+flame, and, whenever I dared anticipate the future, hope refused to
+illumine my onward path.  I dwelt in one awful present; nothing to
+solace me--nothing to beckon me onward to a better state.
+
+I knew full well that I was proceeding on a downward course, and
+crossing the sea of time, as it were, on a bridge perilous as that over
+which Mahomet's followers are said to enter paradise.  A terrible
+feeling was ever present that some evil was impending which would soon
+fall on my devoted head, and I would shudder as if the sword of
+Damocles, suspended by its single hair, was about to fall and utterly
+destroy me.
+
+Warnings were not wanting, but they had no voice of terror for me.  I
+was intimately acquainted with a young man in the town, and well
+remember his coming to my shop one morning and asking the loan of
+ninepence with which to buy rum.  I let him have the money, and the
+spirit was soon consumed.  He begged me to lend him a second ninepence,
+but I refused; yet, during my temporary absence, he drank some spirit
+of wine which was in a bottle in the shop, and used by me in my
+business.  He went away, and the next I heard of him was that he had
+died shortly afterward.  Such an awful circumstance as this might well
+have impressed me, but habitual indulgence had almost rendered me
+impervious to salutary impressions.  I was, at this time, deeper in
+degradation than at any period before which I can remember.
+
+My custom now was to purchase my brandy--which, in consequence of my
+limited means, was of the very worst description--and keep it at the
+shop, where, by little and little, I drank it, and continually kept
+myself in a state of excitement.
+
+This course of procedure entirely unfitted me for business, and it not
+unfrequently happened, when I had books to bind, that I would instead
+of attending to business keep my customers waiting, whilst in the
+company of desolute companions I drank during the whole day, to the
+complete ruin of my prospects in life.  So entirely did I give myself
+up to the bottle that those of my companions who fancied they still
+possessed some claims to respectability gradually withdrew from my
+company.  At my house, too, I used to keep a bottle of gin, which was
+in constant requisition.  Indeed, go where I would, stimulant I must
+and did have.  Such a slave was I to the bottle that I resorted to it
+continually, and in vain was every effort which I occasionally made to
+conquer the debasing habit.  I had become a father; but God in his
+mercy removed my little one at so early an age that I did not feel the
+loss as much as if it had lived longer, to engage my affections.
+
+A circumstance now transpired which attracted my attention, and led me
+to consider my situation, and whither I was hurrying.  A lecture was
+advertised to be delivered by the first reformed drunkard, Mr. I. J.
+Johnson, who visited Newburyport, and I was invited by some friends,
+who seemed to feel an interest, to attend and hear what he had to say.
+I determined after some consideration to go and hear what was to be
+said on the subject.  The meeting was held in the Rev. Mr. Campbell's
+church, which was pretty well crowded.  I went to the door, but would
+go no farther; but in the ten minutes I stood there, I heard him in
+graphic and forcible terms depict the misery of the drunkard and the
+awful consequences of his conduct, both as they affected himself and
+those connected with him.  My conscience told that he spoke the
+truth--for what had I not suffered!  I knew he was right, and I turned
+to leave the church when a young man offered me the pledge to sign.  I
+actually turned to sign it; but at that critical moment the appetite
+for strong drink, as if determined to have the mastery over me, came in
+all its force.  Oh, how I wanted it! and remembering that I had a pint
+of brandy at home I deferred signing, and put off to "a more convenient
+season," a proceeding that might have saved me so much after sorrow.
+I, however, compromised the matter with my conscience by inwardly
+resolving that I would drink up what spirit I had by me, and then think
+of leaving off altogether.
+
+I forgot the impressions made upon me by the speaker at the meeting.
+Still, I madly drained the inebriating cup, and speedily my state was
+worse than ever.  Oh, no, I soon ceased to think about it, for my
+master passion, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up every thought and
+feeling opposed to it which I possessed.
+
+My business grew gradually worse, and at length my constitution became
+so impaired that even when I had the will I did not possess the power
+to provide for my daily wants.  My hands would at times tremble so that
+I could not perform the finer operations of my business, the finishing
+and gilding.  How could I letter straight, with a hand burning and
+shaking from the effects of a debauch.  Sometimes, when it was
+absolutely necessary to finish off some work, I have entered the shop
+with a stern determination not to drink a single drop until I completed
+it.  I have bitterly felt that my failing was a matter of common
+conversation in the town, and a burning sense of shame would flush my
+fevered brow at the conviction that I was scorned by the respectable
+portion of the community.  But these feelings passed away like the
+morning cloud or early dew, and I pursued my old course.
+
+One day I thought I would not go to work, and a great inducement to
+remain at home existed in the shape of my enemy, West India rum, of
+which I had a quantity in the house.  Although the morning was by no
+means far advanced, I sat down, intending to do nothing until
+dinner-time.  I could not sit alone without rum, and I drank glass
+after glass until I became so stupefied that I was compelled to lie
+down on the bed, where I soon fell asleep.  When I awoke it was late in
+the afternoon, and then, as I persuaded myself, too late to make a bad
+day's work good.  I invited a neighbor, who, like myself, was a man of
+intemperate habits, to spend the evening with me.  He came, and we sat
+down to our rum, and drank foully together until late that night, when
+he staggered home; and so intoxicated was I that, in moving to go to
+bed, I fell over the table, broke a lamp, and lay on the floor for some
+time, unable to rise.  At last I managed to get to bed, but, oh, I did
+not sleep, only dozed at intervals, for the drunkard never knows the
+blessings of undisturbed repose.  I awoke in the night with a raging
+thirst.  No sooner was one draught taken than the horrible dry feeling
+returned; and so I went on, swallowing repeated glassfuls of the spirit
+until at last I had drained the very last drop which the jug contained.
+My appetite grew by what it fed on; and, having a little money by me, I
+with difficulty got up, made myself look as tidy as possible, and then
+went out to buy more rum, with which I returned to the house.
+
+The fact will, perhaps, seem incredible, but so it was that I drank
+spirits continually without tasting a morsel of food for the next three
+days.  This could not last long; a constitution of iron strength could
+not endure such treatment, and mine was partially broken down by
+previous dissipation.
+
+I began to experience a feeling hitherto unknown to me.  After the
+three days' drinking to which I have just referred, I felt, one night,
+as I lay on my bed, an awful sense of something dreadful coming over
+me.  It was as if I had been partially stunned, and now in an interval
+of consciousness was about to have the fearful blow, which had
+prostrated me, repeated.  There was a craving for sleep, sleep, blessed
+sleep, but my eyelids were as if they could not close.  Every object
+around me I beheld with startling distinctness, and my hearing became
+unnaturally acute.  Then, to the ringing and roaring in my ears would
+suddenly succeed a silence so awful that only the stillness of the
+grave might be compared with it.
+
+At other times, strange voices would whisper unintelligible words, and
+the slightest noise would make me start like a guilty thing.  But the
+horrible, burning thirst was insupportable, and to quench it and induce
+sleep I clutched again and again the rum bottle, hugged my enemy, and
+poured the infernal fluid down my parched throat.  But it was no use,
+none; I could not sleep.  Then I bethought me of tobacco; and
+staggering from my bed to a shelf near by, with great difficulty I
+managed to procure a pipe and some matches.  I could not stand to light
+the latter, so I lay again on the bed, and scraped one on the wall.  I
+began to smoke, and the narcotic leaf produced a stupefaction.  I dozed
+a little, but, feeling a warmth on my face, I awoke and discovered my
+pillow to be on fire!  I had dropped a lighted match on the bed.  By a
+desperate effort I threw the pillow on the floor, and, too exhausted to
+feel annoyed by the burning feathers, I sank into a state of somnolency.
+
+How long I lay, I do not exactly know; but I was roused from my
+lethargy by the neighbors, who, alarmed by the smell of fire, came to
+my room to ascertain the cause.  When they took me from my bed, the
+under part of the straw with which it was stuffed was smouldering, and
+in a quarter of an hour more must have burst into a flame.  Had such
+been the case, how horrible would have been my fate! for it is more
+than probable that, in my half-senseless condition, I should have been
+suffocated, or burned to death.  The fright produced by this incident,
+and a very narrow escape, in some degree sobered me, but what I felt
+more than anything else was the exposure now; all would be known, and I
+feared my name would become, more than ever, a byword and a reproach.
+
+Will it be believed that I again sought refuge in rum?  Yes, so it was.
+Scarcely had I recovered from the fright than I sent out, procured a
+pint of rum, and drank it all in less than an hour.  And now came upon
+me many terrible sensations.  Cramps attacked me in my limbs, which
+raked me with agony, and my temples throbbed as if they would burst.
+So ill was I that I became seriously alarmed, and begged the people of
+the house to send for a physician.  They did so, but I immediately
+repented having summoned him, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to get
+out of his way when he arrived.  He saw at a glance what was the matter
+with me, ordered the persons about me to watch me carefully, and on no
+account to let me have any spirituous liquors.  Everything stimulating
+was vigorously denied me; and there came on the drunkard's remorseless
+torture: delirium tremens, in all its terrors, attacked me.  For three
+days I endured more agony than pen could describe, even were it guided
+by the mind of Dante.  Who can feel the horrors of the horrible malady,
+aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding consciousness that it is
+self-sought.  Hideous faces appeared on the wall and on the ceiling and
+on the floors; foul things crept along the bedclothes, and glaring eyes
+peered into mine.  I was at one time surrounded by millions of
+monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the
+beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would
+shiver until the bed rattled again.  Strange lights would dance before
+my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall
+me by its dense gloom.  All at once, while gazing at a frightful
+creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness.
+I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was
+so pitchy dark.  I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to
+grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone.  I put my hand to
+my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame
+were there.  And then the scene would change!  I was falling--falling
+swiftly as an arrow--far down into some terrible abyss; and so like
+reality was it that as I fell I could see the rocky sides of the
+horrible shaft, where mocking, jibing, fiend-like forms were perched;
+and I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by
+the force of the unwholesome blast.  Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased
+for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, drenched with
+perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of
+the renewal of my torments.
+
+By the mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a
+weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I
+thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the
+instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had
+turned the lessons she had taught me.  I remembered her prayers and
+tears, thought of what I had been but a few short months before, and
+contrasted my situation with what it then was.  Oh! how keen were my
+own rebukes; and in the excitement of the moment I resolved to lead a
+better life, and abstain from the accursed cup.
+
+For about a month, terrified by what I had suffered, I adhered to my
+resolution, then my wife came home, and in my joy at her return I flung
+my good resolutions to the wind, and foolishly fancying that I could
+now restrain my appetite, which had for a whole month remained in
+subjection, I took a glass of brandy.  That glass aroused the
+slumbering demon, who would not be satisfied by so tiny a libation.
+Another and another succeeded, until I was again far advanced in the
+career of intemperance.  The night of my wife's return I went to bed
+intoxicated.
+
+I will not detain the reader by the particulars of my everyday life at
+this time; they may easily be imagined from what has already been
+stated.  My previous bitter experience, one would think, might have
+operated as a warning; but none save the inebriate can tell the almost
+resistless strength of the temptations which assail him.  I did not,
+however, make quite so deep a plunge as before.  My tools I had given
+into the hands of Mr. Gray, for whom I worked, receiving about five
+dollars a week.  My wages were paid me every night, for I was not to be
+trusted with much money at a time, so certain was I to spend a great
+portion of it in drink.  As it was, I regularly got rid of one third of
+what I daily received, for rum.
+
+My wardrobe, as it had, indeed, nearly always been whilst I drank to
+excess, was now exceedingly shabby, and it was with the greatest
+difficulty that I could manage to procure the necessaries of life.  My
+wife became very ill.  Oh! how miserable I was!  Some of the women who
+were in attendance on my wife told me to get two quarts of rum.  I
+procured it, and as it was in the house, and I did not anticipate
+serious consequences, I could not withstand the strong temptation to
+drink.  I did drink, and so freely that the usual effect was produced.
+How much I swallowed I cannot tell, but the quantity, judging from the
+effects, must have been considerable.
+
+Ten long weary days of suspense passed, at the end of which my wife and
+her infant both died.  Then came the terribly oppressive feeling that I
+was forgotten of God, as well as abandoned by man.  All the
+consciousness of my dreadful situation pressed heavily, indeed, upon
+me, and keenly as a sensitive mind could, did I feel the loss I had
+experienced.  I drank now to dispel my gloom, or to drown it in the
+maddening cup.  And soon was it whispered, from one to another, until
+the whole town became aware of it, that my wife and child were lying
+dead, and that I was drunk!  But if ever I was cursed with the faculty
+of thought, in all its intensity, it was then.  And this was the
+degraded condition of one who had been nursed in the lap of piety, and
+whose infant tongue had been taught to utter a prayer against being led
+into temptation.  There in the room where all who had loved me were;
+lying in the unconscious slumber of death was I, gazing, with a maudlin
+melancholy imprinted on my features, on the dead forms of those who
+were flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.  During the miserable hours
+of darkness I would steal from my lonely bed to the place where my dead
+wife and child lay, and, in agony of soul, pass my shaking hand over
+their cold faces, and then return to my bed after a draught of rum,
+which I had obtained and hidden under the pillow of my wretched couch.
+
+How apt the world is to judge of a man pursuing the course I did as one
+destitute of all feeling, with no ambition, no desire for better
+things!  To speak of such a man's pride seems absurd, and yet drink
+does not destroy pride, ambition, or high aspirations.  The sting of
+his misery is that he has ambition but no expectation; desire for
+better things but no hope; pride but no energy; therefore the
+possession of these very qualities is an additional burden to his load
+of agony.  Could he utterly forget his manhood, and wallow with the
+beasts that perish, he would be comparatively happy.  But his curse is
+that he thinks.  He is a man, and must think.  He cannot always drown
+thought or memory.  He may, and does, fly for false solace to the
+drink, and may stun his enemy in the evening, but it will rend him like
+a giant in the morning.  A flower, or half-remembered tune, a child's
+laughter, will sometimes suffice to flood the victim with recollections
+that either madden him to excess or send him crouching to his miserable
+room, to sit with face buried in his hands, while the hot, thin tears
+trickle over his swollen fingers.
+
+I believe this to be one reason why I shrink from society; why I have
+so often refused kind invitations; why, though I love my personal
+friends as strongly and as truly as any man's friends are ever loved, I
+have so steadily withdrawn from social parties, dinners, or
+introductions.  This is the penalty I must ever pay.
+
+A man can never recover from the effects of such a seven years'
+experience, morally or physically.
+
+The month of October had nearly drawn to a close, and on its last
+Sunday evening I wandered out into the streets, pondering as well as I
+was able to do--for I was somewhat intoxicated--on my lone and
+friendless condition.  My frame was much weakened and little fitted to
+bear the cold of winter, which had already begun to come on.  But I had
+no means of protecting myself against the bitter blast, and, as I
+anticipated my coming misery, I staggered along, houseless, aimless,
+and all but hopeless.
+
+Some one tapped me on the shoulder.  An unusual thing that, to occur to
+me, for no one now cared to come in contact with the wretched,
+shabby-looking drunkard.  I was a disgrace, "a living, walking
+disgrace."  I could scarcely believe my own senses when I turned and
+met a kind look; the thing was so unusual, and so entirely unexpected
+that I questioned the reality of it, but so it was.  It was the first
+touch of kindness which I had known for months; and simple and trifling
+as the circumstance may appear to many, it went right to my heart, and
+like the wing of an angel, troubled the waters in that stagnant pool of
+affection, and made them once more reflect a little of the light of
+human love.  The person who touched my shoulder was an entire stranger.
+I looked at him, wondering what his business was with me.  Regarding me
+very earnestly, and apparently with much interest, he said:
+
+"Mr. Gough, I believe?"
+
+"That is my name," I replied, and was passing on.
+
+"You have been drinking to-day," said the stranger, in a kind voice,
+which arrested my attention, and quite dispelled any anger at what I
+might otherwise have considered an officious interference in my affairs.
+
+"Yes, sir," I replied.  "I have----"
+
+"Why do you not sign the pledge?" was the next query.
+
+I considered for a moment or two, and then informed the strange friend
+who had so unexpectedly interested himself in my behalf that I had no
+hope of ever again becoming a sober man, and that I was without a
+single friend in the world who cared for me; that I fully expected to
+die very soon, cared not how soon, or whether I died drunk or sober,
+and, in fact, that I was in a condition of utter recklessness.
+
+The stranger regarded me with a benevolent look, took me by the arm,
+and asked me how I should like to be as I once was, respectable and
+esteemed, well clad, and sitting as I used to, in a place of worship;
+enabled to meet my friends as in old times, and receive from them the
+pleasant nod of recognition as formerly; in fact, become a useful
+member of society?
+
+"Oh," I replied, "I should like all these things first-rate; but I have
+no expectation that such a thing will ever happen.  Such a change
+cannot be possible."
+
+"Only sign our pledge," remarked my friend, "and I will warrant that it
+will be so.  Sign it, and I will introduce you myself to good friends,
+who will feel an interest in your welfare and take a pleasure in
+helping you to keep your good resolution.  Only, Mr. Gough, sign the
+pledge, and all will be as I have said; ay, and more, too!"
+
+Oh! how pleasantly fell these words of kindness and promise on my
+crushed and bruised heart.  I had long been a stranger to feelings such
+as now awoke in my bosom; a chord had been touched which vibrated to
+the tone of woe.  Hope once more dawned; and I began to think, strange
+as it appeared, that such things as my friend promised me might come to
+pass.  On the instant I resolved to try, at least, and said to the
+stranger:
+
+"Well, I will sign it."
+
+"When?" he asked.
+
+"I cannot do so to-night," I replied, "for I must have some more drink
+presently, but I certainly will to-morrow."
+
+"We have a temperance meeting to-morrow evening," he said; "will you
+sign it then?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"That is right," said he, grasping my hand; "I will be there to see
+you."
+
+"You shall," I remarked, and we parted.
+
+I went on my way much touched by the kind interest which at last some
+one had taken in my welfare.  I said to myself: "If it should be the
+last act of my life, I will perform my promise and sign it, even though
+I die in the attempt, for that man has placed confidence in me, and on
+that account I love him."
+
+I then proceeded to a low groggery in Lincoln Square, and in the space
+of half an hour drank several glasses of brandy; this in addition to
+what I had taken before made me very drunk, and I staggered home as
+well as I could.
+
+Arrived there, I threw myself on the bed and lay in a state of
+insensibility until morning.  The first thing which occurred to my mind
+on awaking was the promise I had made on the evening before, to sign
+the pledge; and feeling, as I usually did on the morning succeeding a
+drunken bout, wretched and desolate, I was almost sorry that I had
+agreed to do so.  My tongue was dry, my throat parched, my temples
+throbbed as if they would burst, and I had a horrible burning feeling
+in my stomach which almost maddened me, and I felt that I must have
+some bitters or I should die.  So I yielded to my appetite, which would
+not be appeased, and repaired to the same hotel where I had squandered
+away so many shillings before; there I drank three or four times, until
+my nerves were a little strung, and then I went to work.
+
+All that day the coming event of the evening was continually before my
+mind's eye, and it seemed to me as if the appetite which had so long
+controlled me exerted more power over me than ever.  It grew stronger
+than I had any time known it, now that I was about to rid myself of it.
+Until noon I struggled against its cravings, and then, unable to endure
+my misery any longer, I made some excuse for leaving the shop, and went
+nearly a mile from it in order to procure one more glass wherewith to
+appease the demon who had so tortured me.  The day wore wearily away,
+and when evening came I determined, in spite of many a hesitation, to
+perform the promise I had made to the stranger the night before.  The
+meeting was to be held at the lower town hall, Worcester; and thither,
+clad in an old brown surtout, closely buttoned up to my chin that my
+ragged habiliments beneath might not be visible, I went.  I took a
+place among the rest, and when an opportunity of speaking offered
+itself, I requested permission to be heard, which was readily granted.
+
+When I stood up to relate my story, I was invited to the stand, to
+which I repaired, and on turning to face the audience, I recognized my
+acquaintance who had asked me to sign.  It was Mr. Joel Stratton.  He
+greeted me with a smile of approbation, which nerved and strengthened
+me for my task, as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed upon me.  I
+lifted my quivering hand and then and there told what rum had done for
+me.  I related how I was once respectable and happy, and had a home,
+but that now I was a houseless, miserable, scathed, diseased, and
+blighted outcast from society.  I had scarce a hope remaining to me of
+ever becoming that which I once was, but, having promised to sign the
+pledge, I had determined not to break my word, and would now affix my
+name to it.  In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, and,
+in characters almost as crooked as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the
+Declaration of Independence, I signed the total abstinence pledge, and
+resolved to free myself from the inexorable tyrant.
+
+Although still desponding and hopeless, I felt that I was relieved from
+a part of my heavy load.  It was not because I deemed there was any
+supernatural power in the pledge which would prevent my ever again
+falling into such depths of woe as I had already become acquainted
+with, but the feeling of relief arose from the honest desire I
+entertained to keep a good resolution.  I had exerted a moral power
+which had long remained lying by perfectly useless.  The very idea of
+what I had done strengthened and encouraged me.  Nor was this the only
+impulse given me to proceed in my new pathway, for many who witnessed
+my signing and heard my simple statement came forward, kindly grasped
+my hand, and expressed their satisfaction at the step I had taken.  A
+new and better day seemed already to have dawned upon me.
+
+As I left the hall, agitated and enervated, I remember chuckling to
+myself, with great gratification, "I have done it--I have done it!"
+There was a degree of pleasure in having put my foot on the head of the
+tyrant who had so long led me captive at his will, but although I had
+"scotched the snake," I had not killed him, for every inch of his frame
+was full of venomous vitality, and I felt that all my caution was
+necessary to prevent his stinging me afresh.  I went home, retired to
+bed, but in vain did I try to sleep.  I pondered upon the step I had
+taken, and passed a restless night.  Knowing that I had voluntarily
+renounced drink, I endeavored to support my sufferings, and resist the
+incessant craving of my remorseless appetite as well as I could, but
+the struggle to overcome it was insupportably painful.  When I got up
+in the morning my brain seemed as though it would burst with the
+intensity of its agony; my throat appeared as if it were on fire; and
+in my stomach I experienced a dreadful burning sensation, as if the
+fire of the pit had been kindled there.  My hands trembled so that to
+raise water to my feverish lips was almost impossible.  I craved,
+literally gasped, for my accustomed stimulant, and felt that I should
+die if I did not have it; but I persevered in my resolve, and withstood
+the temptations which assailed me on every hand.
+
+Still, during all this frightful time I experienced a feeling somewhat
+akin to satisfaction at the position I had taken.  I made at least one
+step toward reformation.  I began to think that it was barely possible
+I might see better days, and once more hold up my head in society.
+Such feelings as these would alternate with gloomy forebodings and
+thick coming fancies of approaching ill.  At one time hope, and at
+another fear, would predominate, but the raging, dreadful, continued
+thirst was always present, to torture and tempt me.
+
+After breakfast I proceeded to the shop where I was employed, feeling
+dreadfully ill.  I determined, however, to put a bold face on the
+matter, and, in spite of the cloud which seemed to hang over me,
+attempt work.  I was exceedingly weak, and fancied, as I almost reeled
+about the shop, that every eye was fixed upon me suspiciously, although
+I exerted myself to the utmost to conceal my agitation.  I was
+suffering; and those who have never thus suffered cannot comprehend it.
+The shivering of the spine, then flushes of heat, causing every pore of
+the body to sting, as if punctured with some sharp instrument; the
+horrible whisperings in the ear, combined with a longing cry of the
+whole system for stimulants.  One glass of brandy would steady my
+shaking nerves; I cannot hold my hand still; I cannot stand still.  A
+young man but twenty-five years of age, and I have no control of my
+nerves; one glass of brandy would relieve this gnawing, aching,
+throbbing stomach, but I have signed the pledge.  "I do agree that I
+will not use it; and I must fight it out."  How I got through the day I
+cannot tell.  I went to my employer and said:
+
+"I signed the pledge last night."
+
+"I know you did."
+
+"I mean to keep it."
+
+"So they all say, and I hope you will."
+
+"You do not believe that I will; you have no confidence in me."
+
+"None whatever."
+
+I turned to my work, broken-hearted, crushed in spirit, paralyzed in
+energy, feeling how low I had sunk in the esteem of prudent and
+sober-minded men.  Suddenly the small iron bar I had in my hand began
+to move; I felt it move, I gripped it; still it moved and twisted; I
+gripped still harder; yet the thing would move till I could feel it,
+yes, feel it, tearing the palm out of my hand, then I dropped it, and
+there it lay, a curling, shiny snake!  I could hear the paper shavings
+rustle as the horrible thing writhed before me!  If it had been a snake
+I should not have minded it.  I was never afraid of a snake.  I should
+have called some one to look at it, I could have killed it, I should
+not have been terrified at a thing; but I knew it was a cold dead bar
+of iron, and there it was, with its green eyes, its forked, darting
+tongue, curling in all its shiny loathsomeness, and the horror filled
+me so that my hair seemed to stand up and shiver, and my skin lift from
+the scalp to the ankles, and I groaned out, "I cannot fight this
+through!  Oh! my God, I shall die!" when a gentleman came into the shop
+with a cheerful "Good-morning, Mr. Gough."
+
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"I saw you sign the pledge last night."
+
+"Yes, sir, I did it."
+
+"I was very glad to see you do it, and many young men followed your
+example.  It is such men as you that we want, and I hope you will be
+the means of doing a great deal of good.  My office is in the exchange;
+come in and see me.  I shall be happy to make your acquaintance.  I
+have only a minute or two to spare, but I thought I would just call in
+and tell you to keep up a brave heart.  Good-bye, God bless you.  Come
+in and see me."
+
+That was Jesse Goodrich, then a practising attorney and counselor at
+law, in Worcester, now dead; but to the last of his life my true and
+faithful friend.  It would be impossible to describe how this little
+act of kindness cheered me.  With the exception of Mr. Stratton, who
+was a waiter at a temperance hotel, no one had accosted me for months
+in a manner which would lead me to think any one cared for me, or what
+might be my fate.  Now I was not altogether alone in the world; there
+was a hope of my being rescued from the "slough of despond," where I
+had been so long floundering.  I felt that the fountain of human
+kindness was not utterly sealed up, and again a green spot, an oasis,
+small, indeed, but cheering, appeared in the desert of my life.  I had
+something to live for; a new desire for life seemed suddenly to spring
+up; the universal boundary of human sympathy included even my wretched
+self in its cheering circle.  All these sensations were generated by a
+few kind words at the right time.  Yes, now I can fight; and I did
+fight--six days and six nights--encouraged and helped by a few words of
+sympathy.  He said, "Come in and see me."  I will.  He said he would be
+pleased to make my acquaintance.  He shall.  He said, "Keep up a brave
+heart!"  By God's help I will.  And so encouraged I fought on with not
+one hour of healthy sleep, not one particle of food passing my lips,
+for six days and six nights.
+
+On the evening of the day following that on which I signed the pledge I
+went straight home from my workshop, with a dreadful feeling of some
+impending calamity haunting me.  In spite of the encouragement I had
+received, the presentiment of coming evil was so strong that it bowed
+me almost to the dust with apprehension.  The slakeless thirst still
+clung to me; and water, instead of allaying it, seemed only to increase
+its intensity.
+
+I was fated to encounter one struggle more with my enemy before I
+became free.  Fearful was that struggle.  God in his mercy forbid that
+any young man should endure but a tenth part of the torture which
+racked my frame and agonized my heart.
+
+As in the former attack, horrible faces glared upon me from the
+walls--faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible
+features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of
+burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly.  At one moment
+the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as
+the charnel house.  I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in
+my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably
+bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time;
+and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would
+stretch out all quivering with life.  After a frightful paroxysm of
+this kind I would start like a maniac from my bed, and beg for life,
+life!  What I of late thought so worthless seemed now to be of
+unappreciable value.  I dreaded to die, and clung to existence with a
+feeling that my soul's salvation depended on a little more of life.
+
+In about a week I gained, in a great degree, the mastery over my
+accursed appetite; but the strife had made me dreadfully weak.
+Gradually my health improved, my spirits recovered, and I ceased to
+despair.  Once more was I enabled to crawl into the sunshine; but, oh,
+how changed!  Wan cheeks and hollow eyes, feeble limbs and almost
+powerless hands plainly enough indicated that between me and death
+there had indeed been but a step; and those who saw me might say as was
+said of Dante, when he passed through the streets of France, "There's
+the man that has been in hell."
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+
+(1817-1895)
+
+THE SLAVE WHO STOLE FREEDOM
+
+To Booker T. Washington, the teller of the tale which follows,
+Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation brought freedom when he was but
+three years old.  But Mr. Washington's struggles, first for an
+education, later in behalf of his black brethren, have endowed him with
+understanding and warm sympathy for Douglass, the man who, in his own
+generation, preceded Washington as the foremost colored citizen of the
+United States.
+
+In later days, when the Underground Railway was in full operation, the
+slave who ran away could be sure of aid and comfort at any one of its
+many stations that he might find it possible to reach.  But
+Douglass--pioneer among these dark-skinned adventurers for
+freedom--must needs rely almost wholly upon his own wit and courage in
+making his escape.
+
+
+From "Frederick Douglass," by Booker T. Washington.  Copyright, 1906,
+by George W. Jacobs & Company.
+
+Frederick Douglass was born in the little town of Tuckahoe, in Talbot
+County, on the eastern shore of Maryland, supposedly in the month of
+February, 1817. . . .
+
+Until he was seven years of age, young Fred felt few of the privations
+of slavery.  In these childhood days he probably was as happy and
+carefree as the white children in the "big house."  At liberty to come
+and go and play in the open sunshine, his early life was typical of the
+happier side of the negro life in slavery.  What he missed of a
+mother's affection and a father's care was partly made up to him by the
+indulgent kindness of his good grandmother.
+
+When Fred was between seven and eight years of age his grandmother was
+directed by her master to take her grandson to the Lloyd plantation.
+After the boy arrived at his new home, he was put in charge of a
+slave-woman for whom the only name we know is "Aunt Katy."  This change
+brought him the first real hardship of his life.  As an early
+consequence of it, he lost the care and guidance of his grandmother,
+his freedom to play, good food, and that affection which means so much
+to a child.  When he came under the care of Aunt Katy, he began to feel
+for the first time the sting of unkindness.  He has given a very
+disagreeable picture of this foster-mother.  She was a woman of a
+hateful disposition, and treated the little stranger from Tuckahoe with
+extreme harshness.  Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him
+of food.  Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he
+complained was beaten without mercy.  He has described his misery on
+one particular night.  After being sent supperless to bed, his
+suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody
+else in the cabin was asleep he quietly took some corn and began to
+parch it before the open fireplace.  While thus trying to appease his
+hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, "who but my own
+dear mother should come in?"  The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing
+little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and
+protecting arms.
+
+"I shall never forget," he says, "the indescribable expression of her
+countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would
+starve the life out of me.  There was a deep and tender glance at me,
+and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and
+when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large
+ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.
+That night I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child, but
+somebody's child.  I was grander on my mother's knee than a king upon
+his throne.  But my triumph was short.  I dropped off to sleep and
+waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the
+mercy of the virago in my master's kitchen."
+
+There is no record of another meeting between mother and son.  She
+probably died shortly afterward, because if she had been within walking
+distance, he certainly would have seen her again.  Her memory in his
+child's mind was always that of a real and near personality.  When he
+became older, and conscious of his superiority to his fellows, he was
+wont to say: "I am proud to attribute my love of letters, such as I may
+have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon father, but to my sable,
+unprotected, and uncultivated mother."  Thus, after his mother died,
+his vivid imagination kept before him her image, as she appeared to him
+that last time he saw her, through all his struggles for a fuller and
+freer life for himself and his race.
+
+With the loss of his mother and grandmother, he came more and more to
+realize the peculiar relation in which he and those about him stood to
+Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony.  His active mind soon grasped the
+meaning of "master" and "slave."  While still a lad, longing for a
+mother's care, he began to feel himself within the grasp of the curious
+thing that he afterward learned to know as "slavery."  As he grew older
+in years and understanding, he came also to see what manner of man his
+master was.  He described Captain Anthony as a "sad man."  At times he
+was very gentle, and almost benevolent.  But young Douglass was never
+able to forget that this same kindly slave-holder had refused to
+protect his cousin from a cruel beating by her overseer.  The spectacle
+he had witnessed, when this beautiful young slave was whipped, had made
+a lasting and painful impression upon him.  Vaguely he began to
+recognize the outlines of the institution which at once permitted, and
+to a certain degree made necessary, these cruelties.  It was at this
+point that he began to speculate on the origin and nature of slavery.
+Meanwhile he became, in the course of his life on the plantation, the
+witness of other scenes quite as harrowing, and the memory mingled with
+his reflections, and embittered them.
+
+During this time an event occurred which gave a new direction and a new
+impetus to the thoughts and purposes slowly taking form within him.
+This event was the successful escape of his Aunt Jennie and another
+slave.  It caused a great commotion on the plantation.  Nothing could
+happen in a Southern community that excited so many and such varied
+emotions as the escape of a slave from bondage: terror and revenge,
+hope and fear, mingled with the images of the pursued and the pursuers,
+with speculation in regard to the capture of the fugitive, and with
+prayers for his success in the minds of the slaves. . . .
+
+From now on his quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things
+that formerly never affected him.  The hard and sometimes cruel
+discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of
+ambitions--all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the
+impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy.  He saw
+a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being
+"impudent."  "Crimes" of this nature were committed, as far as he could
+see, with impunity, and the memory of them haunted him by day and by
+night.
+
+Thus far Douglass had not felt the overseer's whip.  He was too small
+for anything except to run errands and to do light chores.  Of course,
+he had been cuffed about by Aunt Katy; he says he seldom got enough to
+eat, and he suffered continually from cold, since his entire wardrobe
+consisted of a tow sack. . . .
+
+When Fred became nine years old the most important event in his life
+occurred.  His master determined to send him to Baltimore to live with
+Hugh Auld, a brother of Thomas Auld.  Baltimore at this time was little
+more than a name to young Douglass.  When he reached the residence of
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld and felt the difference between the plantation cabin
+and this city home, it was to him, for a time, like living in Paradise.
+Mrs. Auld is described as a lady of great kindness of heart, and of a
+gentle disposition.  She at once took a tender interest in the little
+servant from the plantation.  He was much petted and well fed,
+permitted to wear boy's clothes and shoes, and for the first time in
+his life had a good soft bed to sleep in.  His only duty was to take
+care of and play with Tommy Auld, which he found both an easy and
+agreeable task.
+
+Young Douglass yet knew nothing about reading.  A book was as much of a
+mystery to him as the stars at night.  When he heard his mistress read
+aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused.  He felt so secure in
+her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him.
+Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without,
+for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented.  He
+quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of
+three syllables.  But alas, for his young ambition!  When Mr. Auld
+discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
+He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late.  The
+precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning.  He
+quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
+the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
+ignorance.  In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
+you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
+accomplished, he will be running away with himself."  Mr. Douglass,
+referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
+decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
+From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
+freedom."
+
+During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
+of Mr. Auld he was more closely watched than he had been before this
+incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed.
+He declares that he was not allowed to be alone, when this could be
+helped, lest he would attempt to teach himself.  But these were unwise
+precautions, since they but whetted his appetite for learning and
+incited him to many secret schemes to elude the vigilance of his master
+and mistress.  Everything now contributed to his enlightenment and
+prepared him for that freedom for which he thirsted.  His occasional
+contact with free colored people, his visit to the wharves where he
+could watch the vessels going and coming, and his chance acquaintance
+with white boys on the street, all became a part of his education and
+were made to serve his plans.  He got hold of a blue-back speller and
+carried it with him all the time.  He would ask his little white
+friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of
+them.  In this way he soon learned to read.  The first and most
+important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator."  He
+bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street.
+It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham,
+William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan.  These speeches were steeped in the
+sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the "rights of
+man."  They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than was
+included in his mere dream of freedom for himself, and in addition they
+increased his vocabulary of words and phrases.  The reading of this
+book unfitted him longer for restraint.  He became all ears and all
+eyes.  Everything he saw and read suggested to him a larger world lying
+just beyond his reach.  The meaning of the term "Abolition" came to him
+by a chance look at a Baltimore newspaper.
+
+Slavery and Abolition!  The distance between these two points of
+existence seemed to have lessened greatly after he had comprehended
+their meaning.  "When I heard the Word 'Abolition,' I felt the matter
+to be my personal concern.  There was hope in this word."  As he
+afterward went about the city on his ordinary errands, or when at the
+wharf, even performing tasks that were not set for him to do, he was
+like another being.  That word "Abolition" seemed to sing itself into
+his very soul, and when he permitted his thoughts to dwell on the
+possibilities that it opened to him, he was buoyed up with joyous
+expectations.  He tried to find out something from everybody.  He
+learned to write by copying letters on fences and walls and challenging
+his white playmates to find his mistakes; and at night, when no one
+suspected him of being awake, he copied from an old copy-book of his
+young friend Tommy.  Before he had formulated any plans for freedom for
+himself, he learned the important trick of writing "free passes" for
+runaway slaves.
+
+Notwithstanding his progress in gaining knowledge, his considerate
+master and kind mistress, his loving companion in Tommy, his good home,
+food, and clothes, he was not happy or contented.  None of these things
+could stifle his yearning to be free.  He has aptly described his own
+feelings at this time in speaking of Mrs. Auld: "Poor lady, she did not
+understand my trouble, and I could not tell her.  Nature made us
+friends, but slavery made us enemies.  She aimed to keep me ignorant,
+but I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery.
+My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment
+I received.  It was slavery, not its mere incidents, I hated.  Their
+feeding and clothing me well could not atone for taking my liberty from
+me.  The smiles of my master could not remove the deep sorrow that
+dwelt in my young bosom.  We were both victims of the same
+overshadowing evil--she as mistress, I as slave.  I will not censure
+her too harshly. . . ."
+
+After Douglass learned how to write with tolerable ease, he began to
+copy from the Bible and the Methodist hymn books at night when he was
+supposed to be asleep.  He always regarded this religious experience as
+the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only
+of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and
+softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding
+over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race.  He greatly
+needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and
+encourage him to hope for ultimate freedom.
+
+While he was undergoing this, to him, novel religious experience, and
+while he was gradually being adjusted to the situation in which he
+found himself, there came one of those dreaded changes in the fortunes
+of slavemasters that made the status of the slave painfully uncertain.
+His real master, Captain Anthony, died, and this event, complicated
+with some family quarrel, resulted in Douglass being recalled from
+Baltimore to the plantation. . . .
+
+A man named Edward Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from
+the campground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation
+for "breaking in unruly niggers."  Covey was a "poor white" and a farm
+renter.  To this man Douglass was hired out for a year.  In the month
+of January, 1834, he started for his new master, with his little bundle
+of clothes.  From what we have already seen of this sensitive,
+thoughtful young slave of seventeen years, it is not difficult to
+understand his state of mind.  Up to this time he had had a
+comparatively easy life.  He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell
+to the lot of many slaves whom he knew.  To quote his own words: "I was
+now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life.  Starvation made me
+glad to leave Thomas Auld's, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to
+Covey's."  Escape, however, was impossible.  The picture of the
+"slave-driver," painted in the lurid colors that Mr. Douglass's
+indignant memories furnished him, shows the dark side of slavery in the
+South.  During the first six weeks he was with Covey he was whipped,
+either with sticks or cowhides, every week.  With his body one
+continuous ache from his frequent floggings, he was kept at work in
+field or woods from the dawn of day until the darkness of night.  He
+says: "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me in body, soul, and spirit.
+The overwork and the cruel chastisements of which I was the victim,
+combined with the ever-growing and soul-devouring thought, 'I am a
+slave--a slave for life, a slave with no rational ground to hope for
+freedom,' had done their worst."
+
+He confesses that at one time he was strongly tempted to take his own
+life and that of Covey.  Finally, his sufferings of body and soul
+became so great that further endurance seemed impossible.  While in
+this condition he determined upon the daring step of returning to his
+master, Thomas Auld, in order to lay before him the story of abuse.  He
+felt sure that, if for no other reason than the protection of property
+from serious impairment, his master would interfere in his behalf.  He
+even expected sympathy and assurances of future protection.  In all
+this he was grievously disappointed.  Auld not only refused sympathy
+and protection, but would not even listen to his complaints, and
+immediately sent him back to his dreaded master to face the added
+penalty of running away.  The poor, lone boy was plunged into the
+depths of despair.  A feeling that he had been deserted by both God and
+man took possession of him.
+
+Covey was lying in wait for him, knowing full well that he must return
+as defenseless as he went away.  As soon as Douglass came near the
+place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred
+for the purpose of tying him for a flogging.  But Douglass escaped and
+took to the woods, where he concealed himself for a day and a night.
+His condition was desperate.  He felt that he could not endure another
+whipping, and yet there seemed to him no alternative.  His first
+impulse was to pray, but he remembered that Covey also prayed.
+Convinced, at length, that there was no appeal but to his own courage,
+he resolved to go back and face whatever must come to him.  It so
+happened that it was a Sunday morning and, much to his surprise, he met
+Covey, who was on his way to church, and who, when he saw the runaway,
+greeted him with a pleasant smile.  "His religion," says Douglass,
+"prevented him from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my
+bones on any other day of the week."
+
+On Monday morning Douglass was up early, half hoping that he would be
+permitted to resume his work without punishment.  Covey was astir
+betimes, too, and had laid aside his Sunday mildness of manner.  His
+first business was to carry out his fixed purpose of whipping the young
+runaway.  In the meantime Fred had likewise fully decided upon a course
+of action.  He was ready to submit to any kind of work, however hard or
+unreasonable, but determined to defend himself against any attempt at
+another flogging.  In the cold passion that took possession of him, the
+slave-boy became utterly reckless of consequences, reasoning to himself
+that the limit of suffering at the hands of this relentless
+slave-breaker had already been reached.  He was resolved to fight and
+did fight.  He began his morning work in peace, obeying promptly every
+order from his master, and while he was in the act of going up to the
+stable-loft for the purpose of pitching down some hay, he was caught
+and thrown by Covey, in an attempt to get a slip knot about his legs.
+Douglass flew at Covey's throat recklessly, hurled his antagonist to
+the ground, and held him firmly.  Blood followed the nails of the
+infuriated young slave.  He scarcely knew how to account for his
+fighting strength, and his daredevil spirit so dumfounded the master
+that he gaspingly said: "Are you going to resist me, you young
+scoundrel?"  "Yes, sir," was the quick reply.
+
+Finding himself baffled, Covey called for assistance.  His cousin
+Hughes came to aid him, but as he was attempting to put a noose over
+the unruly slave's foot, Douglass promptly gave him a blow in the
+stomach which at once put him out of the combat and he fled.  After
+Hughes had been disabled, Covey called on first one and then another of
+his slaves, but each refused to assist him.  Finding himself fairly
+outdone by his angry antagonist, Covey quit; with the discreet remark:
+"Now, you young scoundrel, you go to work; I would not have whipped you
+half so hard if you had not resisted."
+
+Douglass had thus won his first victory, and was never again threatened
+or flogged by his master.  The effect of this encounter, as far as he
+himself was concerned, was to increase his self-respect, and to give
+him more courage for the future.  He said that, "when a slave cannot be
+flogged, he is more than half free."  To the other slaves he became a
+hero, and Covey was not anxious to advertise his complete failure to
+break in this "unruly nigger."  It speaks well for the natural dignity
+and good sense of young Douglass that he neither boasted of his triumph
+nor did anything rash as a consequence of it, as might have been
+expected from a boy of his age and spirit. . . .
+
+
+[A carefully planned attempt at escape failed dismally, but he remained
+undaunted.]
+
+
+Ever since the first trouble with Auld, he had been pushing his plans
+to redeem his pledge to himself that he would run away on Monday,
+September 3, 1838.  These were anxious days, and many small details had
+to be mastered.  He must carefully avoid anything in manner or word
+which could excite the slightest suspicion.  He had to test the
+fidelity of a number of free colored people whose aid, in secret ways,
+was very essential to him.  Who these persons were has never been
+revealed, and, in fact, it was not until many years after emancipation
+that Mr. Douglass disclosed to the public how he succeeded in making
+his daring escape.  "Murder itself," he says, "was not more severely
+and surely punished in the State of Maryland than aiding and abetting
+the escape of a slave."
+
+Young Douglass's flight had no outward semblance of dramatic incident
+or thrilling episode, and yet, as he modestly says, "the courage that
+could risk betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death,
+if need be, in pursuit of freedom, were features in the undertaking.
+My success was due to address rather than to courage, to good luck
+rather than bravery.  My means of escape were provided by the very
+means which were making laws to hold and bind me more securely to
+slavery."
+
+By the laws of the State of Maryland, every free colored person was
+required to have what were called "free papers," which must be renewed
+frequently, and, of course, a fee was always charged for renewal.  They
+contained a full and minute description of the holder, for the purpose
+of identification.  This device, in some measure, defeated itself,
+since more than one man could be found to answer the general
+description; hence many slaves could get away by impersonating the real
+owners of these passes, which were returned by mail after the borrowers
+had made good their escape.  To use these papers in this manner was
+hazardous both for the fugitives and for the lenders.  Not every
+freeman was willing to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another
+might be free.  It was, however, often done, and the confidence that it
+necessitated was seldom betrayed.  Douglass had not many friends among
+the free colored people in Baltimore who resembled him sufficiently to
+make it safe for him to use their papers.  Fortunately, however, he had
+one who owned a "sailor's protection," a document describing the holder
+and certifying to the fact that he was a "free American sailor."  This
+"protection" did not describe its bearer very accurately.  But it
+called for a man very much darker than himself, and a close examination
+would have betrayed him at the start.  In the face of all these
+conditions young Douglass Was relying upon something besides a dubious
+written passport.  This something was his desperate courage.  He had
+learned to act the part of a freeman so well that no one suspected him
+of being a slave.  He had early acquired the habit of studying human
+nature.  As he grew to understand men, he no longer dreaded them.  No
+one knew better than he the kind of human nature that he had to deal
+with in this perilous undertaking.  He knew the speech, manner, and
+behavior that would excite suspicion; hence he avoided asking for a
+ticket at the railway station, because this would subject him to
+examination.  He so managed that just as the train started he jumped
+on, his bag being thrown after him by some one in waiting.  He knew
+that scrutiny of him in a crowded car en route would be less exacting
+than at the station.  He had borrowed a sailor's shirt, tarpaulin, cap,
+and black cravat, tied in true sailor fashion, and he acted the part of
+an "old salt" so perfectly that he excited no suspicion.  When the
+conductor came to collect his fare and inspected his "free papers,"
+Douglass, in the most natural manner, said that he had none, but
+promptly showed his "sailor's protection," which the railway official
+merely glanced at and passed on without further question.  Twice on the
+trip he thought he was detected.  Once when his car stood opposite a
+south-bound train, Douglass observed a well-known citizen of Baltimore,
+who knew him well, sitting where he could see him distinctly.  At
+another time, while still in Maryland, he was noticed by a man who had
+met him frequently at the shipyards.  In neither of these cases,
+however, was he interfered with or molested.  When he got into the free
+State of Pennsylvania, he felt more joy than he dared express.  He had
+by his cool temerity and address passed every sentinel undetected, and
+no slave, to his knowledge, he afterward said, ever got away from
+bondage on so narrow a margin of safety.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER
+
+(1813-1887)
+
+THE BOY WHO HALF-HEARTEDLY JOINED THE CHURCH
+
+There is great encouragement for the seemingly backward, hesitant youth
+in the story of Henry Ward Beecher's early life.
+
+He tells us that he used to be laughed at for talking as though he had
+pudding in his mouth.  Yet he became one of the greatest orators the
+world has seen.
+
+He joined the church merely because he was expected to do so.  It was
+only "pride and shamefacedness" that prevented him from expressing his
+doubts as to whether he was a Christian.  When he actually came to take
+the step he wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling
+more; and afterward he walked home crying and wishing he knew what he
+ought to do and how he ought to do it.  Yet he became one of the
+greatest religious leaders of his time.
+
+
+From the "Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by W. C. Beecher and
+Scoville.  C. L. Webster Co., 1888.
+
+"If I had had the influence of a discreet, sympathetic Christian person
+to brood over and help and encourage me, I should have been a Christian
+child from my mother's lap, I am persuaded; but I had no such
+influence.  The influences of a Christian family were about me, to be
+sure, but they were generic; and I revolved these speculative
+experiences, my strong religious habitudes taking the form of
+speculation all through my childhood.  I recollect that from the time
+that I was about ten years old I began to have periods when my
+susceptibilities were so profoundly impressed that the outward
+manifestations of my nature were changed.  I remember that when my
+brother George--who was next older than I, and who was beginning to be
+my helpful companion, to whom I looked up--became a Christian, being
+awakened and converted in college, it seemed as though a gulf had come
+between us, and as though he was a saint on one side of it while I was
+a little reprobate on the other side.  It was awful to me.  If there
+had been a total eclipse of the sun I should not have been in more
+profound darkness outwardly than I was inwardly.  I did not know whom
+to go to; I did not dare to go to my father; I had no mother that I
+ever went to at such a time; I did not feel like going to my brother;
+and I did not go to anybody.  I felt that I must try to wrestle out my
+own salvation.
+
+"Once, on coming home, I heard the bell toll, and I learned that it was
+for the funeral of one of my companions with whom I had been accustomed
+to play, and with whom I had grown up.  I did not know that he had been
+sick, but he had dropped into eternity; and the ringing, swinging,
+booming of that bell, if it had been the sound of an angel trumpet of
+the last day, would not have seemed to me more awful.  I went into an
+ecstasy of anguish.  At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and
+prayed.  There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the
+woodhouse, in the carriage-house, or in the barn that was not a scene
+of my crying and praying.  It was piteous that I should be in such a
+state of mind, and that there should be nobody to help me and lead me
+out into the light.  I do not recollect that to that day one word had
+been said to me, or one syllable had been uttered in the pulpit, that
+lead me to think there was any mercy in the heart of God for a sinner
+like me.  For a sinner that had repented it was thought there was
+pardon; but how to repent was the very thing I did not know.  A
+converted sinner might be saved, but for a poor, miserable, faulty boy,
+that pouted, and got mad at his brothers and sisters, and did a great
+many naughty things, there was no salvation so far as I had learned.
+My innumerable shortcomings and misdemeanors were to my mind so many
+pimples that marked my terrible depravity; and I never had the remotest
+idea of God except that he was a sovereign who sat with a sceptre in
+his hand and had his eye on me, and said: 'I see you, and I am after
+you.'  So I used to live in perpetual fear and dread, and often I
+wished myself dead.  I tried to submit and lay down the weapons of my
+rebellion, I tried to surrender everything; but it did not seem to do
+any good, and I thought it was because I did not do it right.  I tried
+to consecrate myself to God, but all to no purpose.  I did everything,
+so far as I could, that others did who professed to be Christians, but
+I did not feel any better.  I passed through two or three revivals.  I
+remember, when Mr. Nettleton was preaching in Litchfield, going to
+carry a note to him from father; and for a sensitive, bashful boy like
+me it was a severe ordeal.  I went to the room where he was speaking,
+with the note in my trembling hand, and had to lay it on the desk
+beside him.  Before I got halfway across the floor I was dazed and
+everything seemed to swim around me, but I made out to get the note to
+him, and he said: 'That's enough; go away, boy,' and I sort of backed
+and stumbled toward the door (I was always stumbling and blundering in
+company) and sat down.  He was preaching in those whispered tones which
+always seem louder than thunder to the conscience, although they are
+only whispers in the ear.  He had not uttered more than three sentences
+before my feelings were excited, and the more I listened the more awful
+I felt; and I said to myself: 'I will stay to the inquiry meeting.'  I
+heard Mr. Nettleton talking about souls writhing under conviction, and
+I thought my soul was writhing under conviction.  I had heard father
+say that after a person had writhed under conviction a week or two they
+began to come out, and I said: 'Perhaps I will get out'; and that
+thought produced in me a sort of half-exhilaration of joy.  I stayed to
+the inquiry meeting, felt better, and trotted home with the hope that I
+was on the way toward conversion.  I went through this revival with
+that hope strengthened; but it did not last long."
+
+It is evident from this chapter that if we would understand Henry Ward
+Beecher and the influences that went to the formation of his character
+and to the success of his life, other things than parentage, home,
+school, or nature must be taken into the account.  The vast things of
+the invisible realm have begun to speak to him, and his nature has
+proved to be peculiarly sensitive to their influence.
+
+He is thus early groping, unresting, and unsatisfied; but it is among
+mountains, and not in marshes or quicksands.  Some day these mountain
+truths, among which he now wanders in darkness, shall be radiant in his
+sight with the Divine Compassion, and his gloom shall give place to
+abiding love, joy, and peace.
+
+It was in 1827, and Henry was fourteen years old, when he entered the
+Mount Pleasant Institute.  "He was admitted to the institution at a
+price about half the usual charge, for one hundred dollars per year.
+His appearance was robust and healthy, rather inclined to fulness of
+form, with a slight pink tinge on his cheeks and a frequent smile upon
+his face.  In his manners and communications he was quiet, orderly, and
+respectful.  He was a good-looking youth."  This is the testimony of
+one of his teachers, Mr. George Montague.
+
+"I think he must have been fond of children, for he was always ready
+for a frolic with me.  I don't remember how he spoke, except that he
+talked a good deal and was full of life and fun."  So says a friend in
+whose home he boarded, in a letter written during the past year.
+
+No place could have been better fitted to the condition of the boy, as
+he then was, than the one chosen.  He was tired of the city with its
+brick walls, stone pavements, and artificial restrictions, and longed
+for the freedom and the freshness of the country.  Amherst at that time
+was only a small village, fighting back with indifferent success the
+country that pressed in upon it from every side, and offering this
+city-sick lad, almost within a stone's throw of the school, the same
+kind of fields and forests that were around him at Litchfield, and
+spreading out for him a landscape equal in beauty to that of his
+childhood home.
+
+Besides, he has an object in view that stirs his blood.  He is to fit
+himself for the navy; his father has promised his influence to get him
+an appointment, if wanted, and Admiral Nelson and all other brave
+admirals and commodores are his models.  For the first time in his life
+he takes hold of study with enthusiasm.
+
+The institution was very popular in its day, and a great advance upon
+the old academy.  It was semi-military in its methods, and in its
+government there was great thoroughness without severity.  Its teachers
+possessed superior qualifications, and all were men of great kindness
+as well as of marked ability.  Among them were two men who especially
+had great influence in directing his energies and preparing him not
+only for Amherst College but for the greater work beyond, and who were
+ever remembered by him with the deepest gratitude.
+
+The first of these was W. P. Fitzgerald, the teacher of mathematics at
+Mount Pleasant School:
+
+"He taught me to conquer in studying.  There is a very hour in which a
+young nature, tugging, discouraged, and weary with books, rises with
+the consciousness of victorious power into masterhood.  For ever after
+he knows that he can learn anything if he pleases.  It is a distinct
+intellectual conversion.
+
+"I first went to the blackboard, uncertain, soft, full of whimpering.
+'That lesson must be learned,' he said, in a very quiet tone, but with
+a terrible intensity and with the certainty of Fate.  All explanations
+and excuses he trod under foot with utter scornfulness.  'I want that
+problem.  I don't want any reasons why I don't get it.'
+
+"'I did study it two hours.'
+
+"'That's nothing to me; I want the lesson.  You need not study it at
+all, or you may study it ten hours--just to suit yourself.  I want the
+lesson.  Underwood, go to the blackboard!'
+
+"'Oh! yes, but Underwood got somebody to _show_ him his lesson.'
+
+"'What do I care _how_ you get it?  That's your business.  But you must
+have it.'
+
+"It was tough for a green boy, but it seasoned him.  In less than a
+month I had the most intense sense of intellectual independence and
+courage to defend my recitations.
+
+"In the midst of a lesson his cold and calm voice would fall upon me in
+the midst of a demonstration--'_No_!'  I hesitated, stopped, and then
+went back to the beginning; and, on reaching the same spot again,
+'_No_!' uttered with the tone of perfect conviction, barred my
+progress.  'The next!' and I sat down in red confusion.  He, too, was
+stopped with 'No!' but went right on, finished, and, as he sat down,
+was rewarded with, 'Very well.'
+
+"'Why,' whimpered I, 'I recited it just as he did, and you said No!'
+
+"'Why didn't you say _Yes_, and stick to it?  It is not enough to know
+your lesson.  You must _know_ that you know it.  You have learned
+nothing until you are _sure_.  If all the world says _No_, your
+business is to say _Yes_ and to _prove it!_'"
+
+The other helper of this period was John E. Lovell.
+
+In a column of the _Christian Union_, of July 14, 1880, devoted to
+"Inquiring Friends," appeared this question with the accompanying
+answer:
+
+
+"We heard Mr. Beecher lecture recently in Boston and found the lecture
+a grand lesson in elocution.  If Mr. Beecher would give through the
+column of 'Inquiring Friends' the methods of instruction and practice
+pursued by him, it would be very thankfully received by a subscriber
+and student.
+
+"E. D. M."
+
+
+"I had from childhood a thickness of speech arising from a large
+palate, so that when a boy I used to be laughed at for talking as if I
+had pudding in my mouth.  When I went to Amherst I was fortunate in
+passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution, and a
+better teacher for my purpose I cannot conceive.  His system consisted
+in drill, or the thorough practice of inflexions by the voice, of
+gesture, posture, and articulation.  Sometimes I was a whole hour
+practising my voice on a word--like 'justice.'  I would have to take a
+posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor.  Then we would go
+through all the gestures, exercising each movement of the arm and the
+throwing open the hand.  All gestures except those of precision go in
+curves, the arm rising from the side, coming to the front, turning to
+the left or right.  I was drilled as to how far the arm should come
+forward, where it should start from, how far go back, and under what
+circumstances these movements should be made.  It was drill, drill,
+drill, until the motions almost became a second nature.  Now I never
+know what movements I shall make.  My gestures are natural, because
+this drill made them natural to me.  The only method of acquiring an
+effective education is by practice, of not less than an hour a day,
+until the student has his voice and himself thoroughly subdued and
+trained to right expression.
+
+"H. W. B."
+
+
+Mr. Montague says: "Mr. Beecher submitted to Mr. Lovell's drilling and
+training with a patience which proved his interest in the study to be
+great.  The piece which was to be spoken was committed to memory from
+Mr. Lovell's mouth, the pupil standing on the stage before him, and
+every sentence and word, accent and pronunciation, position and
+movement of the body, glance of the eye and tone of voice, all were
+subjects of study and criticism.  And day after day, often for several
+weeks in continuance, Mr. Beecher submitted to this drilling upon the
+same piece, until his teacher pronounced him perfect."
+
+His dramatic power was displayed and noted at this early period.  Dr.
+Thomas Field, a classmate in the school, says: "One incident occurred
+during our residence in Mount Pleasant which left an abiding impression
+on my mind.  At the exhibition at the close of the year, either 1828 or
+1829, the drama of 'William Tell' was performed by some of the
+students, and your father took the part of the tyrant Gessler.
+Although sixty years have passed, I think now, as I thought then, that
+it was the most impressive performance I ever witnessed. . . ."
+
+In a letter dated December 24, 1828, addressed to his sister
+Harriet--the first that has come to our hands from Mount Pleasant--he
+gives some account of his manner of life at school, and various
+experiences:
+
+
+DEAR SISTER:
+
+. . . . I have to rise in the morning at half-past five o'clock, and
+after various little duties, such as fixing of room, washing, etc.,
+which occupies about an hour, we proceed to breakfast, from thence to
+chapel, after which we have about ten minutes to prepare for school.
+Then we attend school from eight to twelve.  An hour at noon is allowed
+for diversions of various sorts.  Then dinner.  After that school from
+half-past one to half-past four.  At night we have about an hour and a
+half; then tea.  After tea we have about ten minutes; then we are
+called to our rooms till nine.
+
+Now I will tell you how I occupy my spare time in reading, writing, and
+playing the flute.  We are forming a band here.  I shall play either
+the flute or hautboy.  I enjoy myself _pretty_ well.  In Latin I am
+studying Sallust.  As to ease, all I have to do is study straight
+ahead.  It comes _pretty_ easy.  My Greek is rather hard.  I am as yet
+studying the grammar and Jacob's Greek Reader.  In elocution, we read
+and speak alternately every other day.
+
+. . . . I find it hard to keep as a Christian ought to.  To be sure, I
+find delight in prayer, but I cannot find time to be alone
+sufficiently.  We have in our room only two, one besides myself, but he
+is most of my play-hours practising on some instrument or other.  I
+have some time, to be sure, but it is very irregular, and I never know
+when I shall have an opportunity for private devotions until the time
+comes.  I do not like to read the Bible as well as to pray, but I
+suppose it is the same as it is with a lover, who loves to talk with
+his mistress in person better than to write when she is afar off. . . .
+
+Your affectionate brother,
+  HENRY.
+
+
+His religious experience, of which we have heard nothing, since he left
+Litchfield, the life in Boston apparently not being very favorable to
+it, again attracts our attention at this point.  He says:
+
+"When I was fourteen years of age, I left Boston and went to Mount
+Pleasant.  There broke out while I was there one of those infectious
+religious revivals which have no basis of judicious instruction, but
+spring from inexperienced zeal.  It resulted in many mushroom hopes,
+and I had one of them; but I do not know how or why I was converted.  I
+only know I was in a sort of day-dream, in which I hoped I had given
+myself to Christ.
+
+"I wrote to father expressing this hope; he was overjoyed, and sent me
+a long, kind letter on the subject.  But in the course of three or four
+weeks I was nearly over it; and I never shall forget how I felt, not
+long afterward, when a letter from father was handed me in which he
+said I must anticipate my vacation a week or two and come home and join
+the Church on the next Communion Sabbath.  The serious feelings I had
+were well-nigh gone, and I was beginning to feel quite jolly again, and
+I did not know what to do.  I went home, however, and let them take me
+into the Church.  A kind of pride and shamefacedness kept me from
+saying I did not think I was a Christian, and so I was made a Church
+member."
+
+In an editorial in the _Independent_, written in 1862, upon the
+disbanding of this old church, the Bowdoin Street--originally Hanover
+Street--Church, Boston, he describes this event:
+
+"If somebody will look in the old records of Hanover Street Church
+about 1829 they will find a name there of a boy about fifteen years old
+who was brought into the Church on a sympathetic wave, and who well
+remembers how cold and almost paralyzed he felt while the committee
+questioned him about his 'hope' and 'evidences,' which, upon review,
+amounted to this: that the son of such a father ought to be a good and
+pious boy.  Being tender-hearted and quick to respond to moral
+sympathy, he had been caught and inflamed in a school excitement, but
+was just getting over it when summoned to Boston to join the Church!
+On the morning of the day he went to Church without seeing anything he
+looked at.  He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others,
+and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots
+on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak
+in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as
+if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard
+faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should
+be struck dead for not feeling more--whether he should go to hell for
+touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse;
+spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the
+body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he
+knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to
+do it.  Ah! well, there is a world of things in children's minds that
+grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young."
+
+Unsatisfactory in many respects as was his religious experience, it
+seems to have been powerful enough to change his whole ideal of life.
+We hear no more of his becoming a sailor.  He appears to have yielded
+to the inevitable, and henceforth studies with the ministry in view.
+
+That he became a minister, as did his brothers, by reason of the
+unswerving faith and prayer of the parents, is already well known.
+"Out of six sons not one escaped from the pulpit.  My mother dedicated
+me to the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me,
+wept over me, and set me apart to preach the Gospel among the heathen,
+and I have been doing it all my life long, for it so happens one does
+not need to go far from his own country to find his audience before
+him."
+
+Ushered into the preparation for the ministry by the parental faith,
+stumbling and discouraged and ready to give up the work, another hand
+was not wanting to open still more clearly the way, draw back the
+curtains, and let in the light:
+
+"I beheld Him as a helper, as the soul's mid-wife, as the soul's
+physician, and I felt because I was weak I could come to Him; because I
+did not know how, and, if I did know, I had not the strength, to do the
+things that were right--that was the invitation that He gave to me out
+of my conscious weakness and want.  I will not repeat the scene of that
+morning when light broke fairly on my mind; how one might have thought
+that I was a lunatic escaped from confinement; how I ran up and down
+through the primeval forest of Ohio, shouting, 'Glory, glory!'
+sometimes in loud tones and at other times whispered in an ecstasy of
+joy and surprise.  All the old troubles gone, and light breaking in on
+my mind, I cried: 'I have found my God; I have found my God!'  From
+that hour I consecrated myself to the work of the ministry anew, for
+before that I had about made up my mind to go into some other
+profession."
+
+His early training school for effective preaching was well selected.
+It was, as is well known, one of the little villages on the banks of
+the Ohio River, where the wants of river bargemen and frontiersmen
+demanded his attention.  It was there he decided what his life work
+should be.
+
+"My business shall be to save men, and to bring to bear upon them those
+views that are my comfort, that are the bread of life to me; and I went
+out among them almost entirely cut loose from the ordinary church
+institutions and agencies, knowing nothing but 'Christ, and Him
+crucified,' the sufferer for mankind.  Did not the men round me need
+such a Saviour?  Was there ever such a field as I found?  Every
+sympathy of my being was continually solicited for the ignorance, for
+the rudeness, for the aberrations, for the avarice, for the
+quarrelsomeness of the men among whom I was, and I was trying every
+form and presenting Christ as a medicine to men.  I went through the
+woods and through camp-meetings and over prairies.  Everywhere my
+vacations were all missionary tours, preaching Christ for the hope of
+salvation.  I am not saying this to show you how I came to the
+knowledge of Christ, but to show you how I came to the habits and forms
+of my ministry.  I tried everything on to folks."
+
+Added to the forces of experience and surroundings was always that of
+his own personal, natural endowment.  This he found fault with and
+tried to change, as most people do at some period of their lives, but
+finally accepted and concluded to use as best he could, without
+murmuring, but always conscious of its limitations.
+
+"I have my own peculiar temperament, I have my own method of preaching,
+and my method and temperament necessitate errors.  I am not worthy to
+be related in the hundred-thousandth degree to those more happy men who
+never make a mistake in the pulpit.  I make a great many.  I am
+impetuous.  I am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me.  I
+feel as though all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power
+beyond my words, nor all the thunders that were in the heavens, and it
+is of necessity that such a nature as that should give such intensity
+at times to parts of doctrine as to exaggerate them when you come to
+bring them into connection with a more rounded-out and balanced view.
+I know it--I know it as well as you do.  I would not do it if I could
+help it; but there are times when it is not I that is talking, when I
+am caught up and carried away so that I know not whether I am in the
+body or out of the body, when I think things in the pulpit that I never
+could think in the study, and when I have feelings that are so far
+different from any that belong to the lower or normal condition that I
+neither can regulate them nor understand them.  I see things and I hear
+sounds, and seem, if not in the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that
+leads me to understand what Paul said--that he heard things which it
+was not possible for a man to utter.  I am acting under such a
+temperament as that.  I have got to use it, or not preach at all.  I
+know very well I do not give crystalline views nor thoroughly guarded
+views; there is often an error on this side and an error on that, and I
+cannot stop to correct them.  A man might run around, like a kitten
+after its tail, all his life, if he were going around explaining all
+his expressions and all the things he had written.  Let them go.  They
+will correct themselves.  The average and general influence of a man's
+teaching will be more mighty than any single misconception, or
+misapprehension through misconception.
+
+"There is a deep enjoyment in having devoted yourself, soul and body,
+to the welfare of your fellowmen, so that you have no thought and no
+care but for them.  There is a pleasure in that which is never touched
+by any ordinary experiences in human life.  It is the highest.  I look
+back to my missionary days as being transcendently the happiest period
+of my life.  The sweetest pleasures I have ever known are not those
+that I have now, but those that I remember, when I was unknown, in an
+unknown land, among a scattered people, mostly poor, and to whom I had
+to go and preach the Gospel, man by man, house by house, gathering them
+on Sundays, a few--twenty, fifty, or a hundred as the case might
+be--and preaching the Gospel more formally to them as they were able to
+bear it."
+
+
+
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+(1858-1915)
+
+THE BOY WHO SLEPT UNDER THE SIDEWALK
+
+Two or three years before the outbreak of the Civil War a little black
+baby was born in the slave quarters on a Virginia plantation.  This was
+not a surprising event and nobody except the mother paid it any
+attention.  Even the father of the child ignored it.  For some years
+the boy "just growed," after the manner of Topsy.  Nobody helped him.
+But the boy differed in one way from his thoughtless little playmates.
+There was a mysterious something in him that drove him eagerly to avail
+himself of any opportunity for self-improvement that came along.  If
+the opportunity, as generally happened, _failed_ to "come along," he
+went after it with all his might and main.
+
+He devoted his life unreservedly to the service of his coloured
+brethren, and through his own bitter experience he knew full well the
+best way in which to help them.
+
+
+From "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington.  Doubleday, Page &
+Co., 1901.
+
+I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia.  I am
+not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
+rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.  As
+nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads
+post-office called Hale's Ford and the year was 1858 or 1859.  I do not
+know the month or the day.  The earliest impressions I can now recall
+are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part
+of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.
+
+My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
+and discouraging surroundings.  This was so, however, not because my
+owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
+others.  I was born in a typical log-cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
+feet square.  In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
+sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
+
+Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.  In the slave quarters, and even
+later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
+tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
+mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while
+being conveyed from Africa to America.  I have been unsuccessful in
+securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
+history of my family, beyond my mother.  She, I remember, had a
+half-brother and a half-sister.  In the days of slavery not very much
+attention was given to family history and family records--that is,
+black family records.  My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of
+a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers.  Her addition to the
+slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new
+horse or cow.  Of my father I know even less than of my mother.  I do
+not even know his name.  I have heard reports to the effect that he was
+a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations.  Whoever he
+was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing
+in any way for my rearing.  But I do not find especial fault with him.
+He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the
+Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time. . . .
+
+I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was
+declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation.  Three children--John,
+my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself--had a pallet on the
+dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of
+filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.
+
+From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life
+has been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be
+a more useful man had I had time for sports.  During the period that I
+spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service, still I
+was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to
+the men in the fields, or going to the mill, to which I used to take
+the corn, once a week, to be ground.  The mill was about three miles
+from the plantation.  This work I always dreaded.  The heavy bag of
+corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the corn divided
+about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost without exception,
+on these trips the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and
+would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it.  As I was not
+strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would have to wait,
+sometimes for many hours, till a chance passerby came along who would
+help me out of my trouble.  The hours while waiting for some one were
+usually spent in crying.  The time consumed in this way made me late in
+reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground and reached
+home it would be far into the night.  The road was a lonely one, and
+often led through dense forests.  I was always frightened.  The woods
+were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army, and I
+had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy when
+he found him alone was to cut off his ears.  Besides, when I was late
+in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a
+flogging.
+
+I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
+several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
+young mistresses to carry her books.  The picture of several dozen boys
+and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
+me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
+this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.
+
+So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
+that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being
+discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my
+mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln
+and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her
+children might be free. . . .
+
+I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
+boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and
+God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized
+manner.  On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were
+gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs.  It was a
+piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.  It was a cup of milk at
+one time and some potatoes at another.  Sometimes a portion of our
+family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would
+eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the
+hands with which to hold the food.  When I had grown to sufficient
+size, I was required to go to the "big house" mealtimes to fan the
+flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by
+a pulley.  Naturally much of the conversation of the white people
+turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good
+deal of it.  I remember that at one time I saw two of my young
+mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard.  At
+that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting
+and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I then and there
+resolved that, if I ever got free, the height of my ambition would be
+reached if I could get to the point where I could secure and eat
+ginger-cakes in the way that I saw those ladies doing. . . .
+
+The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones.  They
+had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch
+thick, were of wood.  When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
+besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
+to the natural pressure of the foot.  In wearing them one presented an
+exceedingly awkward appearance.  The most trying ordeal that I was
+forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax
+shirt.  In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use
+flax as part of the clothing for the slaves.  That part of the flax
+from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of
+course, was the cheapest and roughest part.  I can scarcely imagine any
+torture, except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that
+caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time.  It is almost
+equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or
+more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pinpoints in contact with his
+flesh.  Even to this day, I can recall accurately the tortures that I
+underwent when putting on one of these garments.  The fact that my
+flesh was soft and tender added to the pain.  But I had no choice.  I
+had to wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to
+choose, I should have chosen to wear no covering. . . .
+
+Until I had grown to be quite a youth this single garment was all that
+I wore. . . .
+
+From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I
+recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read.  I determined
+when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life,
+I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common
+books and newspapers.  Soon after we got settled in some manner in our
+new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book
+for me.  How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she
+procured an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling-book, which
+contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab,"
+"ba," "ca," "da."  I began at once to devour this book, and I think
+that it was the first one I ever had in my hands.  I had learned from
+somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I
+tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it--all of course
+without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me.  At that time
+there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could
+read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people.  In some
+way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the
+alphabet.  In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my
+ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she
+could.  Though she was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge
+was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large
+fund of good, hard common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and
+master every situation.  If I have done anything in life worth
+attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my
+mother. . . .
+
+The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley brought to me one of
+the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced.  I had been
+working in a salt furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
+discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school
+opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work.  This
+decision seemed to cloud my every ambition.  The disappointment was
+made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work
+was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school,
+morning and afternoons.  Despite this disappointment, however, I
+determined that I would learn something, anyway.  I applied myself with
+greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the
+"blue-back" speller.
+
+My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
+comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
+learn.  After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the
+teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was
+done.  These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more
+at night than the other children did during the day.  My own
+experiences in the night school gave me faith in the night-school idea,
+with which, in after years, had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee.
+But my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day school, and I
+let no opportunity slip to push my case.  Finally I won, and was
+permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the
+understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the
+furnace till nine o'clock, and return immediately after school closed
+in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work.
+
+The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to
+work till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself
+in a difficulty.  School would always be begun before I reached it, and
+sometimes my class had recited.  To get around this difficulty I
+yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn
+me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it.  I have great
+faith in the power and influence of facts.  It is seldom that anything
+is permanently gained by holding back a fact.  There was a large clock,
+in a little office in the furnace.  This clock, of course, all the
+hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of
+beginning and ending the day's work.  I got the idea that the way for
+me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past
+eight up to nine o'clock mark.  This I found myself doing morning after
+morning, till the furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong,
+and locked the clock in a case.  I did not mean to inconvenience
+anybody.  I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.
+
+When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
+found myself confronted with two other difficulties.  In the first
+place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on
+their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap.  In fact, I do not remember
+that up to the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of
+covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else
+had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head.  But,
+of course when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to
+feel quite uncomfortable.  As usual, I put the case before my mother,
+and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a
+"store hat," which was a rather new institution at that time among the
+members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old
+to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty.
+She accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them
+together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap. . . .
+
+My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or, rather, a name.
+From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply
+"Booker."  Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it
+was needful or appropriate to have an additional name.  When I heard
+the school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least
+two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the
+extravagance of having three.  I was in deep perplexity, because I knew
+that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only
+one.  By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an
+idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the
+situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I
+calmly told him "Booker Washington," as if I had been called by that
+name all my life; and by that name I have since been known.  Later in
+my life I found that my mother had given me the name of "Booker
+Taliaferro," soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my
+name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as
+soon as I found out about it I revived it, and, made my full name
+"Booker Taliaferro Washington."  I think there are not many men in our
+country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that
+I have. . . .
+
+The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was
+short, and my attendance was irregular.  It was not long before I had
+to stop attending day school altogether, and devote all of my time
+again to work.  I resorted to the night school again.  In fact, the
+greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered
+through the night school after my day's work was done.  I had
+difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher.  Sometimes, after
+I had secured one to teach me at night, I would find, much to my
+disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than I did.
+Often I would have to walk miles at night in order to recite my
+night-school lessons.  There was never a time in my youth, no matter
+how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not
+continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an
+education at any cost.
+
+After I had worked in the salt furnace for some time, work was secured
+for me in a coal mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of
+securing fuel for the salt furnace. . . .
+
+In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my
+imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely
+no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities.  I used to envy
+the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a
+congressman, governor, bishop, or President by reason of the accident
+of his birth or race.  I used to picture the way that I would act under
+such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising
+until I reached the highest round of success. . . .
+
+One day while at work in the coal mine I happened to overhear two
+miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
+Virginia.  This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
+any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
+coloured school in our town.
+
+In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
+the two men who were talking.  I heard one tell the other that not only
+was the school established for the members of my race, but that
+opportunities were provided by which poor but worthy students could
+work out all or a part of the cost of board, and at the same time be
+taught some trade or industry.
+
+As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be
+the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
+attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
+Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
+I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
+it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
+remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
+that was to go to Hampton.  This thought was with me day and
+night. . . .
+
+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. . . .
+
+Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton.  I had only a
+small, cheap satchel that contained what 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.
+
+The distance from Maiden to Hampton is about five hundred miles.  I had
+not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
+evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to
+Hampton. . . .
+
+By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
+after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
+eighty-two miles from Hampton.  When I reached there, tired, hungry,
+and dirty; it was late in the night.  I had never been in a large city
+before, and this rather added to my misery.  When I reached Richmond I
+was completely out of money.  I had not a single acquaintance in the
+place, and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go.  I
+applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and
+that was what I did not have.  Knowing nothing else better to do, I
+walked the streets.  In doing this I passed by many food-stands where
+fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to
+present a most tempting appearance.  At that time it seemed to me that
+I would have promised all that I expected to possess in the future to
+have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies.
+But I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat.
+
+I must have walked the streets till after midnight.  At last I became
+so exhausted that I could walk no longer.  I was tired, I was hungry, I
+was everything but discouraged.  Just about the time when I reached
+extreme physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where
+the board sidewalk was considerably elevated.  I waited for a few
+minutes, till I was sure that no passersby could see me, and then crept
+under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my
+satchel of clothing for a pillow.  Nearly all night I could hear the
+tramp of feet above my head.  The next morning I found myself somewhat
+refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time
+since I had had sufficient food.  As soon as it became light enough for
+me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and
+that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron.  I went at
+once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload
+the vessel in order to get money for food.  The captain, a white man,
+who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented.  I worked long enough to earn
+money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to
+have been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.
+
+My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
+could continue working for a small amount per day.  This I was very
+glad to do.  I continued working on this vessel for a number of days.
+After buying food with the small wages I received there was not much
+left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton.  In
+order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach
+Hampton in a reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same
+sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. . . .
+
+When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
+Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
+started again.  Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with
+a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education, To
+me it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the
+large, three-story brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for
+all that I had undergone in order to reach the place. . . .
+
+It seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had
+ever seen.  The sight of it seemed to give me new life.  I felt that a
+new kind of existence had now begun--that life would now have a new
+meaning.  I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved
+to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to
+fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.
+
+As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute
+I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class.
+Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of
+clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon
+her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about
+the wisdom of admitting me as a student.  I felt that I could hardly
+blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp.
+For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in
+my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in
+all the ways I could with my worthiness.  In the meantime I saw her
+admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for
+I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I
+could only get a chance to show her what was in me.
+
+After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me, "The
+adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping.  Take the broom and sweep it."
+
+It occurred to me at once that here was my chance.  Never did I receive
+an order with more delight.  I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs.
+Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
+
+I swept the recitation-room three times.  Then I got a dusting-cloth
+and I dusted it four times.  All the woodwork around the walls, every
+bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth.
+Besides every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and
+corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned.  I had the feeling that
+in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon
+the teacher in the cleaning of that room.  When I was through, I
+reported to the head teacher.  She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just
+where to look for dirt.  She went into the room and inspected the floor
+and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the
+woodwork, about the walls, and over the table and benches.  When she
+was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust
+on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked: "I guess you will do to
+enter this institution."
+
+I was one of the happiest souls on earth.  The sweeping of that room
+was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination
+for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine
+satisfaction.  I have passed several examinations since then, but I
+have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed. . . .
+
+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, or
+eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bathtub and of
+the toothbrush, 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.
+
+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 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 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 be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots.  To
+wear one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the
+schoolroom, and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard
+problem for me to solve.  In some way I managed to get on till the
+teachers learned that I was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then
+some of them were kind enough to see that I was partly supplied with
+second-hand clothing that had been sent in barrels from the North.
+These barrels proved a blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving
+students.  Without them I question whether I should ever have gotten
+through Hampton. . . .
+
+I was completely out of money when I graduated.  In company with other
+Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
+in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
+there.  I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I
+knew practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table.  The head
+waiter, however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter.  He soon
+gave me charge of a table at which there sat four or five wealthy and
+rather aristocratic people.  My ignorance of how to wait upon them was
+so apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
+frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
+food.  As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
+that of a dish-carrier.
+
+But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a
+few weeks, and was restored to my former position.  I have had the
+satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
+waiter there.
+
+At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in
+Malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place.
+This was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life.  I
+now felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town
+to a higher life.  I felt from the first that mere book education was
+not all that the young people of that town needed.  I began my work at
+eight o'clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten
+o'clock at night.  In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I
+taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces
+clean, as well as their clothing.  I gave special attention to teaching
+them the proper use of the toothbrush and the bath.
+
+In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the
+toothbrush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of
+civilization that are more far-reaching.
+
+There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
+men and women, who had to work in the daytime but still were craving an
+opportunity for some education, that I soon opened a night school.
+From the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as
+the school that I taught in the day.  The efforts of some of the men
+and women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn,
+were in some cases very pathetic.
+
+My day- and night-school work was not all that I undertook.  I
+established a small reading-room and a debating society.  On Sundays I
+taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
+and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
+Malden.  In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
+men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute.  Without
+regard to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who
+wanted to learn, anything that I could teach him.  I was supremely
+happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else.  I did
+receive, however, a small salary from the public fund for my work as a
+public school teacher. . . .
+
+In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night
+school at Hampton Institute, in a way that I had not dared expect, the
+opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work.  One night in the
+chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong
+referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen
+in Alabama asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was
+to be a normal school for the coloured people in the little town of
+Tuskegee in that State.  These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted
+that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and
+they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place.
+The next day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and,
+much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in
+Alabama.  I told him that I would be willing to try.  Accordingly he
+wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he
+did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing
+to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend.  In this
+letter he gave them my name.
+
+Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.
+Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a
+messenger came in and handed the General a telegram.  At the end of the
+exercises he read the telegram to the school.  In substance, these were
+its words: "Booker T. Washington will suit us.  Send him at once. . . ."
+
+I reached Tuskegee early in June, 1881.  The first month I spent in
+finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through
+Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in
+the country districts, and in getting the school advertised among the
+class of people that I wanted to have attend it.  The most of my
+travelling was done over the country road, with a mule and a cart or a
+mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance.  I ate and slept with the people
+in their little cabins.  I saw their farms, their schools, their
+churches.  Since in the case of the most of these visits there had been
+no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, I had the
+advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people. . . .
+
+I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation
+left me with a very heavy heart.  The work to be done in order to lift
+these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing.  I was only one
+person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put
+forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results.  I
+wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for
+me to try.
+
+On one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending
+this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that
+was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than
+merely to imitate New England education as it then existed.  I saw more
+clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had
+inaugurated at Hampton.  To take the children of such people as I had
+been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book
+education, I felt would be almost a waste of time.
+
+After consultation with the citizens of Tuskegee, I set July 4, 1881,
+as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and
+church which had been secured for its accommodation.  The white people,
+as well as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the
+new school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest
+discussion.  There were not a few white people in the vicinity of
+Tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project.  They
+questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it
+might result in bringing about trouble between the races.  Some had the
+feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same
+proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the State.
+These people feared the result of education would be that the Negroes
+would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them
+for domestic service.
+
+The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school
+had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro, with
+a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid
+gloves, fancy boots, and what not--in a word, a man who was determined
+to live by his wits.  It was difficult for these people to see how
+education would produce any other kind of a coloured man. . . .
+
+On the morning that the school opened thirty students reported for
+admission.  I was the only teacher.  The students were about equally
+divided between the sexes. . . .  The greater part of the thirty were
+public school teachers, and some of them were nearly forty years of age.
+
+At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the
+school as a co-teacher.  This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later
+became my wife. . . .
+
+Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school
+from the first.  The students were making progress in learning books
+and in developing their minds; but it became apparent at once, that, if
+we were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
+for training, we must do something besides teach them mere books.  The
+students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
+lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies.  With few
+exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
+but little improvement upon those from which they had come.  We wanted
+to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
+clothing.  We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
+properly, and how to care for their rooms.  Aside from this, we wanted
+to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together
+with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be
+sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us.  We wanted
+to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone. . . .
+
+We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large
+proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to
+return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put
+new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual
+and moral and religious life of the people.
+
+All these ideals and needs crowded themselves upon us with a
+seriousness that seemed well-nigh overwhelming.  What were we to do?
+We had only the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the
+good coloured people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for
+the accommodation of the classes.  The number of students was
+increasing daily.  The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled
+through the country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were
+reaching, to only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom
+we wanted to lift up through the medium of the students whom we should
+educate and send out as leaders.
+
+The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from
+several parts of the State, the more we found that the chief ambition
+among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
+would not have to work any longer with their hands. . . .
+
+About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time
+when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into
+the market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated
+about a mile from the town of Tuskegee.  The mansion house--or "big
+house," as it would have been called--which had been occupied by the
+owners during slavery, had been burned.  After making a careful
+examination of this place, it seemed to be just the location that we
+wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent.
+
+But how were we to get it?  The price asked for it was very
+little--only five hundred dollars--but we had no money, and we were
+strangers in the town and had no credit.  The owner of the land agreed
+to let us occupy the place if we could make a payment of two hundred
+and fifty dollars down, with the understanding that the remaining two
+hundred and fifty dollars must be paid within a year.  Although five
+hundred dollars was cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did
+not have any part of it.
+
+In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
+wrote to my friend General J. F. B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the
+Hampton Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him
+to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal
+responsibility.  Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he
+had no authority to lend me money belonging to the Hampton Institute,
+but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his own
+personal funds. . . .
+
+I lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm.
+At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin,
+formerly used as the dining-room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old
+hen-house.  Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use.
+The stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very
+presently the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose. . . .
+
+Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school
+purposes was done by the students after school was over in the
+afternoon.  As soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used I
+determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop.  When I
+explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not seem to
+take to it very kindly.  It was hard for them to see the connection
+between clearing land and education.  Besides, many of them had been
+school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would
+be in keeping with their dignity.  In order to relieve them from any
+embarrassment, each afternoon after school I took my axe and led the
+way to the woods.  When they saw that I was not afraid or ashamed to
+work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm.  We kept at the work
+each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted
+a crop.
+
+At the end of three months enough was secured to repay the loan of two
+hundred and fifty dollars to General Marshall, and within two months
+more we had secured the entire five hundred dollars and had received a
+deed of the one hundred acres of land. . . .
+
+Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of
+the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time
+give the students training in agriculture.  All the industries at
+Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of
+the needs of a community settlement.  We began with farming, because we
+wanted something to eat.
+
+Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few
+weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
+their board.  Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
+industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
+of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
+to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school
+year. . . .
+
+From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
+students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have
+them erect their own building.  My plan was to have them, while
+performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour,
+so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but
+the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in
+labour, but beauty and dignity would be taught, in fact, how to lift
+labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for
+its own sake.  My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way,
+but to show them how to make the forces of nature--air, water, steam,
+electricity, horsepower--assist them in their labour. . . .
+
+I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
+excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
+than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
+called National.  I refer to the address which I delivered at the
+opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition at
+Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895. . . .
+
+In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from a prominent citizen in
+Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to Washington
+for the purpose of appearing before a committee of Congress in the
+interest of securing Government help for the Exposition.  The committee
+was composed of about twenty-five of the most prominent and most
+influential white men of Georgia.  All the members of this committee
+were white men except Bishop Grant, Bishop Gaines, and myself.  The
+Mayor and several other city and State officials spoke before the
+committee.  They were followed by the two coloured bishops.  My name
+was the last on the list of speakers.  I had never before appeared
+before such a committee, nor had I ever delivered any address in the
+capital of the Nation.  I had many misgivings as to what I ought to
+say, and as to the impression that my address would make.  While I
+cannot recall in detail what I said, I remember that I tried to impress
+upon the committee, with all the earnestness and plainness of any
+language that I could command, that if Congress wanted to do something
+which would assist in ridding the South of the race question and making
+friends between the two races, it should in every proper way encourage
+the material and intellectual growth of both races.  I said that the
+Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show
+what advance they had made since freedom, and would at the same time
+afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.
+
+I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be
+deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone
+would not save him, and that back of the ballot he must have property,
+industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race
+without these elements could permanently succeed.  I said that in
+granting the appropriation Congress could do something that would prove
+to be of real and lasting value to both races, and that it was the
+first great opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the
+close of the Civil War.
+
+I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close
+of my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia
+committee and of the members of Congress who were present.  The
+committee was unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few
+days the bill passed Congress.  With the passing of this bill the
+success of the Atlanta Exposition was assured.
+
+Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition
+decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to
+erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to
+showing the progress of the Negro since freedom.  It was further
+decided to have the building designed and erected wholly by Negro
+mechanics.  This plan was carried out.  In design, beauty, and general
+finish the Negro Building was equal to the others a on the
+grounds. . . .
+
+As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
+Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises.  In
+the discussion from day to day of the various features of this
+programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a
+member of the Negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since the
+Negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the Exposition.
+It was argued, further, that such recognition would mark the good
+feeling prevailing between the two races.  Of course there were those
+who were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the Negro,
+but the Board of Directors, composed of men who represented the best
+and most progressive element in the South, had their way, and voted to
+invite a black man to speak on the opening day.  The next thing was to
+decide upon the person who was thus to represent the Negro race.  After
+the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted
+unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and
+in a few days after that I received the official invitation.
+
+The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of
+responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my
+position to appreciate.  What were my feelings when this invitation
+came to me?  I remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years
+had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that
+I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as
+this.  It was only a few years before that time that any white man in
+the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily
+possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me
+speak.
+
+I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the
+Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same
+platform with white Southern men and women on any important National
+occasion.  I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the
+wealth and culture of the white South, the representative of my former
+masters.  I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would
+be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large
+number of Northern white, as well as a great many men and women of my
+own race.
+
+I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of
+my heart to be true and right.  When the invitation came to me, there
+was not one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what I
+should omit.  In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a
+tribute to me.  They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in
+a large degree, the success of the Exposition.  I was also painfully
+conscious of the fact that, while I must be true to my own race in my
+utterances, I had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as
+would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a
+black men again for years to come.  I was equally determined to be true
+to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in
+what I had to say.
+
+The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
+speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more
+and more widespread.  Not a few of the Southern white papers were
+unfriendly to the idea of my speaking.  From my own race I received
+many suggestions as to what I ought to say.  I prepared myself as best
+I could for the address, but as the eighteenth of September drew
+nearer, the heavier my heart became, and the more I feared that my
+effort would prove a failure and disappointment.
+
+The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school
+work, as it was the beginning of our school year.  After preparing my
+address, I went through it, as I usually do with all those utterances
+which I consider particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she
+approved of what I intended to say.  On the sixteenth of September, the
+day before I was to start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers
+expressed a desire to hear my address that I consented to read it to
+them in a body.  When I had done so, and had heard their criticisms and
+comments, I felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of
+what I had to say.
+
+In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured and
+white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with
+perfect freedom, in my hearing, what was going to take place the next
+day.  We were met by a committee in Atlanta.  Almost the first thing I
+heard when I got off the train in that city was an expression something
+like this, from an old coloured man near by: "Dat's de man of my race
+what's gwine to make a speech at de Exposition to-morrow.  I'se sho'
+gwine to hear him."
+
+Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts
+of the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as
+well as with military and civic organizations.  The afternoon papers
+had forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines.  All
+this tended to add to my burden.  I did not sleep much that night.  The
+next morning, before day, I went carefully over what I intended to say.
+I also kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort.  Right
+here, perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before
+an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon
+what I want to say. . . .
+
+Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the
+procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds.
+
+The procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition
+grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us
+disagreeably hot.  When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with
+my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse,
+and to feel that my address was not going to be a success.  When I
+entered the audience-room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom
+to top, and there were thousands outside who could not get in.
+
+The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking.  When I
+entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion
+of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people.  I had
+been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people
+were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity, and
+that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me,
+there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of
+those who were going to be present for the purpose of hearing me make a
+fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing, so
+that they could say to the officials who had invited me to speak, "I
+told you so!"
+
+One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal
+friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., was at the time General Manager of
+the Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day.  He
+was so nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the
+effect that my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself
+to go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds
+outside until the opening exercises were over. . . .
+
+Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, "We have with us to-day
+a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization."
+
+When I arose to speak there was considerable cheering, especially from
+the coloured people.  As I remember it now, the thing that was
+uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement
+the friendship of the races and bring about hearty coöperation between
+them.  So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing
+that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up I saw thousands of
+eyes looking intently into my face.
+
+
+
+
+BEN B. LINDSEY
+
+(1869-____)
+
+THE MAN WHO FIGHTS "THE BEAST"
+
+[Judge Lindsey is known all the world over for his work in the Juvenile
+Court in Denver, Colorado.  To his courtroom there come visitors from
+every State in this nation, investigators from Europe and officials
+from China and Japan to study his laws and observe his methods.  But to
+himself, his famous Juvenile Court is side issue, a small detail in his
+career.  For years he has been engaged in a fight of which the founding
+of his Juvenile Court was only a skirmish.
+
+Without money, without powerful friends, without personal popularity,
+this one man has codified laws, instituted reforms, founded charities,
+and balked corruption.]
+
+
+From "The Beast," by Ben B. Lindsey and Harvey J. O'Higgins.
+Doubleday, Page & Company, 1910.
+
+FINDING THE CAT
+
+I came to Denver in the spring of 1880, at the age of eleven, as mildly
+inoffensive a small boy as ever left a farm--undersized and weakly, so
+that at the age of seventeen I commonly passed as twelve, and so
+unaccustomed to the sight of buildings that I thought the five-story
+Windsor Hotel a miracle of height and magnificence.  I had been living
+with my maternal grandfather and aunt on a farm in Jackson, Tennessee,
+where I had been born; and I had come with my younger brother to join
+my parents, who had finally decided that Denver was to be their
+permanent home.  The conductors on the trains had taken care of us,
+because my father was a railroad man, at the head of the telegraph
+system; and we had been entertained on the way by the stories of an old
+forty-niner with a gray moustache, who told us how he had shot buffalo
+on those prairies where we now saw only antelope.  I was not
+precocious; his stories interested me more than anything else on the
+journey; and I stared so hard at the old pioneer that I should
+recognize him now, I believe, if I saw him on the street.
+
+My schooling was not peculiar; there was nothing "holier than thou" in
+my bringing up.  My father, being a Roman Catholic convert from the
+Episcopalian Church, sent me to Notre Dame, Indiana, to be educated;
+and there, to be sure, I read the "Lives of the Saints," aspired to be
+a saint, and put pebbles in my small shoes to "mortify the flesh,"
+because I was told that a good priest, Father Hudson--whom I all but
+worshipped--used to do so.  But even at Notre Dame, and much more in
+Denver, I was homesick for the farm; and at last I was allowed to
+return to Jackson to be cared for by my Protestant relatives.  They
+sent me to a Baptist school till I was seventeen.  And when I was
+recalled to Denver, because of the failure of my father's health, I
+went to work to help earn for the household, with no strong attachment
+for any church and with no recognized membership in any.
+
+I suppose there is no one who does not look back upon his past and
+wonder what he should have become in life if this or that crucial event
+had not occurred to set his destiny.  It seems to me that if it had not
+been for the sudden death of my father I, too, might have found our
+jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey without
+realizing what I was about.  I should have been a lawyer, I know; for I
+had had the ambition from my earliest boyhood, and I had been confirmed
+in it by my success in debating at school.  (Once, at Notre Dame, I
+spoke for a full hour in successful defence of the proposition that
+Colorado was the "greatest state in the Union," and proved at least
+that I had a lawyer's "wind.")  But I should probably have been a
+lawyer who has learned his pleasant theories of life in the colleges.
+And on the night that my father died, the crushing realities of poverty
+put out an awful and compelling hand on me, and my struggle with them
+began.
+
+I was eighteen years old, the eldest of four children.  I had been
+"writing proofs" in the Denver land office, for claimants who had filed
+on Government land; and I had saved $150 of my salary before my work
+there ceased.  I found, after my father's death, that this $150 was all
+we had in the world, and $130 of it went for funeral expenses.  His
+life had been insured for $15,000, and we believed that the premiums
+had all been paid, but we could not find the last receipt; the agent
+denied having received the payment; the policy had lapsed on the day
+before my father's death; and we got nothing.  Our furniture had been
+mortgaged; we were allowed only enough of it to furnish a little house
+on Santa Fé Avenue; and later we moved to a cottage on lower West
+Colfax Avenue, in which Negroes have since lived.
+
+I went to work at a salary of $10 a month, in a real estate office--as
+office boy--and carried a "route" of newspapers in the morning before
+the office opened, and did janitor work at night when it closed.  After
+a month of that, I got a better place, as office boy, with a mining
+company, at a salary of $25 a month.  And finally, my younger brother
+found work in a law office and I "swapped jobs" with him--because I
+wished to study law!
+
+It was the office of Mr. R. D. Thompson, who still practises in Denver;
+and his example as an incorruptibly honest lawyer has been one of the
+best and strongest influences of my life.
+
+I had that one ambition--to be a lawyer.  Associated with it I seem to
+have had an unusual curiosity about politics.  And where I got either
+the ambition or the curiosity, I have no idea.  My father's mother was
+a Greenleaf,[1] and related to the author of "Greenleaf on Evidence,"
+but my father himself had nothing of the legal mind.  As a boy, living
+in Mississippi, he had joined the Confederate army when he was
+preparing for the University of Virginia, had attained the rank of
+captain, had become General Forrest's private secretary, and had
+written--or largely helped to write--General Forrest's autobiography.
+He was idealistic, enthusiastic, of an inventive genius, with a really
+remarkable command of English, and an absorbing love of books.  My
+mother's father was a Barr, from the north of Ireland, a Scotch-Irish
+Presbyterian, her mother was a Woodfalk of Jackson County, Tennessee, a
+Methodist.  The members of the family were practical, strong-willed,
+able men and women, but with no bent, that I know of, toward either law
+or politics.
+
+And yet, one of the most vivid memories of my childhood in Jackson is
+of attending a political rally with my grandfather and hearing a Civil
+War veteran declaim against Republicans who "waved the bloody shirt"--a
+memory so strong that for years afterward I never saw a Republican
+without expecting to see the gory shirt on his back, and wondering
+vaguely why he was not in jail.  When I came to Denver, where the
+Republicans were dominant, I felt myself in the land of the enemy.  And
+when I "swapped" myself into Mr. Thompson's office, I was surprised to
+find that my employer, though a Republican from Pittsburg, was so human
+that one of the first things he did was to give me a suit of clothes.
+If there is anything more ridiculously dangerous than to blind a
+child's mind with such prejudices, I do not know what it is.
+
+However, my own observations of what was going on about me were already
+opening my eyes.  I had read, in the newspapers, of how the Denver
+Republicans won the elections by fraud--by ballot-box stuffing and what
+not--and I had followed one "Soapy" Smith on the streets, from precinct
+to precinct, with his gang of election thieves, and had seen them vote
+not once but five times openly.  I had seen a young man, whom I knew,
+knocked down and arrested for "raising a disturbance" when he objected
+to "Soapy" Smith's proceeding; and the policeman who arrested him did
+it with a smile and a wink.
+
+When I came to Mr. Thompson to ask him how he, a Republican, could
+countenance such things, he assured me that much of what I had been
+reading and hearing of election frauds was a lie--the mere "whine" of
+the defeated party--and I saw that he believed what he said.  I knew
+that he was an honest, upright man; and I was puzzled.  What puzzled me
+still more was this: although the ministers in the churches and
+"prominent citizens" in all walks of life denounced the "election
+crooks" with the most laudable fervor, the election returns showed that
+the best people in the churches joined the worst people in the dives to
+vote the same ticket, and vote it "straight."  And I was most of all
+puzzled to find that when the elections were over, the opposition
+newspaper ceased its scolding, the voice of ministerial denunciation
+died away, and the crimes of the election thieves were condoned and
+forgotten.
+
+I was puzzled.  I saw the jungle of vice and party prejudice, but I did
+not yet see "the Cat."  I saw its ears and its eyes there in the
+underbrush, but I did not know what they were.  I thought they were
+connected with the Republican party.
+
+And then I came upon some more of the brute's anatomy.  Members of the
+Legislature in Denver were accused of fraud in the purchase of state
+supplies, and--some months later--members of the city government were
+accused of committing similar frauds with the aid of civic officials
+and prominent business men.  It was proved in court, for example, that
+bills for $3 had been raised to $300, that $200 had been paid for a
+bundle of hay worth $2, and $50 for a yard of cheesecloth worth five
+cents; barrels of ink had been bought for each legislator, though a
+pint would have sufficed; and an official of the Police Department was
+found guilty of conniving with a gambler named "Jim" Marshall to rob an
+express train.  I watched the cases in court.  I applauded at the
+meetings of leading citizens who denounced the grafters and passed
+resolutions in support of the candidates of the opposition party.  I
+waited to see the criminals punished.  And they were not punished.
+Their crimes were not denied.  They were publicly denounced by the
+courts and by the investigating committees, but somehow, for reasons
+not clear, they all went scot-free, on appeals.  Some mysterious power
+protected them, and I, in the boyish ardor of my ignorance, concluded
+that they were protected by the Republican "bloody shirt"--and I rushed
+into that (to me) great confederation of righteousness and all-decent
+government, the Democratic party.
+
+It would be laughable to me now, if it were not so "sort of sad."
+
+Meanwhile, I was busy about the office, copying letters, running
+errands, carrying books to and from the court rooms, reading law in the
+intervals, and at night scrubbing the floors.  I was pale, thin,
+big-headed, with the body of an underfed child, and an ambition that
+kept me up half the night with Von Holst's "Constitutional Law,"
+Walker's "American Law," or a sheepskin volume of Lawson's "Leading
+Cases in Equity."  I was so mad to save every penny I could earn that
+instead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ate molasses and
+gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn
+my law that I did not take my sleep when I could get it.  The result
+was that I was stupid at my tasks, moody, melancholy, and so sensitive
+that my employer's natural dissatisfaction with my work put me into
+agonies of shame and despair of myself.  I became, as the boys say,
+"dopy."  I remember that one night, after I had scrubbed the floors of
+our offices, I took off the old trousers in which I had been working,
+hung them in a closet, and started home; and it was not until the cold
+wind struck my bare knees that I realized I was on the street in my
+shirt.  Often, when I was given a brief to work up for Mr. Thompson, I
+would slave over it until the small hours of the morning and then, to
+his disgust--and my unspeakable mortification--find that my work was
+valueless, that I had not seized the fundamental points of the case, or
+that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension of the law.
+
+Worse than that, I was unhappy at home.  Poverty was fraying us all
+out.  If it was not exactly brutalizing us, it was warping us, breaking
+our healths, and ruining our dispositions.  My good mother--married out
+of a beautiful Southern home where she had lived a life that (as I
+remembered it) was all horseback rides and Negro servants--had started
+out bravely in this debasing existence in a shanty, but it was wearing
+her out.  She was passing through a critical period of her life, and
+she had no care, no comforts.  I have often since been ashamed of
+myself that I did not sympathize with her and understand her, but I was
+too young to understand, and too miserable myself to sympathize.  It
+seemed to me that my life was not worth living--that every one had lost
+faith in me--that I should never succeed in the law or anything
+else--that I had no brains--that I should never do anything but scrub
+floors and run messages.  And after a day that had been more than
+usually discouraging in the office and an evening of exasperated misery
+at home, I got a revolver and some cartridges, locked myself in my
+room, confronted myself desperately in the mirror, put the muzzle of
+the loaded pistol to my temple, and pulled the trigger.
+
+The hammer snapped sharply on the cartridge; a great wave of horror and
+revulsion swept over me in a rush of blood to my head, and I dropped
+the revolver on the floor and threw myself on my bed.
+
+By some miracle the cartridge had not exploded; but the nervous shock
+of that instant when I felt the trigger yield and the muzzle rap
+against my forehead with the impact of the hammer--that shock was
+almost as great as a very bullet in the brain.  I realized my folly, my
+weakness; and I went back to my life with something of a man's
+determination to crush the circumstances that had almost crushed me.
+
+Why do I tell that?  Because there are so many people in the world who
+believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy
+of the slums is as callous as he seems dull.  Because so many people
+believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a
+weak and vicious man.  Because I came out of that morbid period of
+adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible
+one of the first courts established in America for the protection as
+well as the correction of children.  Because I was never afterward as
+afraid of anything as of my own weakness, my own cowardice--so that
+when the agents of the Beast in the courts and in politics threatened
+me with all the abominations of their rage if I did not commit moral
+suicide for _them_, my fear of yielding to them was so great that I
+attacked them more desperately than ever.
+
+It was about this time, too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws
+of our metaphorical man-eater.  That was during the conflict between
+Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver.  He had the
+appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law,
+and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise
+enforce the laws against vice in Denver, he read them out of office.
+They refused to go, and defied him, with the police at their backs.  He
+threatened to call out the militia and drive them from the City Hall.
+The whole town was in an uproar.
+
+One night, in the previous summer, I had followed the excited crowds to
+Coliseum Hall to hear the Governor speak, and I had seen him rise like
+some old Hebrew prophet, with his long white beard and patriarchal head
+of hair, and denounce iniquity and political injustice and the
+oppressions of the predatory rich.  He appealed to the Bible in a calm
+prediction that, if the reign of lawlessness did not cease, in time to
+come "blood would flow in the land even unto the horses' bridles."
+(And he earned for himself, thereby, the nickname of "Bloody Bridles"
+Waite.)
+
+Now it began to appear that his prediction was about to come true; for
+he called out the militia, and the Board armed the police.  My brother
+was a militiaman, and I kept pace with him as his regiment marched from
+the Armouries to attack the City Hall.  There were riflemen on the
+towers and in the windows of that building; and on the roofs of the
+houses for blocks around were sharpshooters and armed gamblers and the
+defiant agents of the powers who were behind the Police Board in their
+fight.  Gatling guns were rushed through the streets; cannon were
+trained on the City Hall; the long lines of militia were drawn up
+before the building; and amid the excited tumult of the mob and the
+eleventh-hour conferences of the Committee of Public Safety, and the
+hurry of mounted officers and the marching of troops, we all waited
+with our hearts in our mouths for the report of the first shot.
+Suddenly, in the silence that expected the storm, we heard the sound of
+bugles from the direction of the railroad station, and at the head of
+another army--a body of Federal soldiers ordered from Fort Logan by
+President Cleveland, at the frantic call of the Committee of Public
+Safety--a mounted officer rode between the lines of militia and police,
+and in the name of the President commanded peace.
+
+The militia withdrew.  The crowds dispersed.  The police and their
+partisans put up their guns, and the Beast, still defiant, went back
+sullenly to cover.  Not until the Supreme Court had decided that
+Governor Waite had the right and the power to unseat the Board--not
+till then was the City Hall surrendered; and even so, at the next
+election (the Beast turning polecat), "Bloody Bridles" Waite was
+defeated after a campaign of lies, ridicule, and abuse, and the men
+whom he had opposed were returned to office.
+
+I had eyes, but I did not see.  I thought the whole quarrel was a
+personal matter between the Police Board and Governor Waite, who seemed
+determined merely to show them that he was master; and if my young
+brother had been shot down by a policeman that night, I suppose I
+should have joined in the curses upon poor old "Bloody Bridles."
+
+However, my prospects in the office had begun to improve.  I had had my
+salary raised, and I had ceased doing janitor work.  I had become more
+of a clerk and less of an office boy.  A number of us "kids" had got up
+a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of
+another room in the old Denver University building, where, in the
+gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes" and defend imaginary cases.
+(That, by the way, was the beginning of the Denver University Law
+School.)  I read my Blackstone, Kent, Parsons--working night and
+day--and I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law."  Long
+before I had passed my examinations and been called to the bar, Mr.
+Thompson would give me demurrers to argue in court; and, having been
+told that I had only a pretty poor sort of legal mind, I worked twice
+as hard to make up for my deficiencies.  I argued my first case, a
+damage suit, when I was nineteen.  And at last there happened one of
+those lucky turns common in jury cases, and it set me on my feet.
+
+A man had been held by the law on several counts of obtaining goods
+under false pretences.  He had been tried on the first count by an
+assistant district attorney, and the jury had acquitted him.  He had
+been tried on the second count by another assistant, who was one of our
+great criminal lawyers, and the jury had disagreed.  There was a debate
+as to whether it was worth while to try him for a third time, and I
+proposed that I should take the case, since I had been working on it
+and thought there was still a chance of convicting him.  They let me
+have my way, and though the evidence in the third charge was the same
+as before--except as to the person defrauded--the jury, by good luck,
+found against him.  It was the turning point in my struggle.  It gave
+me confidence in myself; and it taught me never to give up.
+
+And now I began to come upon "the Cat" again.
+
+I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at
+the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of
+the great smelter companies of Colorado.  The boy had suffered a
+fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon--because of a hasty and
+ill-considered diagnosis, I believed--had treated him for a bruised
+hip.  The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to
+damages, called me a blackmailer--and that was enough.  I forced the
+case to trial.
+
+I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young
+fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]--though that was not his
+name--and this was to be our first case.  We were opposed by Charles J.
+Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was
+puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of
+prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to
+dismiss it.  The judge refused the motion, and for so doing--as he
+afterward told me himself--he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose
+presence in the court had puzzled me.  After a three weeks' trial, in
+which we worked night and day for the plaintiff--with X-ray photographs
+and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the
+medical school where I prepared them--the jury stood eleven to one in
+our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again.  The second
+time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we
+did not give up.  It had been all fun for us--and for the town.  The
+word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting
+the corporation heavyweights.  It's more fun than a circus."  And we
+were confident that we could win; we knew that we were right.
+
+One evening after dinner, when we were sitting in the dingy little back
+room on Champa Street that served us as an office, A. M.
+Stevenson--"Big Steve"--politician and attorney for the Denver City
+Tramway Company, came shouldering in to see us--a heavy-jowled,
+heavy-waisted, red-faced bulk of good-humour--looking as if he had just
+walked out of a political cartoon.  "Hello, boys," he said jovially.
+"How's she going?  Making a record for yourselves up in court, eh?
+Making a record for yourselves.  Well!"
+
+He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smiled at us, with his
+inevitable cigarette in his mouth--his ridiculously inadequate
+cigarette.  (When he puffed it, he looked like a fat boy blowing
+bubbles.)  "Wearing yourselves out, eh?  Working night and day?  Ain't
+you getting about tired of it?"
+
+"We got eleven to one each time," I said.  "We'll win yet."
+
+"Uh-huh.  You will, eh?"  He laughed amusedly.  "One man stood out
+against you each time, wasn't there?"
+
+There was.
+
+"Well," he said, "there always will be.  You ain't going to get a
+verdict in this case.  You can't.  Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't
+I?  Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case.  Get
+something for your work.  Don't be a pair of fools.  Settle it."
+
+"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.
+
+He winked a fat eye.  "Jury'll hang.  Every time.  I'm here to tell you
+so.  Better settle it." [3]
+
+We refused to.  What was the use of courts if we could not get justice
+for this crippled boy?  What was the use of practising law if we could
+not get a verdict on evidence that would convince a blind man?  Settle
+it?  Never!
+
+So they went to our client and persuaded the boy to give up.
+
+"Big Steve," attorney for the tramway company!  The gas company's
+officers in court!  The business men insulting the judge in his Club!
+The defendant's brother at the head of one of the smelter companies!  I
+began to "connect up" "the Cat."
+
+Gardener and I held a council of war.  If it was possible for these men
+to "hang" juries whenever they chose, there was need of a law to make
+something less than a unanimous decision by a jury sufficient to give a
+verdict in civil cases.  Colorado needed a "three-fourths jury law."
+Gardener was a popular young man, a good "mixer," a member of several
+fraternal orders, a hail-fellow-well-met, and as interested as I was in
+politics.  He had been in the insurance business before he took up law,
+and he had friends everywhere.  Why should he not go into politics?--as
+he had often spoken of doing.
+
+In the intervals of the Smith suit, we had had a case in which a
+mother, whose child had been killed by a street car, had been unable to
+recover damages from the tramway company, because the company claimed,
+under the law, that her child was worthless alive or dead; and there
+was need of a statute permitting such as she to recover damages for
+distress and anguish of mind.  We had had another case in which a young
+factory worker had been injured by the bursting of an emery wheel; and
+the law held that the boy was guilty of "contributory negligence"
+because he had continued to work at the wheel after he had found a flaw
+in it--although he had had no choice except to work at it or leave the
+factory and find employment elsewhere.  There was need of a law giving
+workmen better protection in such circumstances.  Why should not
+Gardener enter the Legislature and introduce these bills?--which I was
+eager to draft.  Why not, indeed!  The state needed them; the people
+wanted them; the courts were crippled and justice was balked because of
+the lack of them.  Here was an opportunity for worthy ambition to serve
+the community and help his fellow-man.
+
+That night, with all the high hopes and generous ideals and merciful
+ignorance of youth, we decided--without knowing what we were about--to
+go into the jungle and attack the Beast!
+
+
+THE CAT PURRS
+
+Denver was then, as it is now, a beautiful city, built on a slope,
+between the prairies and mountains, always sunny, cool, and clear-skyed
+with the very sparkle of happiness in its air; and on the crown of its
+hill, facing the romantic prospect of the Rockies, the State Capitol
+raised its dome--as proud as the ambition of a liberty-loving
+people--the symbol of an aspiration and the expression of its power.
+That Capitol, I confess, was to me a sort of granite temple erected by
+the Commonwealth of Colorado to law, to justice, to the ideals of
+self-government that have made our republic the promised land of all
+the oppressed of Europe; and I could conceive of no nobler work than to
+serve those ideals in the assembly halls of that building, with those
+eternal mountains on the horizon and that sun of freedom overhead.
+Surely a man may confess so much, without shame, of his youth and his
+inexperience. . . .  It is not merely the gold on the dome of the
+Capitol that has given it another look to me now.
+
+It was the year 1897.  I was about twenty-eight years old, and my
+partner, Gardener, was three years younger.  He was more worldly-wise
+than I was, even then; for while I had been busy with briefs and
+court-work, he had been the "business head" of the firm, out among
+business friends and acquaintances--"mixing," as they say--and through
+his innumerable connections, here and there, with this man and that
+fraternity, bringing in the cases that kept us employed.  He was a
+"Silver Republican"; I, a Democrat.  But we both knew that if he was to
+get into politics it must be with the backing of the party
+"organization" and the endorsement of the party "boss."
+
+The "Silver Republican" boss of the day was a man whom we both
+admired--George Graham.  Everybody admired him.  Everybody was fond of
+him.  "Why," they would tell you, "there isn't a man in town who is
+kinder to his family.  He's such a good man in his home!  And he's so
+charitable!"  At Christmas time, when free baskets of food were
+distributed to the poor, George Graham was chairman of the committee
+for their distribution.  He was prominent in the fraternal orders and
+used his political power to help the needy, the widow, and the orphan.
+He had an engaging manner of fellowship, a personal magnetism, a kindly
+interest in aspiring young men, a pleasant appearance--smooth and dark
+in complexion, with a gentle way of smiling.  I liked him; and he
+seemed to discover an affection for both Gardener and me, as we became
+more intimate with him, in the course of Gardener's progress toward his
+coveted nomination by the party.
+
+That progress was so rapid and easy that it surprised us.  We knew, of
+course, that we had attracted some public attention and much newspaper
+notice by our legal battles with "the corporation heavyweights" in our
+three big cases against the surgeon, the tramway company, and the
+factory owner.  But this did not account to us for the ease with which
+Gardener penetrated to the inner circles of the Boss's court.  It did
+not explain why Graham should come to see us in our office, and call us
+by our first names.  The explanation that we tacitly accepted was one
+more personal and flattering to us.  And when Gardener would come back
+from a chat with Graham, full of "inside information" about the party's
+plans--about who was to be nominated for this office at the coming
+convention, and what chance So-and-so had for that one--the sure proofs
+(to us) that he was being admitted to the intimate secrets of the party
+and found worthy of the confidence of those in power--I was as proud of
+Gardener as only a young man can be of a friend who has all the
+brilliant qualities that he himself lacks.  Gardener was a handsome
+fellow, well built, always well dressed, self-assured and ambitious; I
+did not wonder that the politicians admired him and made much of him.
+I accepted his success as a tribute to those qualities in him that had
+already attached me to him with an affection rather more than brotherly.
+
+We said nothing to the politicians about our projected bills.  Indeed,
+from the first, my interest in our measures of reform was greater than
+Gardener's.  His desire to be in the Legislature Was due to a natural
+ambition to "get on" in life, to acquire power in the community as well
+as the wealth and distinction that come with power.  Such ambitions
+were, of course, beyond me; I had none of the qualities that would make
+them possible; and I could only enjoy them, as it were, by proxy, in
+Gardener's person.  I enjoyed, in the same way, his gradual penetration
+behind the scenes in politics.  I saw, with him, that the party
+convention, to which we had at first looked as the source of honours,
+was really only a sort of puppet show of which the Boss held the wires.
+All the candidates for nomination were selected by Graham in
+advance--in secret caucus with his ward leaders, executive
+committeemen, and such other "practical" politicians as "Big
+Steve"--and the convention, with more or less show of independence, did
+nothing but ratify his choice.  When I spoke of canvassing some of the
+chosen delegates of the convention, Gardener said: "What's the use of
+talking to those small fry?  If we can get the big fellows, we've got
+the rest.  They do what the big ones tell them--and won't do anything
+they aren't told.  You leave it to me."  I had only hoped to see him in
+the Lower House, but he, with his wiser audacity, soon proclaimed
+himself a candidate for the Senate.  "We can get the big thing as easy
+as the little one," he said.  "I'm going to tell Graham it's the Senate
+or nothing for me."  And he got his promise.  And when we knew, at
+last, that his name was really on "the slate" of candidates to be
+presented to the convention, we were ready to throw up our hats and
+cheer for ourselves--and for the Boss.
+
+The convention met in September, 1898.  There had been a fusion of
+Silver Republicans, Democrats, and Populists, that year, and the
+political offices had been apportioned out among the faithful
+machine-men of these parties.  Gardener was nominated by "Big Steve,"
+in a eulogistic speech that was part of the farce; and the convention
+ratified the nomination with the unanimity of a stage mob.  We knew
+that his election was as sure as sunrise, and I set to work looking up
+models for my bills with all the enthusiasm of the first reformer.
+
+Meanwhile there was the question of the campaign and of the campaign
+expenses.  Gardener had been assessed $500 by the committee as his
+share of the legitimate costs of the election, and Boss Graham
+generously offered to get the money for him "from friends."  We were
+rather inclined to let Graham do so, feeling a certain delicacy about
+refusing his generosity and being aware, too, that we were not
+millionaires.  But Graham was not the only one who made the offer; for
+example, Ed. Chase, since head of the gambler's syndicate in Denver,
+made similar proposals of kindly aid; and we decided, at last, that
+perhaps it would be well to be quite independent.  Our law practice was
+improving.  Doubtless, it would continue to improve now that we were
+"in right" with the political powers.  We put up $250 each and paid the
+assessment.
+
+The usual business of political rallies, mass-meetings, and campaign
+speeches followed in due course, and in November, 1898, Gardener was
+elected a State Senator on the fusion ticket.  I had been busy with my
+"three-fourths jury" bill, studying the constitution of the State of
+Colorado, comparing it with those of the other states, and making
+myself certain that such a law as we proposed was possible.  Unlike
+most of the state constitutions, Colorado's preserved inviolate the
+right of jury trial in criminal cases only, and therefore it seemed to
+me that the Legislature had plenary power to regulate it in civil
+suits.  I found that the Supreme Court of the state had so decided in
+two cases, and I felt very properly elated; there seemed to be nothing
+to prevent us having a law that should make "hung" juries practically
+impossible in Colorado and relieve the courts of an abuse that thwarted
+justice in scores of cases.  At the same time I prepared a bill
+allowing parents to recover damages for "anguish of mind" when a child
+of theirs was killed in an accident; and, after much study, I worked up
+an "employer's liability" bill to protect men who were compelled by
+necessity to work under needlessly dangerous conditions.  With these
+three bills in his pocket, Senator Gardener went up to the Capitol,
+like another David, and I went joyfully with him to aid and abet.
+
+Happy?  I was as happy as if Gardener had been elected President and I
+was to be his Secretary of State.  I was as happy as a man who has
+found his proper work and knows that it is for the good of his fellows.
+I would not have changed places that day with any genius of the fine
+arts who had three masterpieces to unveil to an admiring world.
+
+I did not know, of course--but I was soon to learn--that the
+Legislature's time was almost wholly taken up with the routine work of
+government, that most of the bills passed were concerned with
+appropriations and such necessary details of administration, and that
+only twenty or thirty bills such as ours--dealing with other
+matters--could possibly be passed, among the hundreds offered.  It was
+Boss Graham who warned us that we had better concentrate on one
+measure, if we wished to succeed with any at all, and we decided to put
+all our strength behind the "three-fourths jury" bill.  Since Graham
+seemed to doubt its constitutionality, I went to the Attorney General
+for his opinion, and he referred me to his assistant--whom I convinced.
+I came back with the assistant's decision that the Legislature had
+power to pass such a law, and Gardener promptly introduced it in the
+Senate.
+
+It proved at once mildly unpopular, and after a preliminary debate, in
+which the senators rather laughed at it as visionary and
+unconstitutional, it was referred to the Attorney General for his
+opinion.  We waited, confidently.  To our amazement he reported it
+unconstitutional, and the very assistant who had given me a favourable
+opinion before, now conducted the case against it.  Nothing daunted,
+Gardener fought to get it referred to the Supreme Court, under the law;
+and the Senate sent it there.  I got up an elaborate brief, had it
+printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing it before the
+Supreme Court judges.  They held that the Court had already twice found
+the Legislature possessed of plenary powers in such matters, and
+Gardener brought the bill back into the Senate triumphantly, and got a
+favourable report from the Judiciary Committee.
+
+By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed.  He had warned
+Gardener that the bill was distasteful to him and to those whom he
+called his "friends."  It was particularly distasteful, it seemed, to
+the Denver City Tramway Company.  And he could promise, he said, that
+if we dropped the bill, the railway company would see that we got at
+least four thousand dollars' worth of litigation a year to handle.  To
+both Gardener and myself, flushed with success and roused to the
+battle, this offer seemed an amusing confession of defeat on the part
+of the opposition; and we went ahead more gaily than ever.
+
+We were enjoying ourselves.  If we had been a pair of chums in college,
+we could not have had a better time.  Whenever I could get away from my
+court cases and my office work, I rushed up to watch the fight in the
+Senate, as eagerly as a Freshman hurrying from his studies to see his
+athletic room-mate carry everything before him in a football game.  The
+whole atmosphere of the Capitol--with its corridors of coloured marble,
+its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal balustrades, its
+great staircases--all its majesty of rich grandeur and solidity of
+power--affected me with an increased respect for the functions of
+government that were discharged there and for the men who had them to
+discharge.  I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon
+myself when I was introduced as "Senator Gardener's law partner, sir";
+and I accepted the bows and greetings of lobbyists and legislators with
+all the pleasure in the world.
+
+When Gardener got our bill up for its final reading in the Senate, I
+was there to watch, and it tickled me to the heart to see him.  He made
+a fine figure of an orator, the handsomest man in the Senate; and he
+was not afraid to raise his voice and look as independent and
+determined as his words.  He had given the senators to understand that
+any one who opposed his bill would have him as an obstinate opponent on
+every other measure; and the Senate evidently realized that it would be
+wise to let him have his way.  The bill was passed.  But it had to go
+through the Lower House, too, and it was sent there, to be taken care
+of by its opponents--with the tongue in the cheek, no doubt.
+
+I met Boss Graham in the corridor.  "Hello, Ben," he greeted me.
+"What's the matter with that partner of yours?" I laughed; he looked
+worried.  "Come in here," he said.  "I'd like to have a talk with you."
+He led me into a quiet side room and shut the door.  "Now look here,"
+he said.  "Did you boys ever stop to think what a boat you'll be in
+with this law that you're trying to get, if you ever have to defend a
+corporation in a jury suit?  Now they tell me down at the tramway
+offices"--the offices of the Denver City Tramway Company--"that they're
+going to need a lot more legal help.  There's every prospect that
+they'll appoint you boys assistant counsel.  But they can't expect to
+do much, even with you bright boys as counsel, if they have this law
+against them.  You know that all the money there is in law is in
+corporation business.  I don't see what you're fighting for."
+
+I explained, as well as I could, that we were fighting for the bill
+because we thought it was right--that it was needed.  He did not seem
+to believe me; he objected that this sort of talk was not "practical."
+
+"Well," I ended, "we've made up our minds to put it through.  And we're
+going to try."
+
+"You'll find you're making a mistake, boy," he warned me.  "You'll find
+you're making a mistake."
+
+We laughed over it together--Gardener and I.  It was another proof to
+us that we had our opponents on their knees.  We thought we understood
+Graham's position in the matter; he had made no disguise of the fact
+that he was intimate and friendly with Mr. William G. Evans--the great
+"Bill" Evans--head of the tramway company and an acknowledged power in
+politics.  And it was natural to us that Graham should do what he could
+to induce us to spare his friends.  That was all very well, but we had
+made no pledges; we were under no obligations to any one except the
+public whom we served.  Gardener was making himself felt.  He did not
+intend to stultify himself, even for Graham's good "friends."  I, of
+course, went along with him, rejoicing.
+
+He had another bill in hand (House Bill 235) to raise the tax on large
+foreign insurance companies so as to help replenish the depleted
+treasury of the state.  Governor Thomas had been appealing for money;
+the increased tax was conceded to be just, and it would add at least
+$100,000 in revenue to the public coffers.  Gardener handled it well in
+the Senate, and--though we were indirectly offered a bribe of $2,500 to
+drop it--he got it passed and returned it to the Lower House.  He had
+two other bills--one our "anguish of mind" provision and the second a
+bill regulating the telephone companies; but he was not able to move
+them out of committee.  The opposition was silent but solid.
+
+It became my duty to watch the two bills that we had been able to get
+as far as the House calendar on final passage--to see that they were
+given their turn for consideration.  The jury bill came to the top very
+soon, but it was passed over, and next day it was on the bottom of the
+list.  This happened more than once.  And once it disappeared from the
+calendar altogether.  The Clerk of the House, when I demanded an
+explanation, said that it was an oversight--a clerical error--and put
+it back at the foot.  I began to suspect jugglery, but I was not yet
+sure of it.
+
+One day while I was on this sentry duty, a lobbyist who was a member of
+a fraternal order to which I belonged, came to me with the fraternal
+greeting and a thousand dollars in bills.  "Lindsey," he said, "this is
+a legal fee for an argument we want you to make before the committee,
+as a lawyer, against that insurance bill.  It's perfectly legitimate.
+We don't want you to do anything except in a legal way.  You know our
+other lawyer has made an able argument, showing how the extra tax will
+come out of the people in increased premiums"--and so on.  I refused
+the money and continued trying to push along the bill.  In a few days
+he came back to me, with a grin.  "Too bad you didn't take that money,"
+he said.  "There's lots of it going round.  But the joke of it is, I
+got the whole thing fixed up for $250.  Watch Cannon."  I watched
+Cannon--Wilbur F. Cannon, a member of the House and a "floor leader"
+there.  He had already voted in favour of the bill.  But--to anticipate
+somewhat the sequence of events--I saw Wilbur F. Cannon, in the
+confusion and excitement of the closing moments of the session, rush
+down the aisle toward the Speaker's chair and make a motion concerning
+the insurance bill--to what effect I could not hear.  The motion was
+put, in the midst of the uproar, and declared carried; and the bill was
+killed.  It was killed so neatly that there is to-day no record of its
+decease in the official account of the proceedings of the House!
+Expert treason, bold and skilful! [4]
+
+Meanwhile, I had been standing by our jury bill.  It went up and it
+went down on the calendar, and at last when it arrived at a hearing it
+was referred back to the Judiciary Committee with two other
+anti-corporation bills.  The session was drawing toward the day
+provided by the constitution for its closing, and we could no longer
+doubt that we were being juggled out of our last chance by the Clerk
+and the Speaker--who was Mr. William G. Smith, since known as "Tramway
+Bill." [5]
+
+"All right," Gardener said.  "Not one of Speaker Smith's House bills
+will get through the Senate until he lets our jury bill get to a vote."
+He told Speaker Smith what he intended to do and next day he began to
+do it.
+
+That afternoon, tired out, I was resting, during a recess of the House,
+in a chair that stood in a shadowed corner, when the Speaker hurried by
+heavily, evidently unaware of me, and rang a telephone.  I heard him
+mention the name of "Mr. Evans," in a low, husky voice.  I heard,
+sleepily, not consciously listening; and I did note at first connect
+"Mr. Evans" with William G. Evans of the tramway company.  But a little
+later I heard the Speaker say: "Well, unless Gardener can be pulled
+off, we'll have to let that 'three-fourths' bill out.  He's raising
+hell with a lot of our measures over in the Senate. . .  What? . . .
+Yes. . . .  Well, get at it pretty quick."
+
+Those hoarse, significant words wakened like the thrill of an electric
+shock--wakened to an understanding of the strength of "special
+interests" that were opposed to us--and wakened in me, too, the anger
+of a determination to fight to a finish.  The Powers that had "fixed"
+our juries, were now fixing Legislature.  They had laughed at us in the
+courts; they were going to laugh at us in the Capitol!
+
+Speaker Smith came lumbering out.  He was a heavily built man, with a
+big jaw.  And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed
+from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt--lowering
+his head like a bull--as if he were saying to himself: "What!  That
+d---- little devil!  I'll bet he heard me!"  But he did not speak.  And
+neither did I.  He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and
+I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had
+heard.
+
+When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of
+course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby.
+Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone
+conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was
+"reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a
+vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the
+session to death.  Smith fumed and blustered, but Gardener, with the
+blood in his face, out-blustered and out-fumed him.  The Speaker, later
+in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject
+me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist.  But he had to allow the
+bill to come up, and it was finally passed, with very little
+opposition--for reasons which I was afterward to understand.
+
+It had yet to be signed by the Speaker; and it had to be signed before
+the close of the session or it could not become a law.  I heard rumours
+that some anti-corporation bills were going to be "lost" by the Chief
+Clerk, so that they might not be signed; and I kept my eye on him.  He
+was a fat-faced, stupid-looking, flabby creature--by name D. H.
+Dickason--who did not appear capable of doing anything very daring.  I
+saw the chairman of the Enrolling Committee place our bill on
+Dickason's desk, among those waiting for the Speaker's signature;
+and--while the House was busy--I withdrew it from the pile and placed
+it to one side, conspicuously, so that I could see it from a distance.
+
+When the time came for signing--sure enough! the Clerk was missing, and
+some bills were missing with him.  The House was crowded--floor and
+galleries--and the whole place went into an uproar at once.  Nobody
+seemed to know which bills were gone; every member who had an
+anti-corporation bill thought it was his that had been stolen; and they
+all together broke out into denunciations of the Speaker, the Clerk,
+and everybody else whom they thought concerned in the outrage.  One man
+jumped up on his chair and tried to dominate the pandemonium, shouting
+and waving his hands.  The galleries went wild with noisy excitement.
+Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House,
+cursing and shaking their fists.  Others rushed here and there trying
+to find some trace of the Clerk.  The Speaker, breathless from calling
+for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them
+rage.
+
+At last, from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I
+saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a
+blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an
+abject terror.  He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin,
+providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works;
+but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to
+the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and
+it was the Senator now who had him by the neck.
+
+They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and
+with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody
+concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the
+desperate haste of men working against time.  And our jury bill was
+signed!
+
+It was signed; and we had won!  (At least we thought so.)  And I walked
+out of the crowded glare of the session's close, into an April midnight
+that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet.  It seemed to me that
+the stars, even in Colorado, had never been brighter; they sparkled in
+the clear blackness of the sky with a joyful brilliancy.  A cool breeze
+drew down from the mountains as peacefully as the breath in sleep.  It
+was a night to make a man take on his hat and breathe out his last
+vexation in a sigh.
+
+We had won.  What did it matter that the Boss, the Speaker, the Clerk
+and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in
+selfishness?  That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth
+and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that
+arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol.  Had not even
+we, two "boys"--as they called us--put a just law before them and made
+them take up the pen and sign it?  If we had done so much without even
+a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to
+aid and back us, what would the future not do when we found the help
+that an aroused community would surely give us?  Hope?  The whole night
+was hushed and peaceful with hope.  The very houses that I
+passed--walking home up the tree-lined streets--seemed to me in some
+way so quiet because they were so sure.  All was right with the world.
+We had won.
+
+
+
+[1] A New England family, to which the poet Whittier was related.
+
+[2] This is one of the few fictitious names used in the story.  Judge
+Lindsey wishes it disguised "for old sake's sake."
+
+[3] Many of the conversations reported in this volume are given from
+memory, and they are liable to errors of memory in the use of a word or
+a turn of expression.  But they are not liable to error in substance.
+They are the unadorned truth, clearly recollected.--B. B. L.
+
+[4] Wilbur F. Cannon is now Pure Food Commissioner in Colorado.
+
+[5] Smith is now tax agent in the tramway offices.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III
+(OF 6)***
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6), by Various</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-size: medium;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
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+P {text-indent: 4% }
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+<body>
+<h1 align="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6), by
+Various, Edited by Asa Don Dickinson</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6)</p>
+<p>       Orators and Reformers</p>
+<p>Author: Various</p>
+<p>Editor: Asa Don Dickinson</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 15, 2006  [eBook #18597]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III (OF 6)***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Henry Ward Beecher" BORDER="2" WIDTH="320" HEIGHT="506">
+<H3>
+[Frontispiece: Henry Ward Beecher]
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+EDITED BY
+<BR>
+ASA DON DICKINSON
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+Orators and Reformers
+</H2>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+DESMOSTHENES<BR>
+ELIHU BURRITT<BR>
+JOHN B. GOUGH<BR>
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS<BR>
+HENRY WARD BEECHER<BR>
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON<BR>
+BEN. B. LINDSEY<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+GARDEN CITY &mdash;&mdash; NEW YORK
+<BR>
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY
+<BR>
+1925
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
+<BR>
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY
+<BR>
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In the preparation of this volume the publishers have received from
+several houses and authors generous permissions to reprint copyright
+material.  For this they wish to express their cordial gratitude.  In
+particular, acknowledgments are due to the Houghton Mifflin Company for
+the extract concerning Elihu Burritt; to George W. Jacobs &amp; Co. for the
+extract from Booker T. Washington's "Frederick Douglass"; to P. B.
+Bromfield for permission to use passages from "The Biography of Henry
+Ward Beecher"; to the late Booker T. Washington for permission to
+reprint extracts from "Up From Slavery"; to Judge Ben. B. Lindsey for
+permission to reprint from "The Beast."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ORATORS AND REFORMERS
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap01">
+DEMOSTHENES<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Orator Who Stammered<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap02">
+ELIHU BURRITT<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"The Learned Blacksmith"<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap03">
+JOHN B. GOUGH<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Conquest of a Bad Habit<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap04">
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Slave Who Stole Freedom<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap05">
+HENRY WARD BEECHER<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Boy Who Half-heartedly Joined the Church<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap06">
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Boy Who Slept Under the Sidewalk<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#chap07">
+BEN. B. LINDSEY<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Man Who Fights the Beast<BR>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DEMOSTHENES
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(384-322 B. C.)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE ORATOR WHO STAMMERED
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Modern critics are fond of discriminating between talent and genius.
+The fire of <I>genius</I>, it seems, will flame resplendent even in spite of
+an unworthy possessor's neglect.  But the man with <I>talent</I> which must
+be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by
+its help&mdash;that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in
+sympathy.  Every schoolboy knows that Demosthenes practised declamation
+on the seashore, with his mouth full of pebbles.  This description of
+the unlovely old Athenian with the compelling tongue is Plutarch's
+contribution to the literature of self-help.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From Plutarch's "Lives of Illustrious Men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The orator Callistratus was to plead in the cause which the city of
+Oropus had depending; and the expectation of the public was greatly
+raised, both by the powers of the orator, which were then in the
+highest repute, and by the importance of the trial.  Demosthenes,
+hearing the governors and tutors agree among themselves to attend the
+trial, with much importunity prevailed on his master to take him to
+hear the pleadings.  The master, having some acquaintance with the
+officers who opened the court, got his young pupil a seat where he
+could hear the orators without being seen.  Callistratus had great
+success, and his abilities were extremely admired.  Demosthenes was
+fired with a spirit of emulation.  When he saw with what distinction
+the orator was conducted home, and complimented by the people, he was
+struck still more with the power of that commanding eloquence which
+could carry all before it.  From this time, therefore, he bade adieu to
+the other studies and exercises in which boys are engaged, and applied
+himself with great assiduity to declaiming, in hopes of being one day
+numbered among the orators.  Isaeus was the man he made use of as his
+preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was
+that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten
+<I>minae</I>, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he
+preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more fit for public
+use.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hermippus says he met with an account in certain anonymous memoirs that
+Demosthenes likewise studied under Plato, and received great assistance
+from him in preparing to speak in public.  He adds, that Ctesibius used
+to say that Demosthenes was privately supplied by Callias the Syracusan
+and some others, with the systems of rhetoric taught by Isocrates and
+Alcidamus, and made his advantage of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When his minority was expired, he called his guardians to account at
+law, and wrote orations against them.  As they found many methods of
+chicane and delay, he had great opportunity, as Thucydides says, to
+exercise his talent for the bar.  It was not without much pain and some
+risk that he gained his cause; and, at last, it was but a very small
+part of his patrimony that he could recover.  By this means, however,
+he acquired a proper assurance and some experience; and having tasted
+the honour and power that go in the train of eloquence, he attempted to
+speak in the public debates, and take a share in the administration.
+As it is said of Laomedon the Orchomenian, that, by the advice of his
+physicians, in some disorder of the spleen, he applied himself to
+running, and continued it constantly a great length of way, till he had
+gained such excellent health and breath that he tried for the crown at
+the public games, and distinguished himself in the long course; so it
+happened to Demosthenes, that he first appeared at the bar for the
+recovery of his own fortune, which had been so much embezzled; and
+having acquired in that cause a persuasive and powerful manner of
+speaking, he contested the crown, as I may call it, with the other
+orators before the general assembly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his first address to the people he was laughed at and interrupted by
+their clamours, for the violence of his manner threw him into a
+confusion of periods and a distortion of his argument; besides he had a
+weakness and a stammering in his voice, and a want of breath, which
+caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for
+the audience to understand him.  At last, upon his quitting the
+assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him
+wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him to
+set him right.  "You," said he, "have a manner of speaking very like
+that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and
+cowardice.  You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular
+assembly nor prepare your body by exercise for the labour of the
+rostrum, but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and
+indolence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another time, we are told, when his speeches had been ill-received, and
+he was going home with his head covered, and in the greatest distress,
+Satyrus, the player, who was an acquaintance of his, followed and went
+in with him.  Demosthenes lamented to him, "That though he was the most
+laborious of all the orators, and had almost sacrificed his health to
+that application, yet he could gain no favour with the people; but
+drunken seamen and other unlettered persons were heard, and kept the
+rostrum, while he was entirely disregarded."  "You say true," answered
+Satyrus, "but I will soon provide a remedy, if you will repeat to me
+some speech in Euripides or Sophocles."  When Demosthenes had done,
+Satyrus pronounced the same speech; and he did it with such propriety
+of action, and so much in character, that it appeared to the orator
+quite a different passage.  He now understood so well how much grace
+and dignity action adds to the best oration that he thought it a small
+matter to premeditate and compose, though with the utmost care, if the
+pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not attended to.  Upon this
+he built himself a subterraneous study which remained to our times.
+Thither he repaired every day to form his action and exercise his
+voice; and he would often stay there for two or three months together,
+shaving one side of his head, that, if he should happen to be ever so
+desirous of going abroad, the shame of appearing in that condition
+might keep him in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he did go out on a visit, or received one, he would take something
+that passed in conversation, some business or fact that was reported to
+him, for a subject to exercise himself upon.  As soon as he had parted
+from his friends, he went to his study, where he repeated the matter in
+order as it passed, together with the arguments for and against it.
+The substance of the speeches which he heard he committed to memory,
+and afterward reduced them to regular sentences and periods, meditating
+a variety of corrections and new forms of expression, both of what
+others had said to him, and he had addressed to them.  Hence, it was
+concluded that he was not a man of much genius, and that all his
+eloquence was the effect of labour.  A strong proof of this seemed to
+be that he was seldom heard to speak anything extempore, and though the
+people often called upon him by name, as he sat in the assembly, to
+speak to the point debated, he would not do it unless he came prepared.
+For this many of the orators ridiculed him; and Pytheas, in particular,
+told him, "That all his arguments smelled of the lamp."  Demosthenes
+retorted sharply upon him, "Yes, indeed, but your lamp and mine, my
+friend, are not conscious to the same labours."  To others he did not
+pretend to deny his previous application, but told them, "He either
+wrote the whole of his orations, or spoke not without first committing
+part to writing."  He further affirmed, "That this shewed him a good
+member of a democratic state; for the coming prepared to the rostrum
+was a mark of respect for the people.  Whereas, to be regardless of
+what the people might think of a man's address shewed his inclination
+for oligarchy, and that he had rather gain his point by force than by
+persuasion."  Another proof they gave us of his want of confidence on
+any sudden occasion is, that when he happened to be put into disorder
+by the tumultuary behaviour of the people, Demades often rose up to
+support him in an extempore address, but he never did the same for
+Demades.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon the whole it appears that Demosthenes did not take Pericles
+entirely for his model.  He only adopted his action and delivery, and
+his prudent resolutions not to make a practice of speaking from a
+sudden impulse, or on any occasion that might present itself; being
+persuaded that it was to that conduct he owed his greatness.  Yet,
+while he chose not often to trust the success of his powers to fortune,
+he did not absolutely neglect the reputation which may be acquired by
+speaking on a sudden occasion; and if we believe Eratosthenes,
+Demetrius the Phalerean, and the comic poets, there was a greater
+spirit and boldness in his unpremeditated orations than in those he had
+committed to writing.  Eratosthenes says that in his extemporaneous
+harangues he often spoke as from a supernatural impulse; and Demetrius
+tells us that in an address to the people, like a man inspired, he once
+uttered this oath in verse:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods!&nbsp;&#8230;<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for his personal defects, Demetrius the Phalerean gives us an
+account of the remedies he applied to them; and he says he had it from
+Demosthenes in his old age.  The hesitation and stammering of his
+tongue he corrected by practising to speak with pebbles in his mouth;
+and he strengthened his voice by running or walking uphill, and
+pronouncing some passage in an oration or a poem during the difficulty
+of breath which that caused.  He had, moreover, a looking-glass in his
+house before which he used to declaim and adjust all his motions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was said that a man came to him one day, and desired him to be his
+advocate against a person from whom he had suffered by assault.  "Not
+you, indeed," said Demosthenes, "you have suffered no such thing."
+"What," said the man, raising his voice, "have I not received those
+blows?"  "Ay, <I>now</I>," replied Demosthenes, "you do speak like a person
+that has been injured."  So much in his opinion do the tone of voice
+and the action contribute to gain the speaker credit in what he affirms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His action pleased the commonalty much; but people of taste (among whom
+was Demetrius the Phalerean) thought there was something in it low,
+inelegant, and unmanly.  Hermippus acquaints us, Aesion being asked his
+opinion of the ancient orators and those of that time, said, "Whoever
+has heard the orators of former times must admire the decorum and
+dignity with which they spoke.  Yet when we read the orations of
+Demosthenes, we must allow they have more art in the composition and
+greater force."  It is needless to mention that in his written orations
+there was something extremely cutting and severe; but in his sudden
+repartees there was also something of humour.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When a rascal surnamed Chalcus attempted to jest upon his late studies
+and long watchings, he said, "I know my lamp offends thee.  But you
+need not wonder, my countryman, that we have so many robberies, when we
+have thieves of brass [<I>chalcus</I>] and walls only of clay."  Though more
+of his sayings might be produced, we shall pass them over, and go on to
+seek the rest of his manners and character in his actions and political
+conduct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tells us himself that he entered upon public business in the time of
+the Phocian war, and the same may be collected from his Philippics.
+For some of the last of them were delivered after that war was
+finished; and the former relate to the immediate transactions of it.
+It appears, also, that he was thirty-two years old when he was
+preparing his oration against Midias; and yet at that time he had
+attained no name or power in the administration.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had a glorious subject for his political ambition to defend the
+cause of Greece against Philip.  He defended it like a champion worthy
+of such a charge, and soon gained great reputation both for eloquence
+and for the bold truths which he spoke.  He was admired in Greece, and
+courted by the king of Persia.  Nay, Philip himself had a much higher
+opinion of him than the other orators; and his enemies acknowledged
+that they had to contend with a great man.  For Aeschines and
+Hyperides, in their very accusations, give him such a character.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wonder, therefore, how Theopompus could say that he was a man of no
+steadiness, who was never long pleased either with the same persons or
+things.  For, on the contrary, it appears that he abode by the party
+and the measures which he first adopted; and was so far from quitting
+them during his life that he forfeited his life rather than he would
+forsake them.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It must be acknowledged, however, that he excelled all the orators of
+his time, except Phocion, in his life and conversation.  And we find in
+his orations that he told the people the boldest truths, that he
+opposed their inclinations and corrected their errors with the greatest
+spirit and freedom.  Theopompus also acquaints us that when the
+Athenians were for having him manager of a certain impeachment, and
+insisted upon it in a tumultuary manner, he would not comply, but rose
+up and said, "My friends, I will be your counsellor whether you will or
+no; but a false accuser I will not be how much soever you may wish it.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Demosthenes, through the whole course of his political conduct, left
+none of the actions of the kin of Macedon undisparaged.  Even in time
+of peace he laid hold on every opportunity to raise suspicions against
+him among the Athenians, and to excite their resentment.  Hence Philip
+looked upon him as a person of the greatest importance in Athens; and
+when he went with nine other deputies to the court of that prince,
+after having given them all audience, he answered the speech of
+Demosthenes with greater care than the rest.  As to other marks of
+honour and respect, Demosthenes had not an equal share in them; they
+were bestowed principally upon Aeschines and Philocrates.  They,
+therefore, were large in the praise of Philip on all occasions, and
+they insisted, in particular, on his eloquence, his beauty, and even
+his being able to drink a great quantity of liquor.  Demosthenes, who
+could not bear to hear him praised, turned these things off as trifles.
+"The first," he said, "was the property of a sophist, the second of a
+woman, and the third of a sponge; and not one of them could do any
+credit to a king."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Afterward, it appeared that nothing was to be expected but war; for, on
+the one hand, Philip knew not how to sit down in tranquillity; and, on
+the other, Demosthenes inflamed the Athenians.  In this case, the first
+step the orator took was to put the people upon sending an armament to
+Euboea, which was brought under the yoke of Philip by its petty
+tyrants.  Accordingly he drew up an edict, in pursuance of which they
+passed over to that peninsula, and drove out the Macedonians.  His
+second operation was the sending succor to the Byzantians and
+Perinthians, with whom Philip was at war.  He persuaded the people to
+drop their resentment, to forget the faults which both those nations
+had committed in the confederate war, and to send a body of troops to
+their assistance.  They did so, and it saved them from ruin.  After
+this, he went ambassador to the states of Greece; and, by his animating
+address, brought them almost all to join in the league against Philip.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meantime Philip, elated with his success at Amphissa, surprised Elatea,
+and possessed himself of Phocis.  The Athenians were struck with
+astonishment, and none of them durst mount the rostrum; no one knew
+what advice to give; but a melancholy silence reigned the city.  In
+this distress Demosthenes alone stood forth, and proposed that
+application should be made to the Thebans.  He likewise animated the
+people in his usual manner, and inspired them with fresh hopes; in
+consequence of which he was sent ambassador to Thebes, some others
+being joined in commission with him.  Philip, too, on his part, as
+Maryas informs us, sent Anyntus and Clearchus, two Macedonians, Doachus
+the Thessalian, Thrasidaeus the Elean, to answer the Athenian deputies.
+The Thebans were not ignorant what way their true interest pointed, but
+each of them had the evils of war before his eyes; for their Phocian
+wounds were still fresh upon them.  However, the powers of the orator,
+as Theopompus tells us, rekindled their courage and ambition so
+effectually that all other objects were disregarded.  They lost sight
+of fear, of caution, of every prior attachment, and, through the force
+of his eloquence, fell with enthusiastic transports into the path of
+honour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So powerful, indeed, were the efforts of the orator that Philip
+immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to apply for peace.  Greece
+recovered her spirits, whilst she stood waiting for the event; and not
+only the Athenian generals, but the governors of Boeotia, were ready to
+execute the commands of Demosthenes.  All the assemblies, as well those
+of Thebes as those of Athens, were under his direction: he was equally
+beloved, equally powerful, in both places; and, as Theopompus shows, it
+was no more than his merit claimed.  But the superior power of fortune,
+which seems to have been working at revolution, and drawing the
+liberties of Greece to a period at that time, opposed and baffled all
+the measures that could be taken.  The deity discovered many tokens of
+the approaching event.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ELIHU BURRITT
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1810-1879)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+"THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH"
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+This man's career is the star example of the pursuit of knowledge under
+difficulties.  For years, while earning his living at the forge, he
+denied himself all natural pleasures that he might devote every possible
+minute to cramming his head with seemingly useless scraps of knowledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The acquisition of knowledge merely for its own sake is of course
+foolishness, but it is a very rare kind of foolishness.  Nearly always
+the learned man pays his debt to society in full measure, if we but give
+him time enough.  So it was with "The Learned Blacksmith."  From his deep
+learning, Elihu Burritt at last drew the inspiration which made him a
+powerful advocate in the cause of the world's peace.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From "Captains of Industry," by James Parton.  Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co.,
+1884.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
+Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
+Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford.  He was the
+youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children.  His father
+owned and cultivated a small farm, but spent the winters at the
+shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
+that day.  When Elihu was sixteen years of age his father died, and the
+lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native village.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to
+gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which
+contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond.  This
+boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
+thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
+when his parents were going to have company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
+he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship&mdash;particularly
+mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
+surveyor.  He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
+forge, but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in doing
+sums in his head.  His biographer gives a specimen of these calculations
+which he wrought out without making a single figure:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
+wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it require
+to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how much would
+it all cost at a shilling a yard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
+and report the results to an elder brother, who had worked his way
+through Williams College.  His brother would perform the calculations
+upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
+into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance of
+the same elder brother.  In the evenings of one winter he read the Aeneid
+of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few other
+Latin authors, he began Greek.  During the winter months he was obliged
+to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his
+leisure minutes were few and far between.  But he carried his Greek
+grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a
+large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers,
+and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being
+noticed by his fellow-apprentices.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
+himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
+studied mathematics, Latin, and other languages.  Then he went back to
+the forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he
+had saved a little money, when he resolved to go to New Haven and spend a
+winter in study.  It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
+to enter Yale College, but he seems to have had an idea that the very
+atmosphere of the college would assist him.  He was still so timid that
+he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
+professor or tutor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
+morning a course of heroic study.  As soon as the fire was made in the
+sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
+took possession, and studied German until breakfast-time, which was
+half-past seven.  When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
+down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
+dictionary to help him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
+gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work.  I
+took a short triumphal walk, in favor of that exploit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just before the boarders came back for their dinner he put away all his
+Greek and Latin books and took up a work in Italian, because it was less
+likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd.  After dinner he fell
+again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until bedtime.  In
+this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary student in the
+midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with the grandeurs and
+dignity of the past while eating flapjacks and molasses at a poor tavern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
+academy in a town near by, but he could not bear a life wholly sedentary;
+and at the end of a year abandoned his school and became what is called a
+"runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain.  This business he
+pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age, when, tired of
+wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and provision store,
+in which he invested all the money he had saved.  Soon came the
+commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread ruin.  He
+lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
+Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
+small handkerchief and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
+hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across the
+ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port.  He could not find a
+berth.  He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he found
+work, and found something else which he liked better.  There is an
+antiquarian society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
+containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied, such
+as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others.  The
+directors of the society placed all their treasures at his command, and
+he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor at
+the forge.  To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or two
+from his private diary he then kept:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Monday, June 18.  Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64
+pages French; 11 hours forging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tuesday, June 19.  60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages Cuvier; 8
+lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15
+names of stars; 10 hours forging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wednesday, June 20.  25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He spent five years at Worcester in such labors as these.  When work at
+his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than
+usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand,
+when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study.
+After a while he began to think that he might perhaps earn his
+subsistence in part by his knowledge of languages, and thus save much
+waste of time and vitality at the forge.  He wrote a letter to William
+Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and encouraged him; and in this
+letter he gave a short history of his life, and asked whether he could
+not find employment in translating some foreign work into English.  Mr.
+Lincoln was so much struck with his letter that he sent it to Edward
+Everett, and he, having occasion soon after to address a convention of
+teachers, read it to his audience as a wonderful instance of the pursuit
+of knowledge under difficulties.  Mr. Everett prefaced it by saying that
+such a resolute purpose of improvement against such obstacles excited his
+admiration, and even his veneration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is enough," he added, "to make one who has good opportunities for
+education hang his head in shame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this, including the whole of the letter, was published in the
+newspapers, with eulogistic comments, in which the student was spoken of
+as the "Learned Blacksmith."  The bashful scholar was overwhelmed with
+shame at finding himself suddenly famous.  However, it led to his
+entering upon public life.  Lecturing was then coming into vogue, and he
+was frequently invited to the platform.  Accordingly, he wrote a lecture,
+entitled "Application and Genius," in which he endeavored to show that
+there is no such thing as genius, but that all extraordinary attainments
+are the results of application.  After delivering this lecture sixty
+times in one season, he went back to his forge at Worcester, mingling
+study with labor in the old way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On sitting down to write a new lecture for the following season, on the
+"Anatomy of the Earth," a certain impression was made upon his mind which
+changed the current of his life.  Studying the globe, he was impressed
+with the need that one nation has of other nations, and one zone of
+another zone; the tropics producing what assuages life in the northern
+latitudes and northern lands furnishing the means of mitigating tropical
+discomforts.  He felt that the earth was made for friendliness and
+coöperation, not for fierce competition and bloody wars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture became an eloquent
+plea for peace, and to this object his after life was chiefly devoted.
+The dispute with England upon the Oregon boundary induced him to go to
+England with the design of travelling on foot from village to village,
+preaching peace, and exposing the horrors and folly of war.  His
+addresses attracting attention, he was invited to speak to larger bodies,
+and, in short, he spent twenty years of his life as a lecturer upon
+peace, organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uniform rates of ocean
+postage, and spreading abroad among the people of Europe the feeling
+which issued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute between the
+United States and Great Britain, an event which posterity will, perhaps,
+consider the most important of this century.  He heard Victor Hugo say at
+the Paris Congress of 1850:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just
+as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a
+thing could ever have been.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life upon a little farm which
+he had contrived to buy in his native town.  He was never married, but
+lived with his sister and her daughters.  He was not so very much richer
+in worldly goods than when he started out for Boston, with his property
+wrapped in a small handkerchief.  He died in March, 1879, aged sixty-nine
+years.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+JOHN B. GOUGH
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1817-1886)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CONQUEST OF A BAD HABIT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Happily few human beings sink to the depths in which John B. Gough
+found himself at the age of twenty-five years.  By sheer force of will
+he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he
+attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of
+exceptional usefulness to society.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His story, as told in his own vivid words, is one of the most absorbing
+in the annals of self-help.  His example must have helped thousands
+among the myriads whom he thrilled by the dramatic recital of his
+experience.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From his "Autobiography."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I boarded in Grand Street at this time, and soon after laid the
+foundation of many of my future sorrows.  I possessed a tolerably good
+voice, and sang pretty well, having also the faculty of imitation
+rather strongly developed; and being well stocked with amusing stories,
+I was introduced into the society of thoughtless and dissipated young
+men, to whom my talents made me welcome.  These companions were what is
+termed respectable, but they drank.  I now began to attend the theatres
+frequently, and felt ambitious of strutting my part upon the stage.  By
+slow but sure degrees I forgot the lessons of wisdom which my mother
+had taught me, lost all relish for the great truths of religion,
+neglected my devotions, and considered an actor's situation to be the
+<I>ne plus ultra</I> of greatness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During my residence at Newburyport my early serious impressions on one
+occasion in a measure revived, and I felt some stinging of conscience
+for my neglect of the Sabbath and religious observances.  I recommenced
+attending a place of worship, and for a short time I attended the Rev.
+Mr. Campbell's church, by whom, as well as by several of his members, I
+was treated with much Christian kindness.  I was often invited to Mr.
+Campbell's house, as well as to the house of some of his hearers, and
+it seemed as if a favorable turning-point or crisis in my fortunes had
+arrived.  Mr. Campbell was good enough to manifest a very great
+interest in my welfare, and frequently expressed a hope that I should
+be enabled, although late in life, to obtain an education.  And this I
+might have acquired had not my evil genius prevented my making any
+efforts to obtain so desirable an end.  My desire for strong liquors
+and company seemed to present an insuperable barrier to all
+improvement; and after a few weeks every aspiration after better things
+had ceased; every bud of promised comfort was crushed.  Again I grieved
+the spirit that had been striving with my spirit, and ere long became
+even more addicted to the use of the infernal draughts, which had
+already wrought me so much woe, than at any previous period of my
+existence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now my circumstances began to be desperate indeed.  In vain were
+all my efforts to obtain work, and at last I became so reduced that at
+times I did not know when one meal was ended, where on the face of the
+broad earth I should find another.  Further mortification awaited me,
+and by slow degrees I became aware of it.  The young men with whom I
+had associated, in barrooms and parlors, and who wore a little better
+clothing than I could afford, one after another began to drop my
+acquaintance.  If I walked in the public streets, I too quickly
+perceived the cold look, the averted eye, the half recognition, and to
+a sensitive spirit such as I possessed such treatment was almost past
+endurance.  To add to the mortification caused by such a state of
+things, it happened that those who had laughed the loudest at my songs
+and stories, and who had been social enough with me in the barroom,
+were the very individuals who seemed most ashamed of my acquaintance.
+I felt that I was shunned by the respectable portion of the community
+also; and once, on asking a lad to accompany me in a walk, he informed
+me that his father had cautioned him against associating with me.  This
+was a cutting reproof, and I felt it more deeply than words can
+express.  And could I wonder at it?  No.  Although I may have used
+bitter words against that parent, my conscience told me that he had
+done no more than his duty in preventing his son being influenced by my
+dissipated habits.  Oh! how often have I lain down and bitterly
+remembered many who had hailed my arrival in their company as a joyous
+event.  Their plaudits would resound in my ears, and peals of laughter
+ring again in my deserted chamber; then would succeed stillness, broken
+only by the beatings of my agonized heart, which felt that the gloss of
+respectability had worn off and exposed my threadbare condition.  To
+drown these reflections, I would drink, not from love of the taste of
+the liquor, but to become so stupefied by its fumes as to steep my
+sorrows in a half oblivion; and from this miserable stupor I would wake
+to a fuller consciousness of my situation, and again would I banish my
+reflections by liquor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There lived in Newburyport at that time a Mr. Law, who was a rum
+seller, and I had spent many a shilling at his bar; he proposed to me
+that he would purchase some tools, and I could start a bindery on my
+own account, paying him by installments.  He did so; and I thought it
+an act of great kindness then, and for some time afterward, till I
+found he had received pay from me for tools he had never paid for
+himself, and I was dunned for the account he had failed to settle.  He
+even borrowed seventy-five dollars from me after I signed the pledge,
+which has never been repaid.  "Such is life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Despite all that had occurred, my good name was not so far gone but
+that I might have succeeded, by the aid of common industry and
+attention, in my business.  I was a good workman, and found no
+difficulty in procuring employment, and, I have not the slightest
+doubt, should have succeeded in my endeavor to get on in the world but
+for the unhappy love of stimulating drinks, and my craving for society.
+I was now my own master; all restraint was removed, and, as might be
+expected, I did as I pleased in my own shop.  I became careless, was
+often in the barroom when I should have been at my bindery, and instead
+of spending my evenings at home in reading or conversation, they were
+almost invariably passed in the company of the rum bottle, which became
+almost my sole household deity.  Five months only did I remain in
+business, and during that short period I gradually sunk deeper and
+deeper in the scale of degradation.  I was now the slave of a habit
+which had become completely my master, and which fastened its
+remorseless fangs in my very vitals.  Thought was a torturing thing.
+When I looked back, memory drew fearful pictures, the lines of lurid
+flame, and, whenever I dared anticipate the future, hope refused to
+illumine my onward path.  I dwelt in one awful present; nothing to
+solace me&mdash;nothing to beckon me onward to a better state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew full well that I was proceeding on a downward course, and
+crossing the sea of time, as it were, on a bridge perilous as that over
+which Mahomet's followers are said to enter paradise.  A terrible
+feeling was ever present that some evil was impending which would soon
+fall on my devoted head, and I would shudder as if the sword of
+Damocles, suspended by its single hair, was about to fall and utterly
+destroy me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Warnings were not wanting, but they had no voice of terror for me.  I
+was intimately acquainted with a young man in the town, and well
+remember his coming to my shop one morning and asking the loan of
+ninepence with which to buy rum.  I let him have the money, and the
+spirit was soon consumed.  He begged me to lend him a second ninepence,
+but I refused; yet, during my temporary absence, he drank some spirit
+of wine which was in a bottle in the shop, and used by me in my
+business.  He went away, and the next I heard of him was that he had
+died shortly afterward.  Such an awful circumstance as this might well
+have impressed me, but habitual indulgence had almost rendered me
+impervious to salutary impressions.  I was, at this time, deeper in
+degradation than at any period before which I can remember.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My custom now was to purchase my brandy&mdash;which, in consequence of my
+limited means, was of the very worst description&mdash;and keep it at the
+shop, where, by little and little, I drank it, and continually kept
+myself in a state of excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This course of procedure entirely unfitted me for business, and it not
+unfrequently happened, when I had books to bind, that I would instead
+of attending to business keep my customers waiting, whilst in the
+company of desolute companions I drank during the whole day, to the
+complete ruin of my prospects in life.  So entirely did I give myself
+up to the bottle that those of my companions who fancied they still
+possessed some claims to respectability gradually withdrew from my
+company.  At my house, too, I used to keep a bottle of gin, which was
+in constant requisition.  Indeed, go where I would, stimulant I must
+and did have.  Such a slave was I to the bottle that I resorted to it
+continually, and in vain was every effort which I occasionally made to
+conquer the debasing habit.  I had become a father; but God in his
+mercy removed my little one at so early an age that I did not feel the
+loss as much as if it had lived longer, to engage my affections.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A circumstance now transpired which attracted my attention, and led me
+to consider my situation, and whither I was hurrying.  A lecture was
+advertised to be delivered by the first reformed drunkard, Mr. I. J.
+Johnson, who visited Newburyport, and I was invited by some friends,
+who seemed to feel an interest, to attend and hear what he had to say.
+I determined after some consideration to go and hear what was to be
+said on the subject.  The meeting was held in the Rev. Mr. Campbell's
+church, which was pretty well crowded.  I went to the door, but would
+go no farther; but in the ten minutes I stood there, I heard him in
+graphic and forcible terms depict the misery of the drunkard and the
+awful consequences of his conduct, both as they affected himself and
+those connected with him.  My conscience told that he spoke the
+truth&mdash;for what had I not suffered!  I knew he was right, and I turned
+to leave the church when a young man offered me the pledge to sign.  I
+actually turned to sign it; but at that critical moment the appetite
+for strong drink, as if determined to have the mastery over me, came in
+all its force.  Oh, how I wanted it! and remembering that I had a pint
+of brandy at home I deferred signing, and put off to "a more convenient
+season," a proceeding that might have saved me so much after sorrow.
+I, however, compromised the matter with my conscience by inwardly
+resolving that I would drink up what spirit I had by me, and then think
+of leaving off altogether.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I forgot the impressions made upon me by the speaker at the meeting.
+Still, I madly drained the inebriating cup, and speedily my state was
+worse than ever.  Oh, no, I soon ceased to think about it, for my
+master passion, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up every thought and
+feeling opposed to it which I possessed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My business grew gradually worse, and at length my constitution became
+so impaired that even when I had the will I did not possess the power
+to provide for my daily wants.  My hands would at times tremble so that
+I could not perform the finer operations of my business, the finishing
+and gilding.  How could I letter straight, with a hand burning and
+shaking from the effects of a debauch.  Sometimes, when it was
+absolutely necessary to finish off some work, I have entered the shop
+with a stern determination not to drink a single drop until I completed
+it.  I have bitterly felt that my failing was a matter of common
+conversation in the town, and a burning sense of shame would flush my
+fevered brow at the conviction that I was scorned by the respectable
+portion of the community.  But these feelings passed away like the
+morning cloud or early dew, and I pursued my old course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day I thought I would not go to work, and a great inducement to
+remain at home existed in the shape of my enemy, West India rum, of
+which I had a quantity in the house.  Although the morning was by no
+means far advanced, I sat down, intending to do nothing until
+dinner-time.  I could not sit alone without rum, and I drank glass
+after glass until I became so stupefied that I was compelled to lie
+down on the bed, where I soon fell asleep.  When I awoke it was late in
+the afternoon, and then, as I persuaded myself, too late to make a bad
+day's work good.  I invited a neighbor, who, like myself, was a man of
+intemperate habits, to spend the evening with me.  He came, and we sat
+down to our rum, and drank foully together until late that night, when
+he staggered home; and so intoxicated was I that, in moving to go to
+bed, I fell over the table, broke a lamp, and lay on the floor for some
+time, unable to rise.  At last I managed to get to bed, but, oh, I did
+not sleep, only dozed at intervals, for the drunkard never knows the
+blessings of undisturbed repose.  I awoke in the night with a raging
+thirst.  No sooner was one draught taken than the horrible dry feeling
+returned; and so I went on, swallowing repeated glassfuls of the spirit
+until at last I had drained the very last drop which the jug contained.
+My appetite grew by what it fed on; and, having a little money by me, I
+with difficulty got up, made myself look as tidy as possible, and then
+went out to buy more rum, with which I returned to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fact will, perhaps, seem incredible, but so it was that I drank
+spirits continually without tasting a morsel of food for the next three
+days.  This could not last long; a constitution of iron strength could
+not endure such treatment, and mine was partially broken down by
+previous dissipation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began to experience a feeling hitherto unknown to me.  After the
+three days' drinking to which I have just referred, I felt, one night,
+as I lay on my bed, an awful sense of something dreadful coming over
+me.  It was as if I had been partially stunned, and now in an interval
+of consciousness was about to have the fearful blow, which had
+prostrated me, repeated.  There was a craving for sleep, sleep, blessed
+sleep, but my eyelids were as if they could not close.  Every object
+around me I beheld with startling distinctness, and my hearing became
+unnaturally acute.  Then, to the ringing and roaring in my ears would
+suddenly succeed a silence so awful that only the stillness of the
+grave might be compared with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At other times, strange voices would whisper unintelligible words, and
+the slightest noise would make me start like a guilty thing.  But the
+horrible, burning thirst was insupportable, and to quench it and induce
+sleep I clutched again and again the rum bottle, hugged my enemy, and
+poured the infernal fluid down my parched throat.  But it was no use,
+none; I could not sleep.  Then I bethought me of tobacco; and
+staggering from my bed to a shelf near by, with great difficulty I
+managed to procure a pipe and some matches.  I could not stand to light
+the latter, so I lay again on the bed, and scraped one on the wall.  I
+began to smoke, and the narcotic leaf produced a stupefaction.  I dozed
+a little, but, feeling a warmth on my face, I awoke and discovered my
+pillow to be on fire!  I had dropped a lighted match on the bed.  By a
+desperate effort I threw the pillow on the floor, and, too exhausted to
+feel annoyed by the burning feathers, I sank into a state of somnolency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How long I lay, I do not exactly know; but I was roused from my
+lethargy by the neighbors, who, alarmed by the smell of fire, came to
+my room to ascertain the cause.  When they took me from my bed, the
+under part of the straw with which it was stuffed was smouldering, and
+in a quarter of an hour more must have burst into a flame.  Had such
+been the case, how horrible would have been my fate! for it is more
+than probable that, in my half-senseless condition, I should have been
+suffocated, or burned to death.  The fright produced by this incident,
+and a very narrow escape, in some degree sobered me, but what I felt
+more than anything else was the exposure now; all would be known, and I
+feared my name would become, more than ever, a byword and a reproach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Will it be believed that I again sought refuge in rum?  Yes, so it was.
+Scarcely had I recovered from the fright than I sent out, procured a
+pint of rum, and drank it all in less than an hour.  And now came upon
+me many terrible sensations.  Cramps attacked me in my limbs, which
+raked me with agony, and my temples throbbed as if they would burst.
+So ill was I that I became seriously alarmed, and begged the people of
+the house to send for a physician.  They did so, but I immediately
+repented having summoned him, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to get
+out of his way when he arrived.  He saw at a glance what was the matter
+with me, ordered the persons about me to watch me carefully, and on no
+account to let me have any spirituous liquors.  Everything stimulating
+was vigorously denied me; and there came on the drunkard's remorseless
+torture: delirium tremens, in all its terrors, attacked me.  For three
+days I endured more agony than pen could describe, even were it guided
+by the mind of Dante.  Who can feel the horrors of the horrible malady,
+aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding consciousness that it is
+self-sought.  Hideous faces appeared on the wall and on the ceiling and
+on the floors; foul things crept along the bedclothes, and glaring eyes
+peered into mine.  I was at one time surrounded by millions of
+monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the
+beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would
+shiver until the bed rattled again.  Strange lights would dance before
+my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall
+me by its dense gloom.  All at once, while gazing at a frightful
+creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness.
+I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was
+so pitchy dark.  I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to
+grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone.  I put my hand to
+my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame
+were there.  And then the scene would change!  I was falling&mdash;falling
+swiftly as an arrow&mdash;far down into some terrible abyss; and so like
+reality was it that as I fell I could see the rocky sides of the
+horrible shaft, where mocking, jibing, fiend-like forms were perched;
+and I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by
+the force of the unwholesome blast.  Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased
+for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, drenched with
+perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of
+the renewal of my torments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a
+weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I
+thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the
+instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had
+turned the lessons she had taught me.  I remembered her prayers and
+tears, thought of what I had been but a few short months before, and
+contrasted my situation with what it then was.  Oh! how keen were my
+own rebukes; and in the excitement of the moment I resolved to lead a
+better life, and abstain from the accursed cup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For about a month, terrified by what I had suffered, I adhered to my
+resolution, then my wife came home, and in my joy at her return I flung
+my good resolutions to the wind, and foolishly fancying that I could
+now restrain my appetite, which had for a whole month remained in
+subjection, I took a glass of brandy.  That glass aroused the
+slumbering demon, who would not be satisfied by so tiny a libation.
+Another and another succeeded, until I was again far advanced in the
+career of intemperance.  The night of my wife's return I went to bed
+intoxicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I will not detain the reader by the particulars of my everyday life at
+this time; they may easily be imagined from what has already been
+stated.  My previous bitter experience, one would think, might have
+operated as a warning; but none save the inebriate can tell the almost
+resistless strength of the temptations which assail him.  I did not,
+however, make quite so deep a plunge as before.  My tools I had given
+into the hands of Mr. Gray, for whom I worked, receiving about five
+dollars a week.  My wages were paid me every night, for I was not to be
+trusted with much money at a time, so certain was I to spend a great
+portion of it in drink.  As it was, I regularly got rid of one third of
+what I daily received, for rum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My wardrobe, as it had, indeed, nearly always been whilst I drank to
+excess, was now exceedingly shabby, and it was with the greatest
+difficulty that I could manage to procure the necessaries of life.  My
+wife became very ill.  Oh! how miserable I was!  Some of the women who
+were in attendance on my wife told me to get two quarts of rum.  I
+procured it, and as it was in the house, and I did not anticipate
+serious consequences, I could not withstand the strong temptation to
+drink.  I did drink, and so freely that the usual effect was produced.
+How much I swallowed I cannot tell, but the quantity, judging from the
+effects, must have been considerable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten long weary days of suspense passed, at the end of which my wife and
+her infant both died.  Then came the terribly oppressive feeling that I
+was forgotten of God, as well as abandoned by man.  All the
+consciousness of my dreadful situation pressed heavily, indeed, upon
+me, and keenly as a sensitive mind could, did I feel the loss I had
+experienced.  I drank now to dispel my gloom, or to drown it in the
+maddening cup.  And soon was it whispered, from one to another, until
+the whole town became aware of it, that my wife and child were lying
+dead, and that I was drunk!  But if ever I was cursed with the faculty
+of thought, in all its intensity, it was then.  And this was the
+degraded condition of one who had been nursed in the lap of piety, and
+whose infant tongue had been taught to utter a prayer against being led
+into temptation.  There in the room where all who had loved me were;
+lying in the unconscious slumber of death was I, gazing, with a maudlin
+melancholy imprinted on my features, on the dead forms of those who
+were flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.  During the miserable hours
+of darkness I would steal from my lonely bed to the place where my dead
+wife and child lay, and, in agony of soul, pass my shaking hand over
+their cold faces, and then return to my bed after a draught of rum,
+which I had obtained and hidden under the pillow of my wretched couch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How apt the world is to judge of a man pursuing the course I did as one
+destitute of all feeling, with no ambition, no desire for better
+things!  To speak of such a man's pride seems absurd, and yet drink
+does not destroy pride, ambition, or high aspirations.  The sting of
+his misery is that he has ambition but no expectation; desire for
+better things but no hope; pride but no energy; therefore the
+possession of these very qualities is an additional burden to his load
+of agony.  Could he utterly forget his manhood, and wallow with the
+beasts that perish, he would be comparatively happy.  But his curse is
+that he thinks.  He is a man, and must think.  He cannot always drown
+thought or memory.  He may, and does, fly for false solace to the
+drink, and may stun his enemy in the evening, but it will rend him like
+a giant in the morning.  A flower, or half-remembered tune, a child's
+laughter, will sometimes suffice to flood the victim with recollections
+that either madden him to excess or send him crouching to his miserable
+room, to sit with face buried in his hands, while the hot, thin tears
+trickle over his swollen fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe this to be one reason why I shrink from society; why I have
+so often refused kind invitations; why, though I love my personal
+friends as strongly and as truly as any man's friends are ever loved, I
+have so steadily withdrawn from social parties, dinners, or
+introductions.  This is the penalty I must ever pay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man can never recover from the effects of such a seven years'
+experience, morally or physically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The month of October had nearly drawn to a close, and on its last
+Sunday evening I wandered out into the streets, pondering as well as I
+was able to do&mdash;for I was somewhat intoxicated&mdash;on my lone and
+friendless condition.  My frame was much weakened and little fitted to
+bear the cold of winter, which had already begun to come on.  But I had
+no means of protecting myself against the bitter blast, and, as I
+anticipated my coming misery, I staggered along, houseless, aimless,
+and all but hopeless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some one tapped me on the shoulder.  An unusual thing that, to occur to
+me, for no one now cared to come in contact with the wretched,
+shabby-looking drunkard.  I was a disgrace, "a living, walking
+disgrace."  I could scarcely believe my own senses when I turned and
+met a kind look; the thing was so unusual, and so entirely unexpected
+that I questioned the reality of it, but so it was.  It was the first
+touch of kindness which I had known for months; and simple and trifling
+as the circumstance may appear to many, it went right to my heart, and
+like the wing of an angel, troubled the waters in that stagnant pool of
+affection, and made them once more reflect a little of the light of
+human love.  The person who touched my shoulder was an entire stranger.
+I looked at him, wondering what his business was with me.  Regarding me
+very earnestly, and apparently with much interest, he said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gough, I believe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is my name," I replied, and was passing on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have been drinking to-day," said the stranger, in a kind voice,
+which arrested my attention, and quite dispelled any anger at what I
+might otherwise have considered an officious interference in my affairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," I replied.  "I have&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you not sign the pledge?" was the next query.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I considered for a moment or two, and then informed the strange friend
+who had so unexpectedly interested himself in my behalf that I had no
+hope of ever again becoming a sober man, and that I was without a
+single friend in the world who cared for me; that I fully expected to
+die very soon, cared not how soon, or whether I died drunk or sober,
+and, in fact, that I was in a condition of utter recklessness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger regarded me with a benevolent look, took me by the arm,
+and asked me how I should like to be as I once was, respectable and
+esteemed, well clad, and sitting as I used to, in a place of worship;
+enabled to meet my friends as in old times, and receive from them the
+pleasant nod of recognition as formerly; in fact, become a useful
+member of society?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," I replied, "I should like all these things first-rate; but I have
+no expectation that such a thing will ever happen.  Such a change
+cannot be possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only sign our pledge," remarked my friend, "and I will warrant that it
+will be so.  Sign it, and I will introduce you myself to good friends,
+who will feel an interest in your welfare and take a pleasure in
+helping you to keep your good resolution.  Only, Mr. Gough, sign the
+pledge, and all will be as I have said; ay, and more, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh! how pleasantly fell these words of kindness and promise on my
+crushed and bruised heart.  I had long been a stranger to feelings such
+as now awoke in my bosom; a chord had been touched which vibrated to
+the tone of woe.  Hope once more dawned; and I began to think, strange
+as it appeared, that such things as my friend promised me might come to
+pass.  On the instant I resolved to try, at least, and said to the
+stranger:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I will sign it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot do so to-night," I replied, "for I must have some more drink
+presently, but I certainly will to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have a temperance meeting to-morrow evening," he said; "will you
+sign it then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is right," said he, grasping my hand; "I will be there to see
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall," I remarked, and we parted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went on my way much touched by the kind interest which at last some
+one had taken in my welfare.  I said to myself: "If it should be the
+last act of my life, I will perform my promise and sign it, even though
+I die in the attempt, for that man has placed confidence in me, and on
+that account I love him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I then proceeded to a low groggery in Lincoln Square, and in the space
+of half an hour drank several glasses of brandy; this in addition to
+what I had taken before made me very drunk, and I staggered home as
+well as I could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Arrived there, I threw myself on the bed and lay in a state of
+insensibility until morning.  The first thing which occurred to my mind
+on awaking was the promise I had made on the evening before, to sign
+the pledge; and feeling, as I usually did on the morning succeeding a
+drunken bout, wretched and desolate, I was almost sorry that I had
+agreed to do so.  My tongue was dry, my throat parched, my temples
+throbbed as if they would burst, and I had a horrible burning feeling
+in my stomach which almost maddened me, and I felt that I must have
+some bitters or I should die.  So I yielded to my appetite, which would
+not be appeased, and repaired to the same hotel where I had squandered
+away so many shillings before; there I drank three or four times, until
+my nerves were a little strung, and then I went to work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All that day the coming event of the evening was continually before my
+mind's eye, and it seemed to me as if the appetite which had so long
+controlled me exerted more power over me than ever.  It grew stronger
+than I had any time known it, now that I was about to rid myself of it.
+Until noon I struggled against its cravings, and then, unable to endure
+my misery any longer, I made some excuse for leaving the shop, and went
+nearly a mile from it in order to procure one more glass wherewith to
+appease the demon who had so tortured me.  The day wore wearily away,
+and when evening came I determined, in spite of many a hesitation, to
+perform the promise I had made to the stranger the night before.  The
+meeting was to be held at the lower town hall, Worcester; and thither,
+clad in an old brown surtout, closely buttoned up to my chin that my
+ragged habiliments beneath might not be visible, I went.  I took a
+place among the rest, and when an opportunity of speaking offered
+itself, I requested permission to be heard, which was readily granted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I stood up to relate my story, I was invited to the stand, to
+which I repaired, and on turning to face the audience, I recognized my
+acquaintance who had asked me to sign.  It was Mr. Joel Stratton.  He
+greeted me with a smile of approbation, which nerved and strengthened
+me for my task, as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed upon me.  I
+lifted my quivering hand and then and there told what rum had done for
+me.  I related how I was once respectable and happy, and had a home,
+but that now I was a houseless, miserable, scathed, diseased, and
+blighted outcast from society.  I had scarce a hope remaining to me of
+ever becoming that which I once was, but, having promised to sign the
+pledge, I had determined not to break my word, and would now affix my
+name to it.  In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, and,
+in characters almost as crooked as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the
+Declaration of Independence, I signed the total abstinence pledge, and
+resolved to free myself from the inexorable tyrant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Although still desponding and hopeless, I felt that I was relieved from
+a part of my heavy load.  It was not because I deemed there was any
+supernatural power in the pledge which would prevent my ever again
+falling into such depths of woe as I had already become acquainted
+with, but the feeling of relief arose from the honest desire I
+entertained to keep a good resolution.  I had exerted a moral power
+which had long remained lying by perfectly useless.  The very idea of
+what I had done strengthened and encouraged me.  Nor was this the only
+impulse given me to proceed in my new pathway, for many who witnessed
+my signing and heard my simple statement came forward, kindly grasped
+my hand, and expressed their satisfaction at the step I had taken.  A
+new and better day seemed already to have dawned upon me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I left the hall, agitated and enervated, I remember chuckling to
+myself, with great gratification, "I have done it&mdash;I have done it!"
+There was a degree of pleasure in having put my foot on the head of the
+tyrant who had so long led me captive at his will, but although I had
+"scotched the snake," I had not killed him, for every inch of his frame
+was full of venomous vitality, and I felt that all my caution was
+necessary to prevent his stinging me afresh.  I went home, retired to
+bed, but in vain did I try to sleep.  I pondered upon the step I had
+taken, and passed a restless night.  Knowing that I had voluntarily
+renounced drink, I endeavored to support my sufferings, and resist the
+incessant craving of my remorseless appetite as well as I could, but
+the struggle to overcome it was insupportably painful.  When I got up
+in the morning my brain seemed as though it would burst with the
+intensity of its agony; my throat appeared as if it were on fire; and
+in my stomach I experienced a dreadful burning sensation, as if the
+fire of the pit had been kindled there.  My hands trembled so that to
+raise water to my feverish lips was almost impossible.  I craved,
+literally gasped, for my accustomed stimulant, and felt that I should
+die if I did not have it; but I persevered in my resolve, and withstood
+the temptations which assailed me on every hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still, during all this frightful time I experienced a feeling somewhat
+akin to satisfaction at the position I had taken.  I made at least one
+step toward reformation.  I began to think that it was barely possible
+I might see better days, and once more hold up my head in society.
+Such feelings as these would alternate with gloomy forebodings and
+thick coming fancies of approaching ill.  At one time hope, and at
+another fear, would predominate, but the raging, dreadful, continued
+thirst was always present, to torture and tempt me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After breakfast I proceeded to the shop where I was employed, feeling
+dreadfully ill.  I determined, however, to put a bold face on the
+matter, and, in spite of the cloud which seemed to hang over me,
+attempt work.  I was exceedingly weak, and fancied, as I almost reeled
+about the shop, that every eye was fixed upon me suspiciously, although
+I exerted myself to the utmost to conceal my agitation.  I was
+suffering; and those who have never thus suffered cannot comprehend it.
+The shivering of the spine, then flushes of heat, causing every pore of
+the body to sting, as if punctured with some sharp instrument; the
+horrible whisperings in the ear, combined with a longing cry of the
+whole system for stimulants.  One glass of brandy would steady my
+shaking nerves; I cannot hold my hand still; I cannot stand still.  A
+young man but twenty-five years of age, and I have no control of my
+nerves; one glass of brandy would relieve this gnawing, aching,
+throbbing stomach, but I have signed the pledge.  "I do agree that I
+will not use it; and I must fight it out."  How I got through the day I
+cannot tell.  I went to my employer and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I signed the pledge last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to keep it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they all say, and I hope you will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not believe that I will; you have no confidence in me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None whatever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned to my work, broken-hearted, crushed in spirit, paralyzed in
+energy, feeling how low I had sunk in the esteem of prudent and
+sober-minded men.  Suddenly the small iron bar I had in my hand began
+to move; I felt it move, I gripped it; still it moved and twisted; I
+gripped still harder; yet the thing would move till I could feel it,
+yes, feel it, tearing the palm out of my hand, then I dropped it, and
+there it lay, a curling, shiny snake!  I could hear the paper shavings
+rustle as the horrible thing writhed before me!  If it had been a snake
+I should not have minded it.  I was never afraid of a snake.  I should
+have called some one to look at it, I could have killed it, I should
+not have been terrified at a thing; but I knew it was a cold dead bar
+of iron, and there it was, with its green eyes, its forked, darting
+tongue, curling in all its shiny loathsomeness, and the horror filled
+me so that my hair seemed to stand up and shiver, and my skin lift from
+the scalp to the ankles, and I groaned out, "I cannot fight this
+through!  Oh! my God, I shall die!" when a gentleman came into the shop
+with a cheerful "Good-morning, Mr. Gough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-morning, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw you sign the pledge last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir, I did it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was very glad to see you do it, and many young men followed your
+example.  It is such men as you that we want, and I hope you will be
+the means of doing a great deal of good.  My office is in the exchange;
+come in and see me.  I shall be happy to make your acquaintance.  I
+have only a minute or two to spare, but I thought I would just call in
+and tell you to keep up a brave heart.  Good-bye, God bless you.  Come
+in and see me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was Jesse Goodrich, then a practising attorney and counselor at
+law, in Worcester, now dead; but to the last of his life my true and
+faithful friend.  It would be impossible to describe how this little
+act of kindness cheered me.  With the exception of Mr. Stratton, who
+was a waiter at a temperance hotel, no one had accosted me for months
+in a manner which would lead me to think any one cared for me, or what
+might be my fate.  Now I was not altogether alone in the world; there
+was a hope of my being rescued from the "slough of despond," where I
+had been so long floundering.  I felt that the fountain of human
+kindness was not utterly sealed up, and again a green spot, an oasis,
+small, indeed, but cheering, appeared in the desert of my life.  I had
+something to live for; a new desire for life seemed suddenly to spring
+up; the universal boundary of human sympathy included even my wretched
+self in its cheering circle.  All these sensations were generated by a
+few kind words at the right time.  Yes, now I can fight; and I did
+fight&mdash;six days and six nights&mdash;encouraged and helped by a few words of
+sympathy.  He said, "Come in and see me."  I will.  He said he would be
+pleased to make my acquaintance.  He shall.  He said, "Keep up a brave
+heart!"  By God's help I will.  And so encouraged I fought on with not
+one hour of healthy sleep, not one particle of food passing my lips,
+for six days and six nights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the evening of the day following that on which I signed the pledge I
+went straight home from my workshop, with a dreadful feeling of some
+impending calamity haunting me.  In spite of the encouragement I had
+received, the presentiment of coming evil was so strong that it bowed
+me almost to the dust with apprehension.  The slakeless thirst still
+clung to me; and water, instead of allaying it, seemed only to increase
+its intensity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was fated to encounter one struggle more with my enemy before I
+became free.  Fearful was that struggle.  God in his mercy forbid that
+any young man should endure but a tenth part of the torture which
+racked my frame and agonized my heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As in the former attack, horrible faces glared upon me from the
+walls&mdash;faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible
+features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of
+burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly.  At one moment
+the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as
+the charnel house.  I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in
+my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably
+bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time;
+and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would
+stretch out all quivering with life.  After a frightful paroxysm of
+this kind I would start like a maniac from my bed, and beg for life,
+life!  What I of late thought so worthless seemed now to be of
+unappreciable value.  I dreaded to die, and clung to existence with a
+feeling that my soul's salvation depended on a little more of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In about a week I gained, in a great degree, the mastery over my
+accursed appetite; but the strife had made me dreadfully weak.
+Gradually my health improved, my spirits recovered, and I ceased to
+despair.  Once more was I enabled to crawl into the sunshine; but, oh,
+how changed!  Wan cheeks and hollow eyes, feeble limbs and almost
+powerless hands plainly enough indicated that between me and death
+there had indeed been but a step; and those who saw me might say as was
+said of Dante, when he passed through the streets of France, "There's
+the man that has been in hell."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1817-1895)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SLAVE WHO STOLE FREEDOM
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+To Booker T. Washington, the teller of the tale which follows,
+Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation brought freedom when he was but
+three years old.  But Mr. Washington's struggles, first for an
+education, later in behalf of his black brethren, have endowed him with
+understanding and warm sympathy for Douglass, the man who, in his own
+generation, preceded Washington as the foremost colored citizen of the
+United States.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In later days, when the Underground Railway was in full operation, the
+slave who ran away could be sure of aid and comfort at any one of its
+many stations that he might find it possible to reach.  But
+Douglass&mdash;pioneer among these dark-skinned adventurers for
+freedom&mdash;must needs rely almost wholly upon his own wit and courage in
+making his escape.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From "Frederick Douglass," by Booker T. Washington.  Copyright, 1906,
+by George W. Jacobs &amp; Company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Frederick Douglass was born in the little town of Tuckahoe, in Talbot
+County, on the eastern shore of Maryland, supposedly in the month of
+February, 1817.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until he was seven years of age, young Fred felt few of the privations
+of slavery.  In these childhood days he probably was as happy and
+carefree as the white children in the "big house."  At liberty to come
+and go and play in the open sunshine, his early life was typical of the
+happier side of the negro life in slavery.  What he missed of a
+mother's affection and a father's care was partly made up to him by the
+indulgent kindness of his good grandmother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Fred was between seven and eight years of age his grandmother was
+directed by her master to take her grandson to the Lloyd plantation.
+After the boy arrived at his new home, he was put in charge of a
+slave-woman for whom the only name we know is "Aunt Katy."  This change
+brought him the first real hardship of his life.  As an early
+consequence of it, he lost the care and guidance of his grandmother,
+his freedom to play, good food, and that affection which means so much
+to a child.  When he came under the care of Aunt Katy, he began to feel
+for the first time the sting of unkindness.  He has given a very
+disagreeable picture of this foster-mother.  She was a woman of a
+hateful disposition, and treated the little stranger from Tuckahoe with
+extreme harshness.  Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him
+of food.  Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he
+complained was beaten without mercy.  He has described his misery on
+one particular night.  After being sent supperless to bed, his
+suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody
+else in the cabin was asleep he quietly took some corn and began to
+parch it before the open fireplace.  While thus trying to appease his
+hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, "who but my own
+dear mother should come in?"  The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing
+little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and
+protecting arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall never forget," he says, "the indescribable expression of her
+countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would
+starve the life out of me.  There was a deep and tender glance at me,
+and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and
+when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large
+ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.
+That night I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child, but
+somebody's child.  I was grander on my mother's knee than a king upon
+his throne.  But my triumph was short.  I dropped off to sleep and
+waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the
+mercy of the virago in my master's kitchen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is no record of another meeting between mother and son.  She
+probably died shortly afterward, because if she had been within walking
+distance, he certainly would have seen her again.  Her memory in his
+child's mind was always that of a real and near personality.  When he
+became older, and conscious of his superiority to his fellows, he was
+wont to say: "I am proud to attribute my love of letters, such as I may
+have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon father, but to my sable,
+unprotected, and uncultivated mother."  Thus, after his mother died,
+his vivid imagination kept before him her image, as she appeared to him
+that last time he saw her, through all his struggles for a fuller and
+freer life for himself and his race.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the loss of his mother and grandmother, he came more and more to
+realize the peculiar relation in which he and those about him stood to
+Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony.  His active mind soon grasped the
+meaning of "master" and "slave."  While still a lad, longing for a
+mother's care, he began to feel himself within the grasp of the curious
+thing that he afterward learned to know as "slavery."  As he grew older
+in years and understanding, he came also to see what manner of man his
+master was.  He described Captain Anthony as a "sad man."  At times he
+was very gentle, and almost benevolent.  But young Douglass was never
+able to forget that this same kindly slave-holder had refused to
+protect his cousin from a cruel beating by her overseer.  The spectacle
+he had witnessed, when this beautiful young slave was whipped, had made
+a lasting and painful impression upon him.  Vaguely he began to
+recognize the outlines of the institution which at once permitted, and
+to a certain degree made necessary, these cruelties.  It was at this
+point that he began to speculate on the origin and nature of slavery.
+Meanwhile he became, in the course of his life on the plantation, the
+witness of other scenes quite as harrowing, and the memory mingled with
+his reflections, and embittered them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During this time an event occurred which gave a new direction and a new
+impetus to the thoughts and purposes slowly taking form within him.
+This event was the successful escape of his Aunt Jennie and another
+slave.  It caused a great commotion on the plantation.  Nothing could
+happen in a Southern community that excited so many and such varied
+emotions as the escape of a slave from bondage: terror and revenge,
+hope and fear, mingled with the images of the pursued and the pursuers,
+with speculation in regard to the capture of the fugitive, and with
+prayers for his success in the minds of the slaves.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From now on his quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things
+that formerly never affected him.  The hard and sometimes cruel
+discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of
+ambitions&mdash;all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the
+impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy.  He saw
+a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being
+"impudent."  "Crimes" of this nature were committed, as far as he could
+see, with impunity, and the memory of them haunted him by day and by
+night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus far Douglass had not felt the overseer's whip.  He was too small
+for anything except to run errands and to do light chores.  Of course,
+he had been cuffed about by Aunt Katy; he says he seldom got enough to
+eat, and he suffered continually from cold, since his entire wardrobe
+consisted of a tow sack.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Fred became nine years old the most important event in his life
+occurred.  His master determined to send him to Baltimore to live with
+Hugh Auld, a brother of Thomas Auld.  Baltimore at this time was little
+more than a name to young Douglass.  When he reached the residence of
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld and felt the difference between the plantation cabin
+and this city home, it was to him, for a time, like living in Paradise.
+Mrs. Auld is described as a lady of great kindness of heart, and of a
+gentle disposition.  She at once took a tender interest in the little
+servant from the plantation.  He was much petted and well fed,
+permitted to wear boy's clothes and shoes, and for the first time in
+his life had a good soft bed to sleep in.  His only duty was to take
+care of and play with Tommy Auld, which he found both an easy and
+agreeable task.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young Douglass yet knew nothing about reading.  A book was as much of a
+mystery to him as the stars at night.  When he heard his mistress read
+aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused.  He felt so secure in
+her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him.
+Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without,
+for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented.  He
+quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of
+three syllables.  But alas, for his young ambition!  When Mr. Auld
+discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
+He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late.  The
+precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning.  He
+quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
+the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
+ignorance.  In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
+you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
+accomplished, he will be running away with himself."  Mr. Douglass,
+referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
+decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
+From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
+freedom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
+of Mr. Auld he was more closely watched than he had been before this
+incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed.
+He declares that he was not allowed to be alone, when this could be
+helped, lest he would attempt to teach himself.  But these were unwise
+precautions, since they but whetted his appetite for learning and
+incited him to many secret schemes to elude the vigilance of his master
+and mistress.  Everything now contributed to his enlightenment and
+prepared him for that freedom for which he thirsted.  His occasional
+contact with free colored people, his visit to the wharves where he
+could watch the vessels going and coming, and his chance acquaintance
+with white boys on the street, all became a part of his education and
+were made to serve his plans.  He got hold of a blue-back speller and
+carried it with him all the time.  He would ask his little white
+friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of
+them.  In this way he soon learned to read.  The first and most
+important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator."  He
+bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street.
+It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham,
+William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan.  These speeches were steeped in the
+sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the "rights of
+man."  They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than was
+included in his mere dream of freedom for himself, and in addition they
+increased his vocabulary of words and phrases.  The reading of this
+book unfitted him longer for restraint.  He became all ears and all
+eyes.  Everything he saw and read suggested to him a larger world lying
+just beyond his reach.  The meaning of the term "Abolition" came to him
+by a chance look at a Baltimore newspaper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slavery and Abolition!  The distance between these two points of
+existence seemed to have lessened greatly after he had comprehended
+their meaning.  "When I heard the Word 'Abolition,' I felt the matter
+to be my personal concern.  There was hope in this word."  As he
+afterward went about the city on his ordinary errands, or when at the
+wharf, even performing tasks that were not set for him to do, he was
+like another being.  That word "Abolition" seemed to sing itself into
+his very soul, and when he permitted his thoughts to dwell on the
+possibilities that it opened to him, he was buoyed up with joyous
+expectations.  He tried to find out something from everybody.  He
+learned to write by copying letters on fences and walls and challenging
+his white playmates to find his mistakes; and at night, when no one
+suspected him of being awake, he copied from an old copy-book of his
+young friend Tommy.  Before he had formulated any plans for freedom for
+himself, he learned the important trick of writing "free passes" for
+runaway slaves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Notwithstanding his progress in gaining knowledge, his considerate
+master and kind mistress, his loving companion in Tommy, his good home,
+food, and clothes, he was not happy or contented.  None of these things
+could stifle his yearning to be free.  He has aptly described his own
+feelings at this time in speaking of Mrs. Auld: "Poor lady, she did not
+understand my trouble, and I could not tell her.  Nature made us
+friends, but slavery made us enemies.  She aimed to keep me ignorant,
+but I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery.
+My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment
+I received.  It was slavery, not its mere incidents, I hated.  Their
+feeding and clothing me well could not atone for taking my liberty from
+me.  The smiles of my master could not remove the deep sorrow that
+dwelt in my young bosom.  We were both victims of the same
+overshadowing evil&mdash;she as mistress, I as slave.  I will not censure
+her too harshly.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After Douglass learned how to write with tolerable ease, he began to
+copy from the Bible and the Methodist hymn books at night when he was
+supposed to be asleep.  He always regarded this religious experience as
+the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only
+of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and
+softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding
+over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race.  He greatly
+needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and
+encourage him to hope for ultimate freedom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he was undergoing this, to him, novel religious experience, and
+while he was gradually being adjusted to the situation in which he
+found himself, there came one of those dreaded changes in the fortunes
+of slavemasters that made the status of the slave painfully uncertain.
+His real master, Captain Anthony, died, and this event, complicated
+with some family quarrel, resulted in Douglass being recalled from
+Baltimore to the plantation.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man named Edward Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from
+the campground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation
+for "breaking in unruly niggers."  Covey was a "poor white" and a farm
+renter.  To this man Douglass was hired out for a year.  In the month
+of January, 1834, he started for his new master, with his little bundle
+of clothes.  From what we have already seen of this sensitive,
+thoughtful young slave of seventeen years, it is not difficult to
+understand his state of mind.  Up to this time he had had a
+comparatively easy life.  He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell
+to the lot of many slaves whom he knew.  To quote his own words: "I was
+now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life.  Starvation made me
+glad to leave Thomas Auld's, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to
+Covey's."  Escape, however, was impossible.  The picture of the
+"slave-driver," painted in the lurid colors that Mr. Douglass's
+indignant memories furnished him, shows the dark side of slavery in the
+South.  During the first six weeks he was with Covey he was whipped,
+either with sticks or cowhides, every week.  With his body one
+continuous ache from his frequent floggings, he was kept at work in
+field or woods from the dawn of day until the darkness of night.  He
+says: "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me in body, soul, and spirit.
+The overwork and the cruel chastisements of which I was the victim,
+combined with the ever-growing and soul-devouring thought, 'I am a
+slave&mdash;a slave for life, a slave with no rational ground to hope for
+freedom,' had done their worst."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He confesses that at one time he was strongly tempted to take his own
+life and that of Covey.  Finally, his sufferings of body and soul
+became so great that further endurance seemed impossible.  While in
+this condition he determined upon the daring step of returning to his
+master, Thomas Auld, in order to lay before him the story of abuse.  He
+felt sure that, if for no other reason than the protection of property
+from serious impairment, his master would interfere in his behalf.  He
+even expected sympathy and assurances of future protection.  In all
+this he was grievously disappointed.  Auld not only refused sympathy
+and protection, but would not even listen to his complaints, and
+immediately sent him back to his dreaded master to face the added
+penalty of running away.  The poor, lone boy was plunged into the
+depths of despair.  A feeling that he had been deserted by both God and
+man took possession of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Covey was lying in wait for him, knowing full well that he must return
+as defenseless as he went away.  As soon as Douglass came near the
+place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred
+for the purpose of tying him for a flogging.  But Douglass escaped and
+took to the woods, where he concealed himself for a day and a night.
+His condition was desperate.  He felt that he could not endure another
+whipping, and yet there seemed to him no alternative.  His first
+impulse was to pray, but he remembered that Covey also prayed.
+Convinced, at length, that there was no appeal but to his own courage,
+he resolved to go back and face whatever must come to him.  It so
+happened that it was a Sunday morning and, much to his surprise, he met
+Covey, who was on his way to church, and who, when he saw the runaway,
+greeted him with a pleasant smile.  "His religion," says Douglass,
+"prevented him from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my
+bones on any other day of the week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On Monday morning Douglass was up early, half hoping that he would be
+permitted to resume his work without punishment.  Covey was astir
+betimes, too, and had laid aside his Sunday mildness of manner.  His
+first business was to carry out his fixed purpose of whipping the young
+runaway.  In the meantime Fred had likewise fully decided upon a course
+of action.  He was ready to submit to any kind of work, however hard or
+unreasonable, but determined to defend himself against any attempt at
+another flogging.  In the cold passion that took possession of him, the
+slave-boy became utterly reckless of consequences, reasoning to himself
+that the limit of suffering at the hands of this relentless
+slave-breaker had already been reached.  He was resolved to fight and
+did fight.  He began his morning work in peace, obeying promptly every
+order from his master, and while he was in the act of going up to the
+stable-loft for the purpose of pitching down some hay, he was caught
+and thrown by Covey, in an attempt to get a slip knot about his legs.
+Douglass flew at Covey's throat recklessly, hurled his antagonist to
+the ground, and held him firmly.  Blood followed the nails of the
+infuriated young slave.  He scarcely knew how to account for his
+fighting strength, and his daredevil spirit so dumfounded the master
+that he gaspingly said: "Are you going to resist me, you young
+scoundrel?"  "Yes, sir," was the quick reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finding himself baffled, Covey called for assistance.  His cousin
+Hughes came to aid him, but as he was attempting to put a noose over
+the unruly slave's foot, Douglass promptly gave him a blow in the
+stomach which at once put him out of the combat and he fled.  After
+Hughes had been disabled, Covey called on first one and then another of
+his slaves, but each refused to assist him.  Finding himself fairly
+outdone by his angry antagonist, Covey quit; with the discreet remark:
+"Now, you young scoundrel, you go to work; I would not have whipped you
+half so hard if you had not resisted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Douglass had thus won his first victory, and was never again threatened
+or flogged by his master.  The effect of this encounter, as far as he
+himself was concerned, was to increase his self-respect, and to give
+him more courage for the future.  He said that, "when a slave cannot be
+flogged, he is more than half free."  To the other slaves he became a
+hero, and Covey was not anxious to advertise his complete failure to
+break in this "unruly nigger."  It speaks well for the natural dignity
+and good sense of young Douglass that he neither boasted of his triumph
+nor did anything rash as a consequence of it, as might have been
+expected from a boy of his age and spirit.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+[A carefully planned attempt at escape failed dismally, but he remained
+undaunted.]
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Ever since the first trouble with Auld, he had been pushing his plans
+to redeem his pledge to himself that he would run away on Monday,
+September 3, 1838.  These were anxious days, and many small details had
+to be mastered.  He must carefully avoid anything in manner or word
+which could excite the slightest suspicion.  He had to test the
+fidelity of a number of free colored people whose aid, in secret ways,
+was very essential to him.  Who these persons were has never been
+revealed, and, in fact, it was not until many years after emancipation
+that Mr. Douglass disclosed to the public how he succeeded in making
+his daring escape.  "Murder itself," he says, "was not more severely
+and surely punished in the State of Maryland than aiding and abetting
+the escape of a slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young Douglass's flight had no outward semblance of dramatic incident
+or thrilling episode, and yet, as he modestly says, "the courage that
+could risk betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death,
+if need be, in pursuit of freedom, were features in the undertaking.
+My success was due to address rather than to courage, to good luck
+rather than bravery.  My means of escape were provided by the very
+means which were making laws to hold and bind me more securely to
+slavery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the laws of the State of Maryland, every free colored person was
+required to have what were called "free papers," which must be renewed
+frequently, and, of course, a fee was always charged for renewal.  They
+contained a full and minute description of the holder, for the purpose
+of identification.  This device, in some measure, defeated itself,
+since more than one man could be found to answer the general
+description; hence many slaves could get away by impersonating the real
+owners of these passes, which were returned by mail after the borrowers
+had made good their escape.  To use these papers in this manner was
+hazardous both for the fugitives and for the lenders.  Not every
+freeman was willing to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another
+might be free.  It was, however, often done, and the confidence that it
+necessitated was seldom betrayed.  Douglass had not many friends among
+the free colored people in Baltimore who resembled him sufficiently to
+make it safe for him to use their papers.  Fortunately, however, he had
+one who owned a "sailor's protection," a document describing the holder
+and certifying to the fact that he was a "free American sailor."  This
+"protection" did not describe its bearer very accurately.  But it
+called for a man very much darker than himself, and a close examination
+would have betrayed him at the start.  In the face of all these
+conditions young Douglass Was relying upon something besides a dubious
+written passport.  This something was his desperate courage.  He had
+learned to act the part of a freeman so well that no one suspected him
+of being a slave.  He had early acquired the habit of studying human
+nature.  As he grew to understand men, he no longer dreaded them.  No
+one knew better than he the kind of human nature that he had to deal
+with in this perilous undertaking.  He knew the speech, manner, and
+behavior that would excite suspicion; hence he avoided asking for a
+ticket at the railway station, because this would subject him to
+examination.  He so managed that just as the train started he jumped
+on, his bag being thrown after him by some one in waiting.  He knew
+that scrutiny of him in a crowded car en route would be less exacting
+than at the station.  He had borrowed a sailor's shirt, tarpaulin, cap,
+and black cravat, tied in true sailor fashion, and he acted the part of
+an "old salt" so perfectly that he excited no suspicion.  When the
+conductor came to collect his fare and inspected his "free papers,"
+Douglass, in the most natural manner, said that he had none, but
+promptly showed his "sailor's protection," which the railway official
+merely glanced at and passed on without further question.  Twice on the
+trip he thought he was detected.  Once when his car stood opposite a
+south-bound train, Douglass observed a well-known citizen of Baltimore,
+who knew him well, sitting where he could see him distinctly.  At
+another time, while still in Maryland, he was noticed by a man who had
+met him frequently at the shipyards.  In neither of these cases,
+however, was he interfered with or molested.  When he got into the free
+State of Pennsylvania, he felt more joy than he dared express.  He had
+by his cool temerity and address passed every sentinel undetected, and
+no slave, to his knowledge, he afterward said, ever got away from
+bondage on so narrow a margin of safety.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+HENRY WARD BEECHER
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1813-1887)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE BOY WHO HALF-HEARTEDLY JOINED THE CHURCH
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There is great encouragement for the seemingly backward, hesitant youth
+in the story of Henry Ward Beecher's early life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tells us that he used to be laughed at for talking as though he had
+pudding in his mouth.  Yet he became one of the greatest orators the
+world has seen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He joined the church merely because he was expected to do so.  It was
+only "pride and shamefacedness" that prevented him from expressing his
+doubts as to whether he was a Christian.  When he actually came to take
+the step he wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling
+more; and afterward he walked home crying and wishing he knew what he
+ought to do and how he ought to do it.  Yet he became one of the
+greatest religious leaders of his time.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From the "Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by W. C. Beecher and
+Scoville.  C. L. Webster Co., 1888.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had had the influence of a discreet, sympathetic Christian person
+to brood over and help and encourage me, I should have been a Christian
+child from my mother's lap, I am persuaded; but I had no such
+influence.  The influences of a Christian family were about me, to be
+sure, but they were generic; and I revolved these speculative
+experiences, my strong religious habitudes taking the form of
+speculation all through my childhood.  I recollect that from the time
+that I was about ten years old I began to have periods when my
+susceptibilities were so profoundly impressed that the outward
+manifestations of my nature were changed.  I remember that when my
+brother George&mdash;who was next older than I, and who was beginning to be
+my helpful companion, to whom I looked up&mdash;became a Christian, being
+awakened and converted in college, it seemed as though a gulf had come
+between us, and as though he was a saint on one side of it while I was
+a little reprobate on the other side.  It was awful to me.  If there
+had been a total eclipse of the sun I should not have been in more
+profound darkness outwardly than I was inwardly.  I did not know whom
+to go to; I did not dare to go to my father; I had no mother that I
+ever went to at such a time; I did not feel like going to my brother;
+and I did not go to anybody.  I felt that I must try to wrestle out my
+own salvation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once, on coming home, I heard the bell toll, and I learned that it was
+for the funeral of one of my companions with whom I had been accustomed
+to play, and with whom I had grown up.  I did not know that he had been
+sick, but he had dropped into eternity; and the ringing, swinging,
+booming of that bell, if it had been the sound of an angel trumpet of
+the last day, would not have seemed to me more awful.  I went into an
+ecstasy of anguish.  At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and
+prayed.  There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the
+woodhouse, in the carriage-house, or in the barn that was not a scene
+of my crying and praying.  It was piteous that I should be in such a
+state of mind, and that there should be nobody to help me and lead me
+out into the light.  I do not recollect that to that day one word had
+been said to me, or one syllable had been uttered in the pulpit, that
+lead me to think there was any mercy in the heart of God for a sinner
+like me.  For a sinner that had repented it was thought there was
+pardon; but how to repent was the very thing I did not know.  A
+converted sinner might be saved, but for a poor, miserable, faulty boy,
+that pouted, and got mad at his brothers and sisters, and did a great
+many naughty things, there was no salvation so far as I had learned.
+My innumerable shortcomings and misdemeanors were to my mind so many
+pimples that marked my terrible depravity; and I never had the remotest
+idea of God except that he was a sovereign who sat with a sceptre in
+his hand and had his eye on me, and said: 'I see you, and I am after
+you.'  So I used to live in perpetual fear and dread, and often I
+wished myself dead.  I tried to submit and lay down the weapons of my
+rebellion, I tried to surrender everything; but it did not seem to do
+any good, and I thought it was because I did not do it right.  I tried
+to consecrate myself to God, but all to no purpose.  I did everything,
+so far as I could, that others did who professed to be Christians, but
+I did not feel any better.  I passed through two or three revivals.  I
+remember, when Mr. Nettleton was preaching in Litchfield, going to
+carry a note to him from father; and for a sensitive, bashful boy like
+me it was a severe ordeal.  I went to the room where he was speaking,
+with the note in my trembling hand, and had to lay it on the desk
+beside him.  Before I got halfway across the floor I was dazed and
+everything seemed to swim around me, but I made out to get the note to
+him, and he said: 'That's enough; go away, boy,' and I sort of backed
+and stumbled toward the door (I was always stumbling and blundering in
+company) and sat down.  He was preaching in those whispered tones which
+always seem louder than thunder to the conscience, although they are
+only whispers in the ear.  He had not uttered more than three sentences
+before my feelings were excited, and the more I listened the more awful
+I felt; and I said to myself: 'I will stay to the inquiry meeting.'  I
+heard Mr. Nettleton talking about souls writhing under conviction, and
+I thought my soul was writhing under conviction.  I had heard father
+say that after a person had writhed under conviction a week or two they
+began to come out, and I said: 'Perhaps I will get out'; and that
+thought produced in me a sort of half-exhilaration of joy.  I stayed to
+the inquiry meeting, felt better, and trotted home with the hope that I
+was on the way toward conversion.  I went through this revival with
+that hope strengthened; but it did not last long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is evident from this chapter that if we would understand Henry Ward
+Beecher and the influences that went to the formation of his character
+and to the success of his life, other things than parentage, home,
+school, or nature must be taken into the account.  The vast things of
+the invisible realm have begun to speak to him, and his nature has
+proved to be peculiarly sensitive to their influence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He is thus early groping, unresting, and unsatisfied; but it is among
+mountains, and not in marshes or quicksands.  Some day these mountain
+truths, among which he now wanders in darkness, shall be radiant in his
+sight with the Divine Compassion, and his gloom shall give place to
+abiding love, joy, and peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in 1827, and Henry was fourteen years old, when he entered the
+Mount Pleasant Institute.  "He was admitted to the institution at a
+price about half the usual charge, for one hundred dollars per year.
+His appearance was robust and healthy, rather inclined to fulness of
+form, with a slight pink tinge on his cheeks and a frequent smile upon
+his face.  In his manners and communications he was quiet, orderly, and
+respectful.  He was a good-looking youth."  This is the testimony of
+one of his teachers, Mr. George Montague.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think he must have been fond of children, for he was always ready
+for a frolic with me.  I don't remember how he spoke, except that he
+talked a good deal and was full of life and fun."  So says a friend in
+whose home he boarded, in a letter written during the past year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No place could have been better fitted to the condition of the boy, as
+he then was, than the one chosen.  He was tired of the city with its
+brick walls, stone pavements, and artificial restrictions, and longed
+for the freedom and the freshness of the country.  Amherst at that time
+was only a small village, fighting back with indifferent success the
+country that pressed in upon it from every side, and offering this
+city-sick lad, almost within a stone's throw of the school, the same
+kind of fields and forests that were around him at Litchfield, and
+spreading out for him a landscape equal in beauty to that of his
+childhood home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Besides, he has an object in view that stirs his blood.  He is to fit
+himself for the navy; his father has promised his influence to get him
+an appointment, if wanted, and Admiral Nelson and all other brave
+admirals and commodores are his models.  For the first time in his life
+he takes hold of study with enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The institution was very popular in its day, and a great advance upon
+the old academy.  It was semi-military in its methods, and in its
+government there was great thoroughness without severity.  Its teachers
+possessed superior qualifications, and all were men of great kindness
+as well as of marked ability.  Among them were two men who especially
+had great influence in directing his energies and preparing him not
+only for Amherst College but for the greater work beyond, and who were
+ever remembered by him with the deepest gratitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first of these was W. P. Fitzgerald, the teacher of mathematics at
+Mount Pleasant School:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He taught me to conquer in studying.  There is a very hour in which a
+young nature, tugging, discouraged, and weary with books, rises with
+the consciousness of victorious power into masterhood.  For ever after
+he knows that he can learn anything if he pleases.  It is a distinct
+intellectual conversion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I first went to the blackboard, uncertain, soft, full of whimpering.
+'That lesson must be learned,' he said, in a very quiet tone, but with
+a terrible intensity and with the certainty of Fate.  All explanations
+and excuses he trod under foot with utter scornfulness.  'I want that
+problem.  I don't want any reasons why I don't get it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I did study it two hours.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That's nothing to me; I want the lesson.  You need not study it at
+all, or you may study it ten hours&mdash;just to suit yourself.  I want the
+lesson.  Underwood, go to the blackboard!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh! yes, but Underwood got somebody to <I>show</I> him his lesson.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What do I care <I>how</I> you get it?  That's your business.  But you must
+have it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was tough for a green boy, but it seasoned him.  In less than a
+month I had the most intense sense of intellectual independence and
+courage to defend my recitations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the midst of a lesson his cold and calm voice would fall upon me in
+the midst of a demonstration&mdash;'<I>No</I>!'  I hesitated, stopped, and then
+went back to the beginning; and, on reaching the same spot again,
+'<I>No</I>!' uttered with the tone of perfect conviction, barred my
+progress.  'The next!' and I sat down in red confusion.  He, too, was
+stopped with 'No!' but went right on, finished, and, as he sat down,
+was rewarded with, 'Very well.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why,' whimpered I, 'I recited it just as he did, and you said No!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why didn't you say <I>Yes</I>, and stick to it?  It is not enough to know
+your lesson.  You must <I>know</I> that you know it.  You have learned
+nothing until you are <I>sure</I>.  If all the world says <I>No</I>, your
+business is to say <I>Yes</I> and to <I>prove it!</I>'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other helper of this period was John E. Lovell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a column of the <I>Christian Union</I>, of July 14, 1880, devoted to
+"Inquiring Friends," appeared this question with the accompanying
+answer:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"We heard Mr. Beecher lecture recently in Boston and found the lecture
+a grand lesson in elocution.  If Mr. Beecher would give through the
+column of 'Inquiring Friends' the methods of instruction and practice
+pursued by him, it would be very thankfully received by a subscriber
+and student.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"E. D. M."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"I had from childhood a thickness of speech arising from a large
+palate, so that when a boy I used to be laughed at for talking as if I
+had pudding in my mouth.  When I went to Amherst I was fortunate in
+passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution, and a
+better teacher for my purpose I cannot conceive.  His system consisted
+in drill, or the thorough practice of inflexions by the voice, of
+gesture, posture, and articulation.  Sometimes I was a whole hour
+practising my voice on a word&mdash;like 'justice.'  I would have to take a
+posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor.  Then we would go
+through all the gestures, exercising each movement of the arm and the
+throwing open the hand.  All gestures except those of precision go in
+curves, the arm rising from the side, coming to the front, turning to
+the left or right.  I was drilled as to how far the arm should come
+forward, where it should start from, how far go back, and under what
+circumstances these movements should be made.  It was drill, drill,
+drill, until the motions almost became a second nature.  Now I never
+know what movements I shall make.  My gestures are natural, because
+this drill made them natural to me.  The only method of acquiring an
+effective education is by practice, of not less than an hour a day,
+until the student has his voice and himself thoroughly subdued and
+trained to right expression.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"H. W. B."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Montague says: "Mr. Beecher submitted to Mr. Lovell's drilling and
+training with a patience which proved his interest in the study to be
+great.  The piece which was to be spoken was committed to memory from
+Mr. Lovell's mouth, the pupil standing on the stage before him, and
+every sentence and word, accent and pronunciation, position and
+movement of the body, glance of the eye and tone of voice, all were
+subjects of study and criticism.  And day after day, often for several
+weeks in continuance, Mr. Beecher submitted to this drilling upon the
+same piece, until his teacher pronounced him perfect."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His dramatic power was displayed and noted at this early period.  Dr.
+Thomas Field, a classmate in the school, says: "One incident occurred
+during our residence in Mount Pleasant which left an abiding impression
+on my mind.  At the exhibition at the close of the year, either 1828 or
+1829, the drama of 'William Tell' was performed by some of the
+students, and your father took the part of the tyrant Gessler.
+Although sixty years have passed, I think now, as I thought then, that
+it was the most impressive performance I ever witnessed.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a letter dated December 24, 1828, addressed to his sister
+Harriet&mdash;the first that has come to our hands from Mount Pleasant&mdash;he
+gives some account of his manner of life at school, and various
+experiences:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+DEAR SISTER:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+.&#8230; I have to rise in the morning at half-past five o'clock, and
+after various little duties, such as fixing of room, washing, etc.,
+which occupies about an hour, we proceed to breakfast, from thence to
+chapel, after which we have about ten minutes to prepare for school.
+Then we attend school from eight to twelve.  An hour at noon is allowed
+for diversions of various sorts.  Then dinner.  After that school from
+half-past one to half-past four.  At night we have about an hour and a
+half; then tea.  After tea we have about ten minutes; then we are
+called to our rooms till nine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now I will tell you how I occupy my spare time in reading, writing, and
+playing the flute.  We are forming a band here.  I shall play either
+the flute or hautboy.  I enjoy myself <I>pretty</I> well.  In Latin I am
+studying Sallust.  As to ease, all I have to do is study straight
+ahead.  It comes <I>pretty</I> easy.  My Greek is rather hard.  I am as yet
+studying the grammar and Jacob's Greek Reader.  In elocution, we read
+and speak alternately every other day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+.&#8230; I find it hard to keep as a Christian ought to.  To be sure, I
+find delight in prayer, but I cannot find time to be alone
+sufficiently.  We have in our room only two, one besides myself, but he
+is most of my play-hours practising on some instrument or other.  I
+have some time, to be sure, but it is very irregular, and I never know
+when I shall have an opportunity for private devotions until the time
+comes.  I do not like to read the Bible as well as to pray, but I
+suppose it is the same as it is with a lover, who loves to talk with
+his mistress in person better than to write when she is afar off.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Your affectionate brother,<BR>
+HENRY.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+His religious experience, of which we have heard nothing, since he left
+Litchfield, the life in Boston apparently not being very favorable to
+it, again attracts our attention at this point.  He says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I was fourteen years of age, I left Boston and went to Mount
+Pleasant.  There broke out while I was there one of those infectious
+religious revivals which have no basis of judicious instruction, but
+spring from inexperienced zeal.  It resulted in many mushroom hopes,
+and I had one of them; but I do not know how or why I was converted.  I
+only know I was in a sort of day-dream, in which I hoped I had given
+myself to Christ.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wrote to father expressing this hope; he was overjoyed, and sent me
+a long, kind letter on the subject.  But in the course of three or four
+weeks I was nearly over it; and I never shall forget how I felt, not
+long afterward, when a letter from father was handed me in which he
+said I must anticipate my vacation a week or two and come home and join
+the Church on the next Communion Sabbath.  The serious feelings I had
+were well-nigh gone, and I was beginning to feel quite jolly again, and
+I did not know what to do.  I went home, however, and let them take me
+into the Church.  A kind of pride and shamefacedness kept me from
+saying I did not think I was a Christian, and so I was made a Church
+member."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an editorial in the <I>Independent</I>, written in 1862, upon the
+disbanding of this old church, the Bowdoin Street&mdash;originally Hanover
+Street&mdash;Church, Boston, he describes this event:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If somebody will look in the old records of Hanover Street Church
+about 1829 they will find a name there of a boy about fifteen years old
+who was brought into the Church on a sympathetic wave, and who well
+remembers how cold and almost paralyzed he felt while the committee
+questioned him about his 'hope' and 'evidences,' which, upon review,
+amounted to this: that the son of such a father ought to be a good and
+pious boy.  Being tender-hearted and quick to respond to moral
+sympathy, he had been caught and inflamed in a school excitement, but
+was just getting over it when summoned to Boston to join the Church!
+On the morning of the day he went to Church without seeing anything he
+looked at.  He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others,
+and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots
+on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak
+in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as
+if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard
+faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should
+be struck dead for not feeling more&mdash;whether he should go to hell for
+touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse;
+spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the
+body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he
+knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to
+do it.  Ah! well, there is a world of things in children's minds that
+grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Unsatisfactory in many respects as was his religious experience, it
+seems to have been powerful enough to change his whole ideal of life.
+We hear no more of his becoming a sailor.  He appears to have yielded
+to the inevitable, and henceforth studies with the ministry in view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That he became a minister, as did his brothers, by reason of the
+unswerving faith and prayer of the parents, is already well known.
+"Out of six sons not one escaped from the pulpit.  My mother dedicated
+me to the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me,
+wept over me, and set me apart to preach the Gospel among the heathen,
+and I have been doing it all my life long, for it so happens one does
+not need to go far from his own country to find his audience before
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ushered into the preparation for the ministry by the parental faith,
+stumbling and discouraged and ready to give up the work, another hand
+was not wanting to open still more clearly the way, draw back the
+curtains, and let in the light:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beheld Him as a helper, as the soul's mid-wife, as the soul's
+physician, and I felt because I was weak I could come to Him; because I
+did not know how, and, if I did know, I had not the strength, to do the
+things that were right&mdash;that was the invitation that He gave to me out
+of my conscious weakness and want.  I will not repeat the scene of that
+morning when light broke fairly on my mind; how one might have thought
+that I was a lunatic escaped from confinement; how I ran up and down
+through the primeval forest of Ohio, shouting, 'Glory, glory!'
+sometimes in loud tones and at other times whispered in an ecstasy of
+joy and surprise.  All the old troubles gone, and light breaking in on
+my mind, I cried: 'I have found my God; I have found my God!'  From
+that hour I consecrated myself to the work of the ministry anew, for
+before that I had about made up my mind to go into some other
+profession."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His early training school for effective preaching was well selected.
+It was, as is well known, one of the little villages on the banks of
+the Ohio River, where the wants of river bargemen and frontiersmen
+demanded his attention.  It was there he decided what his life work
+should be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My business shall be to save men, and to bring to bear upon them those
+views that are my comfort, that are the bread of life to me; and I went
+out among them almost entirely cut loose from the ordinary church
+institutions and agencies, knowing nothing but 'Christ, and Him
+crucified,' the sufferer for mankind.  Did not the men round me need
+such a Saviour?  Was there ever such a field as I found?  Every
+sympathy of my being was continually solicited for the ignorance, for
+the rudeness, for the aberrations, for the avarice, for the
+quarrelsomeness of the men among whom I was, and I was trying every
+form and presenting Christ as a medicine to men.  I went through the
+woods and through camp-meetings and over prairies.  Everywhere my
+vacations were all missionary tours, preaching Christ for the hope of
+salvation.  I am not saying this to show you how I came to the
+knowledge of Christ, but to show you how I came to the habits and forms
+of my ministry.  I tried everything on to folks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Added to the forces of experience and surroundings was always that of
+his own personal, natural endowment.  This he found fault with and
+tried to change, as most people do at some period of their lives, but
+finally accepted and concluded to use as best he could, without
+murmuring, but always conscious of its limitations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have my own peculiar temperament, I have my own method of preaching,
+and my method and temperament necessitate errors.  I am not worthy to
+be related in the hundred-thousandth degree to those more happy men who
+never make a mistake in the pulpit.  I make a great many.  I am
+impetuous.  I am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me.  I
+feel as though all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power
+beyond my words, nor all the thunders that were in the heavens, and it
+is of necessity that such a nature as that should give such intensity
+at times to parts of doctrine as to exaggerate them when you come to
+bring them into connection with a more rounded-out and balanced view.
+I know it&mdash;I know it as well as you do.  I would not do it if I could
+help it; but there are times when it is not I that is talking, when I
+am caught up and carried away so that I know not whether I am in the
+body or out of the body, when I think things in the pulpit that I never
+could think in the study, and when I have feelings that are so far
+different from any that belong to the lower or normal condition that I
+neither can regulate them nor understand them.  I see things and I hear
+sounds, and seem, if not in the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that
+leads me to understand what Paul said&mdash;that he heard things which it
+was not possible for a man to utter.  I am acting under such a
+temperament as that.  I have got to use it, or not preach at all.  I
+know very well I do not give crystalline views nor thoroughly guarded
+views; there is often an error on this side and an error on that, and I
+cannot stop to correct them.  A man might run around, like a kitten
+after its tail, all his life, if he were going around explaining all
+his expressions and all the things he had written.  Let them go.  They
+will correct themselves.  The average and general influence of a man's
+teaching will be more mighty than any single misconception, or
+misapprehension through misconception.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a deep enjoyment in having devoted yourself, soul and body,
+to the welfare of your fellowmen, so that you have no thought and no
+care but for them.  There is a pleasure in that which is never touched
+by any ordinary experiences in human life.  It is the highest.  I look
+back to my missionary days as being transcendently the happiest period
+of my life.  The sweetest pleasures I have ever known are not those
+that I have now, but those that I remember, when I was unknown, in an
+unknown land, among a scattered people, mostly poor, and to whom I had
+to go and preach the Gospel, man by man, house by house, gathering them
+on Sundays, a few&mdash;twenty, fifty, or a hundred as the case might
+be&mdash;and preaching the Gospel more formally to them as they were able to
+bear it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1858-1915)
+</H3>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE BOY WHO SLEPT UNDER THE SIDEWALK
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Two or three years before the outbreak of the Civil War a little black
+baby was born in the slave quarters on a Virginia plantation.  This was
+not a surprising event and nobody except the mother paid it any
+attention.  Even the father of the child ignored it.  For some years
+the boy "just growed," after the manner of Topsy.  Nobody helped him.
+But the boy differed in one way from his thoughtless little playmates.
+There was a mysterious something in him that drove him eagerly to avail
+himself of any opportunity for self-improvement that came along.  If
+the opportunity, as generally happened, <I>failed</I> to "come along," he
+went after it with all his might and main.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He devoted his life unreservedly to the service of his coloured
+brethren, and through his own bitter experience he knew full well the
+best way in which to help them.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington.  Doubleday, Page &amp;
+Co., 1901.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia.  I am
+not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
+rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.  As
+nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads
+post-office called Hale's Ford and the year was 1858 or 1859.  I do not
+know the month or the day.  The earliest impressions I can now recall
+are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part
+of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
+and discouraging surroundings.  This was so, however, not because my
+owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
+others.  I was born in a typical log-cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
+feet square.  In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
+sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.  In the slave quarters, and even
+later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
+tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
+mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while
+being conveyed from Africa to America.  I have been unsuccessful in
+securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
+history of my family, beyond my mother.  She, I remember, had a
+half-brother and a half-sister.  In the days of slavery not very much
+attention was given to family history and family records&mdash;that is,
+black family records.  My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of
+a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers.  Her addition to the
+slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new
+horse or cow.  Of my father I know even less than of my mother.  I do
+not even know his name.  I have heard reports to the effect that he was
+a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations.  Whoever he
+was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing
+in any way for my rearing.  But I do not find especial fault with him.
+He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the
+Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was
+declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation.  Three children&mdash;John,
+my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself&mdash;had a pallet on the
+dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of
+filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life
+has been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be
+a more useful man had I had time for sports.  During the period that I
+spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service, still I
+was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to
+the men in the fields, or going to the mill, to which I used to take
+the corn, once a week, to be ground.  The mill was about three miles
+from the plantation.  This work I always dreaded.  The heavy bag of
+corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the corn divided
+about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost without exception,
+on these trips the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and
+would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it.  As I was not
+strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would have to wait,
+sometimes for many hours, till a chance passerby came along who would
+help me out of my trouble.  The hours while waiting for some one were
+usually spent in crying.  The time consumed in this way made me late in
+reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground and reached
+home it would be far into the night.  The road was a lonely one, and
+often led through dense forests.  I was always frightened.  The woods
+were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army, and I
+had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy when
+he found him alone was to cut off his ears.  Besides, when I was late
+in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a
+flogging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
+several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
+young mistresses to carry her books.  The picture of several dozen boys
+and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
+me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
+this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
+that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being
+discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my
+mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln
+and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her
+children might be free.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
+boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and
+God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized
+manner.  On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were
+gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs.  It was a
+piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.  It was a cup of milk at
+one time and some potatoes at another.  Sometimes a portion of our
+family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would
+eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the
+hands with which to hold the food.  When I had grown to sufficient
+size, I was required to go to the "big house" mealtimes to fan the
+flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by
+a pulley.  Naturally much of the conversation of the white people
+turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good
+deal of it.  I remember that at one time I saw two of my young
+mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard.  At
+that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting
+and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I then and there
+resolved that, if I ever got free, the height of my ambition would be
+reached if I could get to the point where I could secure and eat
+ginger-cakes in the way that I saw those ladies doing.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones.  They
+had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch
+thick, were of wood.  When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
+besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
+to the natural pressure of the foot.  In wearing them one presented an
+exceedingly awkward appearance.  The most trying ordeal that I was
+forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax
+shirt.  In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use
+flax as part of the clothing for the slaves.  That part of the flax
+from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of
+course, was the cheapest and roughest part.  I can scarcely imagine any
+torture, except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that
+caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time.  It is almost
+equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or
+more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pinpoints in contact with his
+flesh.  Even to this day, I can recall accurately the tortures that I
+underwent when putting on one of these garments.  The fact that my
+flesh was soft and tender added to the pain.  But I had no choice.  I
+had to wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to
+choose, I should have chosen to wear no covering.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until I had grown to be quite a youth this single garment was all that
+I wore.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I
+recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read.  I determined
+when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life,
+I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common
+books and newspapers.  Soon after we got settled in some manner in our
+new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book
+for me.  How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she
+procured an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling-book, which
+contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab,"
+"ba," "ca," "da."  I began at once to devour this book, and I think
+that it was the first one I ever had in my hands.  I had learned from
+somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I
+tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it&mdash;all of course
+without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me.  At that time
+there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could
+read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people.  In some
+way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the
+alphabet.  In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my
+ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she
+could.  Though she was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge
+was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large
+fund of good, hard common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and
+master every situation.  If I have done anything in life worth
+attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my
+mother.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley brought to me one of
+the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced.  I had been
+working in a salt furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
+discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school
+opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work.  This
+decision seemed to cloud my every ambition.  The disappointment was
+made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work
+was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school,
+morning and afternoons.  Despite this disappointment, however, I
+determined that I would learn something, anyway.  I applied myself with
+greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the
+"blue-back" speller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
+comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
+learn.  After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the
+teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was
+done.  These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more
+at night than the other children did during the day.  My own
+experiences in the night school gave me faith in the night-school idea,
+with which, in after years, had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee.
+But my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day school, and I
+let no opportunity slip to push my case.  Finally I won, and was
+permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the
+understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the
+furnace till nine o'clock, and return immediately after school closed
+in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to
+work till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself
+in a difficulty.  School would always be begun before I reached it, and
+sometimes my class had recited.  To get around this difficulty I
+yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn
+me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it.  I have great
+faith in the power and influence of facts.  It is seldom that anything
+is permanently gained by holding back a fact.  There was a large clock,
+in a little office in the furnace.  This clock, of course, all the
+hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of
+beginning and ending the day's work.  I got the idea that the way for
+me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past
+eight up to nine o'clock mark.  This I found myself doing morning after
+morning, till the furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong,
+and locked the clock in a case.  I did not mean to inconvenience
+anybody.  I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
+found myself confronted with two other difficulties.  In the first
+place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on
+their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap.  In fact, I do not remember
+that up to the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of
+covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else
+had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head.  But,
+of course when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to
+feel quite uncomfortable.  As usual, I put the case before my mother,
+and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a
+"store hat," which was a rather new institution at that time among the
+members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old
+to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty.
+She accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them
+together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or, rather, a name.
+From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply
+"Booker."  Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it
+was needful or appropriate to have an additional name.  When I heard
+the school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least
+two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the
+extravagance of having three.  I was in deep perplexity, because I knew
+that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only
+one.  By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an
+idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the
+situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I
+calmly told him "Booker Washington," as if I had been called by that
+name all my life; and by that name I have since been known.  Later in
+my life I found that my mother had given me the name of "Booker
+Taliaferro," soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my
+name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as
+soon as I found out about it I revived it, and, made my full name
+"Booker Taliaferro Washington."  I think there are not many men in our
+country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that
+I have.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was
+short, and my attendance was irregular.  It was not long before I had
+to stop attending day school altogether, and devote all of my time
+again to work.  I resorted to the night school again.  In fact, the
+greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered
+through the night school after my day's work was done.  I had
+difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher.  Sometimes, after
+I had secured one to teach me at night, I would find, much to my
+disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than I did.
+Often I would have to walk miles at night in order to recite my
+night-school lessons.  There was never a time in my youth, no matter
+how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not
+continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an
+education at any cost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After I had worked in the salt furnace for some time, work was secured
+for me in a coal mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of
+securing fuel for the salt furnace.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my
+imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely
+no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities.  I used to envy
+the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a
+congressman, governor, bishop, or President by reason of the accident
+of his birth or race.  I used to picture the way that I would act under
+such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising
+until I reached the highest round of success.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day while at work in the coal mine I happened to overhear two
+miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
+Virginia.  This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
+any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
+coloured school in our town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
+the two men who were talking.  I heard one tell the other that not only
+was the school established for the members of my race, but that
+opportunities were provided by which poor but worthy students could
+work out all or a part of the cost of board, and at the same time be
+taught some trade or industry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be
+the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
+attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
+Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
+I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
+it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
+remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
+that was to go to Hampton.  This thought was with me day and
+night.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton.  I had only a
+small, cheap satchel that contained what 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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The distance from Maiden to Hampton is about five hundred miles.  I had
+not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
+evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to
+Hampton.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
+after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
+eighty-two miles from Hampton.  When I reached there, tired, hungry,
+and dirty; it was late in the night.  I had never been in a large city
+before, and this rather added to my misery.  When I reached Richmond I
+was completely out of money.  I had not a single acquaintance in the
+place, and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go.  I
+applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and
+that was what I did not have.  Knowing nothing else better to do, I
+walked the streets.  In doing this I passed by many food-stands where
+fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to
+present a most tempting appearance.  At that time it seemed to me that
+I would have promised all that I expected to possess in the future to
+have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies.
+But I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must have walked the streets till after midnight.  At last I became
+so exhausted that I could walk no longer.  I was tired, I was hungry, I
+was everything but discouraged.  Just about the time when I reached
+extreme physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where
+the board sidewalk was considerably elevated.  I waited for a few
+minutes, till I was sure that no passersby could see me, and then crept
+under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my
+satchel of clothing for a pillow.  Nearly all night I could hear the
+tramp of feet above my head.  The next morning I found myself somewhat
+refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time
+since I had had sufficient food.  As soon as it became light enough for
+me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and
+that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron.  I went at
+once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload
+the vessel in order to get money for food.  The captain, a white man,
+who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented.  I worked long enough to earn
+money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to
+have been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
+could continue working for a small amount per day.  This I was very
+glad to do.  I continued working on this vessel for a number of days.
+After buying food with the small wages I received there was not much
+left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton.  In
+order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach
+Hampton in a reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same
+sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
+Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
+started again.  Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with
+a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education, To
+me it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the
+large, three-story brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for
+all that I had undergone in order to reach the place.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had
+ever seen.  The sight of it seemed to give me new life.  I felt that a
+new kind of existence had now begun&mdash;that life would now have a new
+meaning.  I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved
+to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to
+fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute
+I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class.
+Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of
+clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon
+her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about
+the wisdom of admitting me as a student.  I felt that I could hardly
+blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp.
+For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in
+my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in
+all the ways I could with my worthiness.  In the meantime I saw her
+admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for
+I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I
+could only get a chance to show her what was in me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me, "The
+adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping.  Take the broom and sweep it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to me at once that here was my chance.  Never did I receive
+an order with more delight.  I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs.
+Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I swept the recitation-room three times.  Then I got a dusting-cloth
+and I dusted it four times.  All the woodwork around the walls, every
+bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth.
+Besides every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and
+corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned.  I had the feeling that
+in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon
+the teacher in the cleaning of that room.  When I was through, I
+reported to the head teacher.  She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just
+where to look for dirt.  She went into the room and inspected the floor
+and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the
+woodwork, about the walls, and over the table and benches.  When she
+was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust
+on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked: "I guess you will do to
+enter this institution."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was one of the happiest souls on earth.  The sweeping of that room
+was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination
+for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine
+satisfaction.  I have passed several examinations since then, but I
+have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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, or
+eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bathtub and of
+the toothbrush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new
+to me.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
+Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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 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.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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 be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots.  To
+wear one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the
+schoolroom, and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard
+problem for me to solve.  In some way I managed to get on till the
+teachers learned that I was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then
+some of them were kind enough to see that I was partly supplied with
+second-hand clothing that had been sent in barrels from the North.
+These barrels proved a blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving
+students.  Without them I question whether I should ever have gotten
+through Hampton.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was completely out of money when I graduated.  In company with other
+Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
+in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
+there.  I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I
+knew practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table.  The head
+waiter, however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter.  He soon
+gave me charge of a table at which there sat four or five wealthy and
+rather aristocratic people.  My ignorance of how to wait upon them was
+so apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
+frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
+food.  As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
+that of a dish-carrier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a
+few weeks, and was restored to my former position.  I have had the
+satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
+waiter there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in
+Malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place.
+This was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life.  I
+now felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town
+to a higher life.  I felt from the first that mere book education was
+not all that the young people of that town needed.  I began my work at
+eight o'clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten
+o'clock at night.  In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I
+taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces
+clean, as well as their clothing.  I gave special attention to teaching
+them the proper use of the toothbrush and the bath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the
+toothbrush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of
+civilization that are more far-reaching.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
+men and women, who had to work in the daytime but still were craving an
+opportunity for some education, that I soon opened a night school.
+From the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as
+the school that I taught in the day.  The efforts of some of the men
+and women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn,
+were in some cases very pathetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My day- and night-school work was not all that I undertook.  I
+established a small reading-room and a debating society.  On Sundays I
+taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
+and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
+Malden.  In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
+men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute.  Without
+regard to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who
+wanted to learn, anything that I could teach him.  I was supremely
+happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else.  I did
+receive, however, a small salary from the public fund for my work as a
+public school teacher.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night
+school at Hampton Institute, in a way that I had not dared expect, the
+opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work.  One night in the
+chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong
+referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen
+in Alabama asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was
+to be a normal school for the coloured people in the little town of
+Tuskegee in that State.  These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted
+that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and
+they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place.
+The next day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and,
+much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in
+Alabama.  I told him that I would be willing to try.  Accordingly he
+wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he
+did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing
+to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend.  In this
+letter he gave them my name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.
+Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a
+messenger came in and handed the General a telegram.  At the end of the
+exercises he read the telegram to the school.  In substance, these were
+its words: "Booker T. Washington will suit us.  Send him at once.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I reached Tuskegee early in June, 1881.  The first month I spent in
+finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through
+Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in
+the country districts, and in getting the school advertised among the
+class of people that I wanted to have attend it.  The most of my
+travelling was done over the country road, with a mule and a cart or a
+mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance.  I ate and slept with the people
+in their little cabins.  I saw their farms, their schools, their
+churches.  Since in the case of the most of these visits there had been
+no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, I had the
+advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation
+left me with a very heavy heart.  The work to be done in order to lift
+these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing.  I was only one
+person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put
+forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results.  I
+wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for
+me to try.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending
+this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that
+was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than
+merely to imitate New England education as it then existed.  I saw more
+clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had
+inaugurated at Hampton.  To take the children of such people as I had
+been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book
+education, I felt would be almost a waste of time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After consultation with the citizens of Tuskegee, I set July 4, 1881,
+as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and
+church which had been secured for its accommodation.  The white people,
+as well as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the
+new school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest
+discussion.  There were not a few white people in the vicinity of
+Tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project.  They
+questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it
+might result in bringing about trouble between the races.  Some had the
+feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same
+proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the State.
+These people feared the result of education would be that the Negroes
+would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them
+for domestic service.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school
+had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro, with
+a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid
+gloves, fancy boots, and what not&mdash;in a word, a man who was determined
+to live by his wits.  It was difficult for these people to see how
+education would produce any other kind of a coloured man.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the morning that the school opened thirty students reported for
+admission.  I was the only teacher.  The students were about equally
+divided between the sexes.&#8230;  The greater part of the thirty were
+public school teachers, and some of them were nearly forty years of age.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the
+school as a co-teacher.  This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later
+became my wife.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school
+from the first.  The students were making progress in learning books
+and in developing their minds; but it became apparent at once, that, if
+we were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
+for training, we must do something besides teach them mere books.  The
+students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
+lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies.  With few
+exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
+but little improvement upon those from which they had come.  We wanted
+to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
+clothing.  We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
+properly, and how to care for their rooms.  Aside from this, we wanted
+to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together
+with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be
+sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us.  We wanted
+to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large
+proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to
+return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put
+new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual
+and moral and religious life of the people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All these ideals and needs crowded themselves upon us with a
+seriousness that seemed well-nigh overwhelming.  What were we to do?
+We had only the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the
+good coloured people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for
+the accommodation of the classes.  The number of students was
+increasing daily.  The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled
+through the country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were
+reaching, to only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom
+we wanted to lift up through the medium of the students whom we should
+educate and send out as leaders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from
+several parts of the State, the more we found that the chief ambition
+among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
+would not have to work any longer with their hands.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time
+when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into
+the market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated
+about a mile from the town of Tuskegee.  The mansion house&mdash;or "big
+house," as it would have been called&mdash;which had been occupied by the
+owners during slavery, had been burned.  After making a careful
+examination of this place, it seemed to be just the location that we
+wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But how were we to get it?  The price asked for it was very
+little&mdash;only five hundred dollars&mdash;but we had no money, and we were
+strangers in the town and had no credit.  The owner of the land agreed
+to let us occupy the place if we could make a payment of two hundred
+and fifty dollars down, with the understanding that the remaining two
+hundred and fifty dollars must be paid within a year.  Although five
+hundred dollars was cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did
+not have any part of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
+wrote to my friend General J. F. B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the
+Hampton Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him
+to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal
+responsibility.  Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he
+had no authority to lend me money belonging to the Hampton Institute,
+but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his own
+personal funds.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm.
+At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin,
+formerly used as the dining-room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old
+hen-house.  Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use.
+The stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very
+presently the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school
+purposes was done by the students after school was over in the
+afternoon.  As soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used I
+determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop.  When I
+explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not seem to
+take to it very kindly.  It was hard for them to see the connection
+between clearing land and education.  Besides, many of them had been
+school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would
+be in keeping with their dignity.  In order to relieve them from any
+embarrassment, each afternoon after school I took my axe and led the
+way to the woods.  When they saw that I was not afraid or ashamed to
+work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm.  We kept at the work
+each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted
+a crop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of three months enough was secured to repay the loan of two
+hundred and fifty dollars to General Marshall, and within two months
+more we had secured the entire five hundred dollars and had received a
+deed of the one hundred acres of land.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of
+the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time
+give the students training in agriculture.  All the industries at
+Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of
+the needs of a community settlement.  We began with farming, because we
+wanted something to eat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few
+weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
+their board.  Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
+industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
+of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
+to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school
+year.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
+students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have
+them erect their own building.  My plan was to have them, while
+performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour,
+so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but
+the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in
+labour, but beauty and dignity would be taught, in fact, how to lift
+labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for
+its own sake.  My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way,
+but to show them how to make the forces of nature&mdash;air, water, steam,
+electricity, horsepower&mdash;assist them in their labour.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
+excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
+than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
+called National.  I refer to the address which I delivered at the
+opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition at
+Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from a prominent citizen in
+Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to Washington
+for the purpose of appearing before a committee of Congress in the
+interest of securing Government help for the Exposition.  The committee
+was composed of about twenty-five of the most prominent and most
+influential white men of Georgia.  All the members of this committee
+were white men except Bishop Grant, Bishop Gaines, and myself.  The
+Mayor and several other city and State officials spoke before the
+committee.  They were followed by the two coloured bishops.  My name
+was the last on the list of speakers.  I had never before appeared
+before such a committee, nor had I ever delivered any address in the
+capital of the Nation.  I had many misgivings as to what I ought to
+say, and as to the impression that my address would make.  While I
+cannot recall in detail what I said, I remember that I tried to impress
+upon the committee, with all the earnestness and plainness of any
+language that I could command, that if Congress wanted to do something
+which would assist in ridding the South of the race question and making
+friends between the two races, it should in every proper way encourage
+the material and intellectual growth of both races.  I said that the
+Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show
+what advance they had made since freedom, and would at the same time
+afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be
+deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone
+would not save him, and that back of the ballot he must have property,
+industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race
+without these elements could permanently succeed.  I said that in
+granting the appropriation Congress could do something that would prove
+to be of real and lasting value to both races, and that it was the
+first great opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the
+close of the Civil War.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close
+of my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia
+committee and of the members of Congress who were present.  The
+committee was unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few
+days the bill passed Congress.  With the passing of this bill the
+success of the Atlanta Exposition was assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition
+decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to
+erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to
+showing the progress of the Negro since freedom.  It was further
+decided to have the building designed and erected wholly by Negro
+mechanics.  This plan was carried out.  In design, beauty, and general
+finish the Negro Building was equal to the others a on the
+grounds.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
+Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises.  In
+the discussion from day to day of the various features of this
+programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a
+member of the Negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since the
+Negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the Exposition.
+It was argued, further, that such recognition would mark the good
+feeling prevailing between the two races.  Of course there were those
+who were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the Negro,
+but the Board of Directors, composed of men who represented the best
+and most progressive element in the South, had their way, and voted to
+invite a black man to speak on the opening day.  The next thing was to
+decide upon the person who was thus to represent the Negro race.  After
+the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted
+unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and
+in a few days after that I received the official invitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of
+responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my
+position to appreciate.  What were my feelings when this invitation
+came to me?  I remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years
+had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that
+I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as
+this.  It was only a few years before that time that any white man in
+the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily
+possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me
+speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the
+Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same
+platform with white Southern men and women on any important National
+occasion.  I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the
+wealth and culture of the white South, the representative of my former
+masters.  I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would
+be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large
+number of Northern white, as well as a great many men and women of my
+own race.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of
+my heart to be true and right.  When the invitation came to me, there
+was not one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what I
+should omit.  In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a
+tribute to me.  They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in
+a large degree, the success of the Exposition.  I was also painfully
+conscious of the fact that, while I must be true to my own race in my
+utterances, I had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as
+would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a
+black men again for years to come.  I was equally determined to be true
+to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in
+what I had to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
+speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more
+and more widespread.  Not a few of the Southern white papers were
+unfriendly to the idea of my speaking.  From my own race I received
+many suggestions as to what I ought to say.  I prepared myself as best
+I could for the address, but as the eighteenth of September drew
+nearer, the heavier my heart became, and the more I feared that my
+effort would prove a failure and disappointment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school
+work, as it was the beginning of our school year.  After preparing my
+address, I went through it, as I usually do with all those utterances
+which I consider particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she
+approved of what I intended to say.  On the sixteenth of September, the
+day before I was to start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers
+expressed a desire to hear my address that I consented to read it to
+them in a body.  When I had done so, and had heard their criticisms and
+comments, I felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of
+what I had to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured and
+white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with
+perfect freedom, in my hearing, what was going to take place the next
+day.  We were met by a committee in Atlanta.  Almost the first thing I
+heard when I got off the train in that city was an expression something
+like this, from an old coloured man near by: "Dat's de man of my race
+what's gwine to make a speech at de Exposition to-morrow.  I'se sho'
+gwine to hear him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts
+of the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as
+well as with military and civic organizations.  The afternoon papers
+had forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines.  All
+this tended to add to my burden.  I did not sleep much that night.  The
+next morning, before day, I went carefully over what I intended to say.
+I also kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort.  Right
+here, perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before
+an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon
+what I want to say.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the
+procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition
+grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us
+disagreeably hot.  When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with
+my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse,
+and to feel that my address was not going to be a success.  When I
+entered the audience-room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom
+to top, and there were thousands outside who could not get in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking.  When I
+entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion
+of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people.  I had
+been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people
+were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity, and
+that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me,
+there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of
+those who were going to be present for the purpose of hearing me make a
+fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing, so
+that they could say to the officials who had invited me to speak, "I
+told you so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal
+friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., was at the time General Manager of
+the Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day.  He
+was so nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the
+effect that my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself
+to go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds
+outside until the opening exercises were over.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, "We have with us to-day
+a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I arose to speak there was considerable cheering, especially from
+the coloured people.  As I remember it now, the thing that was
+uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement
+the friendship of the races and bring about hearty coöperation between
+them.  So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing
+that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up I saw thousands of
+eyes looking intently into my face.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BEN B. LINDSEY
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+(1869-____)
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MAN WHO FIGHTS "THE BEAST"
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+[Judge Lindsey is known all the world over for his work in the Juvenile
+Court in Denver, Colorado.  To his courtroom there come visitors from
+every State in this nation, investigators from Europe and officials
+from China and Japan to study his laws and observe his methods.  But to
+himself, his famous Juvenile Court is side issue, a small detail in his
+career.  For years he has been engaged in a fight of which the founding
+of his Juvenile Court was only a skirmish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without money, without powerful friends, without personal popularity,
+this one man has codified laws, instituted reforms, founded charities,
+and balked corruption.]
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+From "The Beast," by Ben B. Lindsey and Harvey J. O'Higgins.
+Doubleday, Page &amp; Company, 1910.
+</P>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FINDING THE CAT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I came to Denver in the spring of 1880, at the age of eleven, as mildly
+inoffensive a small boy as ever left a farm&mdash;undersized and weakly, so
+that at the age of seventeen I commonly passed as twelve, and so
+unaccustomed to the sight of buildings that I thought the five-story
+Windsor Hotel a miracle of height and magnificence.  I had been living
+with my maternal grandfather and aunt on a farm in Jackson, Tennessee,
+where I had been born; and I had come with my younger brother to join
+my parents, who had finally decided that Denver was to be their
+permanent home.  The conductors on the trains had taken care of us,
+because my father was a railroad man, at the head of the telegraph
+system; and we had been entertained on the way by the stories of an old
+forty-niner with a gray moustache, who told us how he had shot buffalo
+on those prairies where we now saw only antelope.  I was not
+precocious; his stories interested me more than anything else on the
+journey; and I stared so hard at the old pioneer that I should
+recognize him now, I believe, if I saw him on the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My schooling was not peculiar; there was nothing "holier than thou" in
+my bringing up.  My father, being a Roman Catholic convert from the
+Episcopalian Church, sent me to Notre Dame, Indiana, to be educated;
+and there, to be sure, I read the "Lives of the Saints," aspired to be
+a saint, and put pebbles in my small shoes to "mortify the flesh,"
+because I was told that a good priest, Father Hudson&mdash;whom I all but
+worshipped&mdash;used to do so.  But even at Notre Dame, and much more in
+Denver, I was homesick for the farm; and at last I was allowed to
+return to Jackson to be cared for by my Protestant relatives.  They
+sent me to a Baptist school till I was seventeen.  And when I was
+recalled to Denver, because of the failure of my father's health, I
+went to work to help earn for the household, with no strong attachment
+for any church and with no recognized membership in any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose there is no one who does not look back upon his past and
+wonder what he should have become in life if this or that crucial event
+had not occurred to set his destiny.  It seems to me that if it had not
+been for the sudden death of my father I, too, might have found our
+jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey without
+realizing what I was about.  I should have been a lawyer, I know; for I
+had had the ambition from my earliest boyhood, and I had been confirmed
+in it by my success in debating at school.  (Once, at Notre Dame, I
+spoke for a full hour in successful defence of the proposition that
+Colorado was the "greatest state in the Union," and proved at least
+that I had a lawyer's "wind.")  But I should probably have been a
+lawyer who has learned his pleasant theories of life in the colleges.
+And on the night that my father died, the crushing realities of poverty
+put out an awful and compelling hand on me, and my struggle with them
+began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was eighteen years old, the eldest of four children.  I had been
+"writing proofs" in the Denver land office, for claimants who had filed
+on Government land; and I had saved $150 of my salary before my work
+there ceased.  I found, after my father's death, that this $150 was all
+we had in the world, and $130 of it went for funeral expenses.  His
+life had been insured for $15,000, and we believed that the premiums
+had all been paid, but we could not find the last receipt; the agent
+denied having received the payment; the policy had lapsed on the day
+before my father's death; and we got nothing.  Our furniture had been
+mortgaged; we were allowed only enough of it to furnish a little house
+on Santa Fé Avenue; and later we moved to a cottage on lower West
+Colfax Avenue, in which Negroes have since lived.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went to work at a salary of $10 a month, in a real estate office&mdash;as
+office boy&mdash;and carried a "route" of newspapers in the morning before
+the office opened, and did janitor work at night when it closed.  After
+a month of that, I got a better place, as office boy, with a mining
+company, at a salary of $25 a month.  And finally, my younger brother
+found work in a law office and I "swapped jobs" with him&mdash;because I
+wished to study law!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the office of Mr. R. D. Thompson, who still practises in Denver;
+and his example as an incorruptibly honest lawyer has been one of the
+best and strongest influences of my life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had that one ambition&mdash;to be a lawyer.  Associated with it I seem to
+have had an unusual curiosity about politics.  And where I got either
+the ambition or the curiosity, I have no idea.  My father's mother was
+a Greenleaf,[1] and related to the author of "Greenleaf on Evidence,"
+but my father himself had nothing of the legal mind.  As a boy, living
+in Mississippi, he had joined the Confederate army when he was
+preparing for the University of Virginia, had attained the rank of
+captain, had become General Forrest's private secretary, and had
+written&mdash;or largely helped to write&mdash;General Forrest's autobiography.
+He was idealistic, enthusiastic, of an inventive genius, with a really
+remarkable command of English, and an absorbing love of books.  My
+mother's father was a Barr, from the north of Ireland, a Scotch-Irish
+Presbyterian, her mother was a Woodfalk of Jackson County, Tennessee, a
+Methodist.  The members of the family were practical, strong-willed,
+able men and women, but with no bent, that I know of, toward either law
+or politics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, one of the most vivid memories of my childhood in Jackson is
+of attending a political rally with my grandfather and hearing a Civil
+War veteran declaim against Republicans who "waved the bloody shirt"&mdash;a
+memory so strong that for years afterward I never saw a Republican
+without expecting to see the gory shirt on his back, and wondering
+vaguely why he was not in jail.  When I came to Denver, where the
+Republicans were dominant, I felt myself in the land of the enemy.  And
+when I "swapped" myself into Mr. Thompson's office, I was surprised to
+find that my employer, though a Republican from Pittsburg, was so human
+that one of the first things he did was to give me a suit of clothes.
+If there is anything more ridiculously dangerous than to blind a
+child's mind with such prejudices, I do not know what it is.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, my own observations of what was going on about me were already
+opening my eyes.  I had read, in the newspapers, of how the Denver
+Republicans won the elections by fraud&mdash;by ballot-box stuffing and what
+not&mdash;and I had followed one "Soapy" Smith on the streets, from precinct
+to precinct, with his gang of election thieves, and had seen them vote
+not once but five times openly.  I had seen a young man, whom I knew,
+knocked down and arrested for "raising a disturbance" when he objected
+to "Soapy" Smith's proceeding; and the policeman who arrested him did
+it with a smile and a wink.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I came to Mr. Thompson to ask him how he, a Republican, could
+countenance such things, he assured me that much of what I had been
+reading and hearing of election frauds was a lie&mdash;the mere "whine" of
+the defeated party&mdash;and I saw that he believed what he said.  I knew
+that he was an honest, upright man; and I was puzzled.  What puzzled me
+still more was this: although the ministers in the churches and
+"prominent citizens" in all walks of life denounced the "election
+crooks" with the most laudable fervor, the election returns showed that
+the best people in the churches joined the worst people in the dives to
+vote the same ticket, and vote it "straight."  And I was most of all
+puzzled to find that when the elections were over, the opposition
+newspaper ceased its scolding, the voice of ministerial denunciation
+died away, and the crimes of the election thieves were condoned and
+forgotten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was puzzled.  I saw the jungle of vice and party prejudice, but I did
+not yet see "the Cat."  I saw its ears and its eyes there in the
+underbrush, but I did not know what they were.  I thought they were
+connected with the Republican party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then I came upon some more of the brute's anatomy.  Members of the
+Legislature in Denver were accused of fraud in the purchase of state
+supplies, and&mdash;some months later&mdash;members of the city government were
+accused of committing similar frauds with the aid of civic officials
+and prominent business men.  It was proved in court, for example, that
+bills for $3 had been raised to $300, that $200 had been paid for a
+bundle of hay worth $2, and $50 for a yard of cheesecloth worth five
+cents; barrels of ink had been bought for each legislator, though a
+pint would have sufficed; and an official of the Police Department was
+found guilty of conniving with a gambler named "Jim" Marshall to rob an
+express train.  I watched the cases in court.  I applauded at the
+meetings of leading citizens who denounced the grafters and passed
+resolutions in support of the candidates of the opposition party.  I
+waited to see the criminals punished.  And they were not punished.
+Their crimes were not denied.  They were publicly denounced by the
+courts and by the investigating committees, but somehow, for reasons
+not clear, they all went scot-free, on appeals.  Some mysterious power
+protected them, and I, in the boyish ardor of my ignorance, concluded
+that they were protected by the Republican "bloody shirt"&mdash;and I rushed
+into that (to me) great confederation of righteousness and all-decent
+government, the Democratic party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would be laughable to me now, if it were not so "sort of sad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, I was busy about the office, copying letters, running
+errands, carrying books to and from the court rooms, reading law in the
+intervals, and at night scrubbing the floors.  I was pale, thin,
+big-headed, with the body of an underfed child, and an ambition that
+kept me up half the night with Von Holst's "Constitutional Law,"
+Walker's "American Law," or a sheepskin volume of Lawson's "Leading
+Cases in Equity."  I was so mad to save every penny I could earn that
+instead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ate molasses and
+gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn
+my law that I did not take my sleep when I could get it.  The result
+was that I was stupid at my tasks, moody, melancholy, and so sensitive
+that my employer's natural dissatisfaction with my work put me into
+agonies of shame and despair of myself.  I became, as the boys say,
+"dopy."  I remember that one night, after I had scrubbed the floors of
+our offices, I took off the old trousers in which I had been working,
+hung them in a closet, and started home; and it was not until the cold
+wind struck my bare knees that I realized I was on the street in my
+shirt.  Often, when I was given a brief to work up for Mr. Thompson, I
+would slave over it until the small hours of the morning and then, to
+his disgust&mdash;and my unspeakable mortification&mdash;find that my work was
+valueless, that I had not seized the fundamental points of the case, or
+that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension of the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Worse than that, I was unhappy at home.  Poverty was fraying us all
+out.  If it was not exactly brutalizing us, it was warping us, breaking
+our healths, and ruining our dispositions.  My good mother&mdash;married out
+of a beautiful Southern home where she had lived a life that (as I
+remembered it) was all horseback rides and Negro servants&mdash;had started
+out bravely in this debasing existence in a shanty, but it was wearing
+her out.  She was passing through a critical period of her life, and
+she had no care, no comforts.  I have often since been ashamed of
+myself that I did not sympathize with her and understand her, but I was
+too young to understand, and too miserable myself to sympathize.  It
+seemed to me that my life was not worth living&mdash;that every one had lost
+faith in me&mdash;that I should never succeed in the law or anything
+else&mdash;that I had no brains&mdash;that I should never do anything but scrub
+floors and run messages.  And after a day that had been more than
+usually discouraging in the office and an evening of exasperated misery
+at home, I got a revolver and some cartridges, locked myself in my
+room, confronted myself desperately in the mirror, put the muzzle of
+the loaded pistol to my temple, and pulled the trigger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hammer snapped sharply on the cartridge; a great wave of horror and
+revulsion swept over me in a rush of blood to my head, and I dropped
+the revolver on the floor and threw myself on my bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By some miracle the cartridge had not exploded; but the nervous shock
+of that instant when I felt the trigger yield and the muzzle rap
+against my forehead with the impact of the hammer&mdash;that shock was
+almost as great as a very bullet in the brain.  I realized my folly, my
+weakness; and I went back to my life with something of a man's
+determination to crush the circumstances that had almost crushed me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why do I tell that?  Because there are so many people in the world who
+believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy
+of the slums is as callous as he seems dull.  Because so many people
+believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a
+weak and vicious man.  Because I came out of that morbid period of
+adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible
+one of the first courts established in America for the protection as
+well as the correction of children.  Because I was never afterward as
+afraid of anything as of my own weakness, my own cowardice&mdash;so that
+when the agents of the Beast in the courts and in politics threatened
+me with all the abominations of their rage if I did not commit moral
+suicide for <I>them</I>, my fear of yielding to them was so great that I
+attacked them more desperately than ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was about this time, too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws
+of our metaphorical man-eater.  That was during the conflict between
+Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver.  He had the
+appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law,
+and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise
+enforce the laws against vice in Denver, he read them out of office.
+They refused to go, and defied him, with the police at their backs.  He
+threatened to call out the militia and drive them from the City Hall.
+The whole town was in an uproar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One night, in the previous summer, I had followed the excited crowds to
+Coliseum Hall to hear the Governor speak, and I had seen him rise like
+some old Hebrew prophet, with his long white beard and patriarchal head
+of hair, and denounce iniquity and political injustice and the
+oppressions of the predatory rich.  He appealed to the Bible in a calm
+prediction that, if the reign of lawlessness did not cease, in time to
+come "blood would flow in the land even unto the horses' bridles."
+(And he earned for himself, thereby, the nickname of "Bloody Bridles"
+Waite.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now it began to appear that his prediction was about to come true; for
+he called out the militia, and the Board armed the police.  My brother
+was a militiaman, and I kept pace with him as his regiment marched from
+the Armouries to attack the City Hall.  There were riflemen on the
+towers and in the windows of that building; and on the roofs of the
+houses for blocks around were sharpshooters and armed gamblers and the
+defiant agents of the powers who were behind the Police Board in their
+fight.  Gatling guns were rushed through the streets; cannon were
+trained on the City Hall; the long lines of militia were drawn up
+before the building; and amid the excited tumult of the mob and the
+eleventh-hour conferences of the Committee of Public Safety, and the
+hurry of mounted officers and the marching of troops, we all waited
+with our hearts in our mouths for the report of the first shot.
+Suddenly, in the silence that expected the storm, we heard the sound of
+bugles from the direction of the railroad station, and at the head of
+another army&mdash;a body of Federal soldiers ordered from Fort Logan by
+President Cleveland, at the frantic call of the Committee of Public
+Safety&mdash;a mounted officer rode between the lines of militia and police,
+and in the name of the President commanded peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The militia withdrew.  The crowds dispersed.  The police and their
+partisans put up their guns, and the Beast, still defiant, went back
+sullenly to cover.  Not until the Supreme Court had decided that
+Governor Waite had the right and the power to unseat the Board&mdash;not
+till then was the City Hall surrendered; and even so, at the next
+election (the Beast turning polecat), "Bloody Bridles" Waite was
+defeated after a campaign of lies, ridicule, and abuse, and the men
+whom he had opposed were returned to office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had eyes, but I did not see.  I thought the whole quarrel was a
+personal matter between the Police Board and Governor Waite, who seemed
+determined merely to show them that he was master; and if my young
+brother had been shot down by a policeman that night, I suppose I
+should have joined in the curses upon poor old "Bloody Bridles."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, my prospects in the office had begun to improve.  I had had my
+salary raised, and I had ceased doing janitor work.  I had become more
+of a clerk and less of an office boy.  A number of us "kids" had got up
+a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of
+another room in the old Denver University building, where, in the
+gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes" and defend imaginary cases.
+(That, by the way, was the beginning of the Denver University Law
+School.)  I read my Blackstone, Kent, Parsons&mdash;working night and
+day&mdash;and I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law."  Long
+before I had passed my examinations and been called to the bar, Mr.
+Thompson would give me demurrers to argue in court; and, having been
+told that I had only a pretty poor sort of legal mind, I worked twice
+as hard to make up for my deficiencies.  I argued my first case, a
+damage suit, when I was nineteen.  And at last there happened one of
+those lucky turns common in jury cases, and it set me on my feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man had been held by the law on several counts of obtaining goods
+under false pretences.  He had been tried on the first count by an
+assistant district attorney, and the jury had acquitted him.  He had
+been tried on the second count by another assistant, who was one of our
+great criminal lawyers, and the jury had disagreed.  There was a debate
+as to whether it was worth while to try him for a third time, and I
+proposed that I should take the case, since I had been working on it
+and thought there was still a chance of convicting him.  They let me
+have my way, and though the evidence in the third charge was the same
+as before&mdash;except as to the person defrauded&mdash;the jury, by good luck,
+found against him.  It was the turning point in my struggle.  It gave
+me confidence in myself; and it taught me never to give up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now I began to come upon "the Cat" again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at
+the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of
+the great smelter companies of Colorado.  The boy had suffered a
+fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon&mdash;because of a hasty and
+ill-considered diagnosis, I believed&mdash;had treated him for a bruised
+hip.  The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to
+damages, called me a blackmailer&mdash;and that was enough.  I forced the
+case to trial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young
+fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]&mdash;though that was not his
+name&mdash;and this was to be our first case.  We were opposed by Charles J.
+Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was
+puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of
+prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to
+dismiss it.  The judge refused the motion, and for so doing&mdash;as he
+afterward told me himself&mdash;he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose
+presence in the court had puzzled me.  After a three weeks' trial, in
+which we worked night and day for the plaintiff&mdash;with X-ray photographs
+and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the
+medical school where I prepared them&mdash;the jury stood eleven to one in
+our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again.  The second
+time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we
+did not give up.  It had been all fun for us&mdash;and for the town.  The
+word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting
+the corporation heavyweights.  It's more fun than a circus."  And we
+were confident that we could win; we knew that we were right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One evening after dinner, when we were sitting in the dingy little back
+room on Champa Street that served us as an office, A. M.
+Stevenson&mdash;"Big Steve"&mdash;politician and attorney for the Denver City
+Tramway Company, came shouldering in to see us&mdash;a heavy-jowled,
+heavy-waisted, red-faced bulk of good-humour&mdash;looking as if he had just
+walked out of a political cartoon.  "Hello, boys," he said jovially.
+"How's she going?  Making a record for yourselves up in court, eh?
+Making a record for yourselves.  Well!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smiled at us, with his
+inevitable cigarette in his mouth&mdash;his ridiculously inadequate
+cigarette.  (When he puffed it, he looked like a fat boy blowing
+bubbles.)  "Wearing yourselves out, eh?  Working night and day?  Ain't
+you getting about tired of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We got eleven to one each time," I said.  "We'll win yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Uh-huh.  You will, eh?"  He laughed amusedly.  "One man stood out
+against you each time, wasn't there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he said, "there always will be.  You ain't going to get a
+verdict in this case.  You can't.  Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't
+I?  Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case.  Get
+something for your work.  Don't be a pair of fools.  Settle it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He winked a fat eye.  "Jury'll hang.  Every time.  I'm here to tell you
+so.  Better settle it." [3]
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We refused to.  What was the use of courts if we could not get justice
+for this crippled boy?  What was the use of practising law if we could
+not get a verdict on evidence that would convince a blind man?  Settle
+it?  Never!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they went to our client and persuaded the boy to give up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Big Steve," attorney for the tramway company!  The gas company's
+officers in court!  The business men insulting the judge in his Club!
+The defendant's brother at the head of one of the smelter companies!  I
+began to "connect up" "the Cat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gardener and I held a council of war.  If it was possible for these men
+to "hang" juries whenever they chose, there was need of a law to make
+something less than a unanimous decision by a jury sufficient to give a
+verdict in civil cases.  Colorado needed a "three-fourths jury law."
+Gardener was a popular young man, a good "mixer," a member of several
+fraternal orders, a hail-fellow-well-met, and as interested as I was in
+politics.  He had been in the insurance business before he took up law,
+and he had friends everywhere.  Why should he not go into politics?&mdash;as
+he had often spoken of doing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the intervals of the Smith suit, we had had a case in which a
+mother, whose child had been killed by a street car, had been unable to
+recover damages from the tramway company, because the company claimed,
+under the law, that her child was worthless alive or dead; and there
+was need of a statute permitting such as she to recover damages for
+distress and anguish of mind.  We had had another case in which a young
+factory worker had been injured by the bursting of an emery wheel; and
+the law held that the boy was guilty of "contributory negligence"
+because he had continued to work at the wheel after he had found a flaw
+in it&mdash;although he had had no choice except to work at it or leave the
+factory and find employment elsewhere.  There was need of a law giving
+workmen better protection in such circumstances.  Why should not
+Gardener enter the Legislature and introduce these bills?&mdash;which I was
+eager to draft.  Why not, indeed!  The state needed them; the people
+wanted them; the courts were crippled and justice was balked because of
+the lack of them.  Here was an opportunity for worthy ambition to serve
+the community and help his fellow-man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night, with all the high hopes and generous ideals and merciful
+ignorance of youth, we decided&mdash;without knowing what we were about&mdash;to
+go into the jungle and attack the Beast!
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CAT PURRS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Denver was then, as it is now, a beautiful city, built on a slope,
+between the prairies and mountains, always sunny, cool, and clear-skyed
+with the very sparkle of happiness in its air; and on the crown of its
+hill, facing the romantic prospect of the Rockies, the State Capitol
+raised its dome&mdash;as proud as the ambition of a liberty-loving
+people&mdash;the symbol of an aspiration and the expression of its power.
+That Capitol, I confess, was to me a sort of granite temple erected by
+the Commonwealth of Colorado to law, to justice, to the ideals of
+self-government that have made our republic the promised land of all
+the oppressed of Europe; and I could conceive of no nobler work than to
+serve those ideals in the assembly halls of that building, with those
+eternal mountains on the horizon and that sun of freedom overhead.
+Surely a man may confess so much, without shame, of his youth and his
+inexperience.&#8230;  It is not merely the gold on the dome of the
+Capitol that has given it another look to me now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the year 1897.  I was about twenty-eight years old, and my
+partner, Gardener, was three years younger.  He was more worldly-wise
+than I was, even then; for while I had been busy with briefs and
+court-work, he had been the "business head" of the firm, out among
+business friends and acquaintances&mdash;"mixing," as they say&mdash;and through
+his innumerable connections, here and there, with this man and that
+fraternity, bringing in the cases that kept us employed.  He was a
+"Silver Republican"; I, a Democrat.  But we both knew that if he was to
+get into politics it must be with the backing of the party
+"organization" and the endorsement of the party "boss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The "Silver Republican" boss of the day was a man whom we both
+admired&mdash;George Graham.  Everybody admired him.  Everybody was fond of
+him.  "Why," they would tell you, "there isn't a man in town who is
+kinder to his family.  He's such a good man in his home!  And he's so
+charitable!"  At Christmas time, when free baskets of food were
+distributed to the poor, George Graham was chairman of the committee
+for their distribution.  He was prominent in the fraternal orders and
+used his political power to help the needy, the widow, and the orphan.
+He had an engaging manner of fellowship, a personal magnetism, a kindly
+interest in aspiring young men, a pleasant appearance&mdash;smooth and dark
+in complexion, with a gentle way of smiling.  I liked him; and he
+seemed to discover an affection for both Gardener and me, as we became
+more intimate with him, in the course of Gardener's progress toward his
+coveted nomination by the party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That progress was so rapid and easy that it surprised us.  We knew, of
+course, that we had attracted some public attention and much newspaper
+notice by our legal battles with "the corporation heavyweights" in our
+three big cases against the surgeon, the tramway company, and the
+factory owner.  But this did not account to us for the ease with which
+Gardener penetrated to the inner circles of the Boss's court.  It did
+not explain why Graham should come to see us in our office, and call us
+by our first names.  The explanation that we tacitly accepted was one
+more personal and flattering to us.  And when Gardener would come back
+from a chat with Graham, full of "inside information" about the party's
+plans&mdash;about who was to be nominated for this office at the coming
+convention, and what chance So-and-so had for that one&mdash;the sure proofs
+(to us) that he was being admitted to the intimate secrets of the party
+and found worthy of the confidence of those in power&mdash;I was as proud of
+Gardener as only a young man can be of a friend who has all the
+brilliant qualities that he himself lacks.  Gardener was a handsome
+fellow, well built, always well dressed, self-assured and ambitious; I
+did not wonder that the politicians admired him and made much of him.
+I accepted his success as a tribute to those qualities in him that had
+already attached me to him with an affection rather more than brotherly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We said nothing to the politicians about our projected bills.  Indeed,
+from the first, my interest in our measures of reform was greater than
+Gardener's.  His desire to be in the Legislature Was due to a natural
+ambition to "get on" in life, to acquire power in the community as well
+as the wealth and distinction that come with power.  Such ambitions
+were, of course, beyond me; I had none of the qualities that would make
+them possible; and I could only enjoy them, as it were, by proxy, in
+Gardener's person.  I enjoyed, in the same way, his gradual penetration
+behind the scenes in politics.  I saw, with him, that the party
+convention, to which we had at first looked as the source of honours,
+was really only a sort of puppet show of which the Boss held the wires.
+All the candidates for nomination were selected by Graham in
+advance&mdash;in secret caucus with his ward leaders, executive
+committeemen, and such other "practical" politicians as "Big
+Steve"&mdash;and the convention, with more or less show of independence, did
+nothing but ratify his choice.  When I spoke of canvassing some of the
+chosen delegates of the convention, Gardener said: "What's the use of
+talking to those small fry?  If we can get the big fellows, we've got
+the rest.  They do what the big ones tell them&mdash;and won't do anything
+they aren't told.  You leave it to me."  I had only hoped to see him in
+the Lower House, but he, with his wiser audacity, soon proclaimed
+himself a candidate for the Senate.  "We can get the big thing as easy
+as the little one," he said.  "I'm going to tell Graham it's the Senate
+or nothing for me."  And he got his promise.  And when we knew, at
+last, that his name was really on "the slate" of candidates to be
+presented to the convention, we were ready to throw up our hats and
+cheer for ourselves&mdash;and for the Boss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The convention met in September, 1898.  There had been a fusion of
+Silver Republicans, Democrats, and Populists, that year, and the
+political offices had been apportioned out among the faithful
+machine-men of these parties.  Gardener was nominated by "Big Steve,"
+in a eulogistic speech that was part of the farce; and the convention
+ratified the nomination with the unanimity of a stage mob.  We knew
+that his election was as sure as sunrise, and I set to work looking up
+models for my bills with all the enthusiasm of the first reformer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile there was the question of the campaign and of the campaign
+expenses.  Gardener had been assessed $500 by the committee as his
+share of the legitimate costs of the election, and Boss Graham
+generously offered to get the money for him "from friends."  We were
+rather inclined to let Graham do so, feeling a certain delicacy about
+refusing his generosity and being aware, too, that we were not
+millionaires.  But Graham was not the only one who made the offer; for
+example, Ed. Chase, since head of the gambler's syndicate in Denver,
+made similar proposals of kindly aid; and we decided, at last, that
+perhaps it would be well to be quite independent.  Our law practice was
+improving.  Doubtless, it would continue to improve now that we were
+"in right" with the political powers.  We put up $250 each and paid the
+assessment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The usual business of political rallies, mass-meetings, and campaign
+speeches followed in due course, and in November, 1898, Gardener was
+elected a State Senator on the fusion ticket.  I had been busy with my
+"three-fourths jury" bill, studying the constitution of the State of
+Colorado, comparing it with those of the other states, and making
+myself certain that such a law as we proposed was possible.  Unlike
+most of the state constitutions, Colorado's preserved inviolate the
+right of jury trial in criminal cases only, and therefore it seemed to
+me that the Legislature had plenary power to regulate it in civil
+suits.  I found that the Supreme Court of the state had so decided in
+two cases, and I felt very properly elated; there seemed to be nothing
+to prevent us having a law that should make "hung" juries practically
+impossible in Colorado and relieve the courts of an abuse that thwarted
+justice in scores of cases.  At the same time I prepared a bill
+allowing parents to recover damages for "anguish of mind" when a child
+of theirs was killed in an accident; and, after much study, I worked up
+an "employer's liability" bill to protect men who were compelled by
+necessity to work under needlessly dangerous conditions.  With these
+three bills in his pocket, Senator Gardener went up to the Capitol,
+like another David, and I went joyfully with him to aid and abet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Happy?  I was as happy as if Gardener had been elected President and I
+was to be his Secretary of State.  I was as happy as a man who has
+found his proper work and knows that it is for the good of his fellows.
+I would not have changed places that day with any genius of the fine
+arts who had three masterpieces to unveil to an admiring world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I did not know, of course&mdash;but I was soon to learn&mdash;that the
+Legislature's time was almost wholly taken up with the routine work of
+government, that most of the bills passed were concerned with
+appropriations and such necessary details of administration, and that
+only twenty or thirty bills such as ours&mdash;dealing with other
+matters&mdash;could possibly be passed, among the hundreds offered.  It was
+Boss Graham who warned us that we had better concentrate on one
+measure, if we wished to succeed with any at all, and we decided to put
+all our strength behind the "three-fourths jury" bill.  Since Graham
+seemed to doubt its constitutionality, I went to the Attorney General
+for his opinion, and he referred me to his assistant&mdash;whom I convinced.
+I came back with the assistant's decision that the Legislature had
+power to pass such a law, and Gardener promptly introduced it in the
+Senate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It proved at once mildly unpopular, and after a preliminary debate, in
+which the senators rather laughed at it as visionary and
+unconstitutional, it was referred to the Attorney General for his
+opinion.  We waited, confidently.  To our amazement he reported it
+unconstitutional, and the very assistant who had given me a favourable
+opinion before, now conducted the case against it.  Nothing daunted,
+Gardener fought to get it referred to the Supreme Court, under the law;
+and the Senate sent it there.  I got up an elaborate brief, had it
+printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing it before the
+Supreme Court judges.  They held that the Court had already twice found
+the Legislature possessed of plenary powers in such matters, and
+Gardener brought the bill back into the Senate triumphantly, and got a
+favourable report from the Judiciary Committee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed.  He had warned
+Gardener that the bill was distasteful to him and to those whom he
+called his "friends."  It was particularly distasteful, it seemed, to
+the Denver City Tramway Company.  And he could promise, he said, that
+if we dropped the bill, the railway company would see that we got at
+least four thousand dollars' worth of litigation a year to handle.  To
+both Gardener and myself, flushed with success and roused to the
+battle, this offer seemed an amusing confession of defeat on the part
+of the opposition; and we went ahead more gaily than ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were enjoying ourselves.  If we had been a pair of chums in college,
+we could not have had a better time.  Whenever I could get away from my
+court cases and my office work, I rushed up to watch the fight in the
+Senate, as eagerly as a Freshman hurrying from his studies to see his
+athletic room-mate carry everything before him in a football game.  The
+whole atmosphere of the Capitol&mdash;with its corridors of coloured marble,
+its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal balustrades, its
+great staircases&mdash;all its majesty of rich grandeur and solidity of
+power&mdash;affected me with an increased respect for the functions of
+government that were discharged there and for the men who had them to
+discharge.  I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon
+myself when I was introduced as "Senator Gardener's law partner, sir";
+and I accepted the bows and greetings of lobbyists and legislators with
+all the pleasure in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Gardener got our bill up for its final reading in the Senate, I
+was there to watch, and it tickled me to the heart to see him.  He made
+a fine figure of an orator, the handsomest man in the Senate; and he
+was not afraid to raise his voice and look as independent and
+determined as his words.  He had given the senators to understand that
+any one who opposed his bill would have him as an obstinate opponent on
+every other measure; and the Senate evidently realized that it would be
+wise to let him have his way.  The bill was passed.  But it had to go
+through the Lower House, too, and it was sent there, to be taken care
+of by its opponents&mdash;with the tongue in the cheek, no doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I met Boss Graham in the corridor.  "Hello, Ben," he greeted me.
+"What's the matter with that partner of yours?" I laughed; he looked
+worried.  "Come in here," he said.  "I'd like to have a talk with you."
+He led me into a quiet side room and shut the door.  "Now look here,"
+he said.  "Did you boys ever stop to think what a boat you'll be in
+with this law that you're trying to get, if you ever have to defend a
+corporation in a jury suit?  Now they tell me down at the tramway
+offices"&mdash;the offices of the Denver City Tramway Company&mdash;"that they're
+going to need a lot more legal help.  There's every prospect that
+they'll appoint you boys assistant counsel.  But they can't expect to
+do much, even with you bright boys as counsel, if they have this law
+against them.  You know that all the money there is in law is in
+corporation business.  I don't see what you're fighting for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I explained, as well as I could, that we were fighting for the bill
+because we thought it was right&mdash;that it was needed.  He did not seem
+to believe me; he objected that this sort of talk was not "practical."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," I ended, "we've made up our minds to put it through.  And we're
+going to try."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll find you're making a mistake, boy," he warned me.  "You'll find
+you're making a mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We laughed over it together&mdash;Gardener and I.  It was another proof to
+us that we had our opponents on their knees.  We thought we understood
+Graham's position in the matter; he had made no disguise of the fact
+that he was intimate and friendly with Mr. William G. Evans&mdash;the great
+"Bill" Evans&mdash;head of the tramway company and an acknowledged power in
+politics.  And it was natural to us that Graham should do what he could
+to induce us to spare his friends.  That was all very well, but we had
+made no pledges; we were under no obligations to any one except the
+public whom we served.  Gardener was making himself felt.  He did not
+intend to stultify himself, even for Graham's good "friends."  I, of
+course, went along with him, rejoicing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had another bill in hand (House Bill 235) to raise the tax on large
+foreign insurance companies so as to help replenish the depleted
+treasury of the state.  Governor Thomas had been appealing for money;
+the increased tax was conceded to be just, and it would add at least
+$100,000 in revenue to the public coffers.  Gardener handled it well in
+the Senate, and&mdash;though we were indirectly offered a bribe of $2,500 to
+drop it&mdash;he got it passed and returned it to the Lower House.  He had
+two other bills&mdash;one our "anguish of mind" provision and the second a
+bill regulating the telephone companies; but he was not able to move
+them out of committee.  The opposition was silent but solid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It became my duty to watch the two bills that we had been able to get
+as far as the House calendar on final passage&mdash;to see that they were
+given their turn for consideration.  The jury bill came to the top very
+soon, but it was passed over, and next day it was on the bottom of the
+list.  This happened more than once.  And once it disappeared from the
+calendar altogether.  The Clerk of the House, when I demanded an
+explanation, said that it was an oversight&mdash;a clerical error&mdash;and put
+it back at the foot.  I began to suspect jugglery, but I was not yet
+sure of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day while I was on this sentry duty, a lobbyist who was a member of
+a fraternal order to which I belonged, came to me with the fraternal
+greeting and a thousand dollars in bills.  "Lindsey," he said, "this is
+a legal fee for an argument we want you to make before the committee,
+as a lawyer, against that insurance bill.  It's perfectly legitimate.
+We don't want you to do anything except in a legal way.  You know our
+other lawyer has made an able argument, showing how the extra tax will
+come out of the people in increased premiums"&mdash;and so on.  I refused
+the money and continued trying to push along the bill.  In a few days
+he came back to me, with a grin.  "Too bad you didn't take that money,"
+he said.  "There's lots of it going round.  But the joke of it is, I
+got the whole thing fixed up for $250.  Watch Cannon."  I watched
+Cannon&mdash;Wilbur F. Cannon, a member of the House and a "floor leader"
+there.  He had already voted in favour of the bill.  But&mdash;to anticipate
+somewhat the sequence of events&mdash;I saw Wilbur F. Cannon, in the
+confusion and excitement of the closing moments of the session, rush
+down the aisle toward the Speaker's chair and make a motion concerning
+the insurance bill&mdash;to what effect I could not hear.  The motion was
+put, in the midst of the uproar, and declared carried; and the bill was
+killed.  It was killed so neatly that there is to-day no record of its
+decease in the official account of the proceedings of the House!
+Expert treason, bold and skilful! [4]
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, I had been standing by our jury bill.  It went up and it
+went down on the calendar, and at last when it arrived at a hearing it
+was referred back to the Judiciary Committee with two other
+anti-corporation bills.  The session was drawing toward the day
+provided by the constitution for its closing, and we could no longer
+doubt that we were being juggled out of our last chance by the Clerk
+and the Speaker&mdash;who was Mr. William G. Smith, since known as "Tramway
+Bill." [5]
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," Gardener said.  "Not one of Speaker Smith's House bills
+will get through the Senate until he lets our jury bill get to a vote."
+He told Speaker Smith what he intended to do and next day he began to
+do it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That afternoon, tired out, I was resting, during a recess of the House,
+in a chair that stood in a shadowed corner, when the Speaker hurried by
+heavily, evidently unaware of me, and rang a telephone.  I heard him
+mention the name of "Mr. Evans," in a low, husky voice.  I heard,
+sleepily, not consciously listening; and I did note at first connect
+"Mr. Evans" with William G. Evans of the tramway company.  But a little
+later I heard the Speaker say: "Well, unless Gardener can be pulled
+off, we'll have to let that 'three-fourths' bill out.  He's raising
+hell with a lot of our measures over in the Senate&#8230;&nbsp;  What?&#8230;
+Yes.&#8230;  Well, get at it pretty quick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those hoarse, significant words wakened like the thrill of an electric
+shock&mdash;wakened to an understanding of the strength of "special
+interests" that were opposed to us&mdash;and wakened in me, too, the anger
+of a determination to fight to a finish.  The Powers that had "fixed"
+our juries, were now fixing Legislature.  They had laughed at us in the
+courts; they were going to laugh at us in the Capitol!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Speaker Smith came lumbering out.  He was a heavily built man, with a
+big jaw.  And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed
+from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt&mdash;lowering
+his head like a bull&mdash;as if he were saying to himself: "What!  That
+d&mdash;&mdash; little devil!  I'll bet he heard me!"  But he did not speak.  And
+neither did I.  He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and
+I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had
+heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of
+course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby.
+Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone
+conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was
+"reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a
+vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the
+session to death.  Smith fumed and blustered, but Gardener, with the
+blood in his face, out-blustered and out-fumed him.  The Speaker, later
+in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject
+me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist.  But he had to allow the
+bill to come up, and it was finally passed, with very little
+opposition&mdash;for reasons which I was afterward to understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had yet to be signed by the Speaker; and it had to be signed before
+the close of the session or it could not become a law.  I heard rumours
+that some anti-corporation bills were going to be "lost" by the Chief
+Clerk, so that they might not be signed; and I kept my eye on him.  He
+was a fat-faced, stupid-looking, flabby creature&mdash;by name D. H.
+Dickason&mdash;who did not appear capable of doing anything very daring.  I
+saw the chairman of the Enrolling Committee place our bill on
+Dickason's desk, among those waiting for the Speaker's signature;
+and&mdash;while the House was busy&mdash;I withdrew it from the pile and placed
+it to one side, conspicuously, so that I could see it from a distance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the time came for signing&mdash;sure enough! the Clerk was missing, and
+some bills were missing with him.  The House was crowded&mdash;floor and
+galleries&mdash;and the whole place went into an uproar at once.  Nobody
+seemed to know which bills were gone; every member who had an
+anti-corporation bill thought it was his that had been stolen; and they
+all together broke out into denunciations of the Speaker, the Clerk,
+and everybody else whom they thought concerned in the outrage.  One man
+jumped up on his chair and tried to dominate the pandemonium, shouting
+and waving his hands.  The galleries went wild with noisy excitement.
+Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House,
+cursing and shaking their fists.  Others rushed here and there trying
+to find some trace of the Clerk.  The Speaker, breathless from calling
+for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them
+rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last, from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I
+saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a
+blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an
+abject terror.  He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin,
+providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works;
+but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to
+the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and
+it was the Senator now who had him by the neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and
+with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody
+concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the
+desperate haste of men working against time.  And our jury bill was
+signed!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was signed; and we had won!  (At least we thought so.)  And I walked
+out of the crowded glare of the session's close, into an April midnight
+that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet.  It seemed to me that
+the stars, even in Colorado, had never been brighter; they sparkled in
+the clear blackness of the sky with a joyful brilliancy.  A cool breeze
+drew down from the mountains as peacefully as the breath in sleep.  It
+was a night to make a man take on his hat and breathe out his last
+vexation in a sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had won.  What did it matter that the Boss, the Speaker, the Clerk
+and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in
+selfishness?  That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth
+and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that
+arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol.  Had not even
+we, two "boys"&mdash;as they called us&mdash;put a just law before them and made
+them take up the pen and sign it?  If we had done so much without even
+a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to
+aid and back us, what would the future not do when we found the help
+that an aroused community would surely give us?  Hope?  The whole night
+was hushed and peaceful with hope.  The very houses that I
+passed&mdash;walking home up the tree-lined streets&mdash;seemed to me in some
+way so quiet because they were so sure.  All was right with the world.
+We had won.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+[1] A New England family, to which the poet Whittier was related.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+[2] This is one of the few fictitious names used in the story.  Judge
+Lindsey wishes it disguised "for old sake's sake."
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+[3] Many of the conversations reported in this volume are given from
+memory, and they are liable to errors of memory in the use of a word or
+a turn of expression.  But they are not liable to error in substance.
+They are the unadorned truth, clearly recollected.&mdash;B. B. L.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+[4] Wilbur F. Cannon is now Pure Food Commissioner in Colorado.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+[5] Smith is now tax agent in the tramway offices.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6), by
+Various, Edited by Asa Don Dickinson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6)
+       Orators and Reformers
+
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Asa Don Dickinson
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2006  [eBook #18597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III
+(OF 6)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
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+
+
+STORIES OF ACHIEVEMENT, VOLUME III
+
+Orators and Reformers
+
+Edited by
+
+ASA DON DICKINSON
+
+Orators and Reformers
+
+ DESMOSTHENES
+ ELIHU BURRITT
+ JOHN B. GOUGH
+ FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+ HENRY WARD BEECHER
+ BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+ BEN. B. LINDSEY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Henry Ward Beecher]
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City ---- New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1925
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+In the preparation of this volume the publishers have received from
+several houses and authors generous permissions to reprint copyright
+material.  For this they wish to express their cordial gratitude.  In
+particular, acknowledgments are due to the Houghton Mifflin Company for
+the extract concerning Elihu Burritt; to George W. Jacobs & Co. for the
+extract from Booker T. Washington's "Frederick Douglass"; to P. B.
+Bromfield for permission to use passages from "The Biography of Henry
+Ward Beecher"; to the late Booker T. Washington for permission to
+reprint extracts from "Up From Slavery"; to Judge Ben. B. Lindsey for
+permission to reprint from "The Beast."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ORATORS AND REFORMERS
+
+DEMOSTHENES
+  The Orator Who Stammered
+
+ELIHU BURRITT
+  "The Learned Blacksmith"
+
+JOHN B. GOUGH
+  The Conquest of a Bad Habit
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+  The Slave Who Stole Freedom
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER
+  The Boy Who Half-heartedly Joined the Church
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+  The Boy Who Slept Under the Sidewalk
+
+BEN. B. LINDSEY
+  The Man Who Fights the Beast
+
+
+
+
+DEMOSTHENES
+
+(384-322 B. C.)
+
+THE ORATOR WHO STAMMERED
+
+Modern critics are fond of discriminating between talent and genius.
+The fire of _genius_, it seems, will flame resplendent even in spite of
+an unworthy possessor's neglect.  But the man with _talent_ which must
+be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by
+its help--that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in
+sympathy.  Every schoolboy knows that Demosthenes practised declamation
+on the seashore, with his mouth full of pebbles.  This description of
+the unlovely old Athenian with the compelling tongue is Plutarch's
+contribution to the literature of self-help.
+
+
+From Plutarch's "Lives of Illustrious Men."
+
+The orator Callistratus was to plead in the cause which the city of
+Oropus had depending; and the expectation of the public was greatly
+raised, both by the powers of the orator, which were then in the
+highest repute, and by the importance of the trial.  Demosthenes,
+hearing the governors and tutors agree among themselves to attend the
+trial, with much importunity prevailed on his master to take him to
+hear the pleadings.  The master, having some acquaintance with the
+officers who opened the court, got his young pupil a seat where he
+could hear the orators without being seen.  Callistratus had great
+success, and his abilities were extremely admired.  Demosthenes was
+fired with a spirit of emulation.  When he saw with what distinction
+the orator was conducted home, and complimented by the people, he was
+struck still more with the power of that commanding eloquence which
+could carry all before it.  From this time, therefore, he bade adieu to
+the other studies and exercises in which boys are engaged, and applied
+himself with great assiduity to declaiming, in hopes of being one day
+numbered among the orators.  Isaeus was the man he made use of as his
+preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was
+that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten
+_minae_, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he
+preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more fit for public
+use.
+
+Hermippus says he met with an account in certain anonymous memoirs that
+Demosthenes likewise studied under Plato, and received great assistance
+from him in preparing to speak in public.  He adds, that Ctesibius used
+to say that Demosthenes was privately supplied by Callias the Syracusan
+and some others, with the systems of rhetoric taught by Isocrates and
+Alcidamus, and made his advantage of them.
+
+When his minority was expired, he called his guardians to account at
+law, and wrote orations against them.  As they found many methods of
+chicane and delay, he had great opportunity, as Thucydides says, to
+exercise his talent for the bar.  It was not without much pain and some
+risk that he gained his cause; and, at last, it was but a very small
+part of his patrimony that he could recover.  By this means, however,
+he acquired a proper assurance and some experience; and having tasted
+the honour and power that go in the train of eloquence, he attempted to
+speak in the public debates, and take a share in the administration.
+As it is said of Laomedon the Orchomenian, that, by the advice of his
+physicians, in some disorder of the spleen, he applied himself to
+running, and continued it constantly a great length of way, till he had
+gained such excellent health and breath that he tried for the crown at
+the public games, and distinguished himself in the long course; so it
+happened to Demosthenes, that he first appeared at the bar for the
+recovery of his own fortune, which had been so much embezzled; and
+having acquired in that cause a persuasive and powerful manner of
+speaking, he contested the crown, as I may call it, with the other
+orators before the general assembly.
+
+In his first address to the people he was laughed at and interrupted by
+their clamours, for the violence of his manner threw him into a
+confusion of periods and a distortion of his argument; besides he had a
+weakness and a stammering in his voice, and a want of breath, which
+caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for
+the audience to understand him.  At last, upon his quitting the
+assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him
+wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him to
+set him right.  "You," said he, "have a manner of speaking very like
+that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and
+cowardice.  You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular
+assembly nor prepare your body by exercise for the labour of the
+rostrum, but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and
+indolence."
+
+Another time, we are told, when his speeches had been ill-received, and
+he was going home with his head covered, and in the greatest distress,
+Satyrus, the player, who was an acquaintance of his, followed and went
+in with him.  Demosthenes lamented to him, "That though he was the most
+laborious of all the orators, and had almost sacrificed his health to
+that application, yet he could gain no favour with the people; but
+drunken seamen and other unlettered persons were heard, and kept the
+rostrum, while he was entirely disregarded."  "You say true," answered
+Satyrus, "but I will soon provide a remedy, if you will repeat to me
+some speech in Euripides or Sophocles."  When Demosthenes had done,
+Satyrus pronounced the same speech; and he did it with such propriety
+of action, and so much in character, that it appeared to the orator
+quite a different passage.  He now understood so well how much grace
+and dignity action adds to the best oration that he thought it a small
+matter to premeditate and compose, though with the utmost care, if the
+pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not attended to.  Upon this
+he built himself a subterraneous study which remained to our times.
+Thither he repaired every day to form his action and exercise his
+voice; and he would often stay there for two or three months together,
+shaving one side of his head, that, if he should happen to be ever so
+desirous of going abroad, the shame of appearing in that condition
+might keep him in.
+
+When he did go out on a visit, or received one, he would take something
+that passed in conversation, some business or fact that was reported to
+him, for a subject to exercise himself upon.  As soon as he had parted
+from his friends, he went to his study, where he repeated the matter in
+order as it passed, together with the arguments for and against it.
+The substance of the speeches which he heard he committed to memory,
+and afterward reduced them to regular sentences and periods, meditating
+a variety of corrections and new forms of expression, both of what
+others had said to him, and he had addressed to them.  Hence, it was
+concluded that he was not a man of much genius, and that all his
+eloquence was the effect of labour.  A strong proof of this seemed to
+be that he was seldom heard to speak anything extempore, and though the
+people often called upon him by name, as he sat in the assembly, to
+speak to the point debated, he would not do it unless he came prepared.
+For this many of the orators ridiculed him; and Pytheas, in particular,
+told him, "That all his arguments smelled of the lamp."  Demosthenes
+retorted sharply upon him, "Yes, indeed, but your lamp and mine, my
+friend, are not conscious to the same labours."  To others he did not
+pretend to deny his previous application, but told them, "He either
+wrote the whole of his orations, or spoke not without first committing
+part to writing."  He further affirmed, "That this shewed him a good
+member of a democratic state; for the coming prepared to the rostrum
+was a mark of respect for the people.  Whereas, to be regardless of
+what the people might think of a man's address shewed his inclination
+for oligarchy, and that he had rather gain his point by force than by
+persuasion."  Another proof they gave us of his want of confidence on
+any sudden occasion is, that when he happened to be put into disorder
+by the tumultuary behaviour of the people, Demades often rose up to
+support him in an extempore address, but he never did the same for
+Demades. . . .
+
+Upon the whole it appears that Demosthenes did not take Pericles
+entirely for his model.  He only adopted his action and delivery, and
+his prudent resolutions not to make a practice of speaking from a
+sudden impulse, or on any occasion that might present itself; being
+persuaded that it was to that conduct he owed his greatness.  Yet,
+while he chose not often to trust the success of his powers to fortune,
+he did not absolutely neglect the reputation which may be acquired by
+speaking on a sudden occasion; and if we believe Eratosthenes,
+Demetrius the Phalerean, and the comic poets, there was a greater
+spirit and boldness in his unpremeditated orations than in those he had
+committed to writing.  Eratosthenes says that in his extemporaneous
+harangues he often spoke as from a supernatural impulse; and Demetrius
+tells us that in an address to the people, like a man inspired, he once
+uttered this oath in verse:
+
+  By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods! . . .
+
+As for his personal defects, Demetrius the Phalerean gives us an
+account of the remedies he applied to them; and he says he had it from
+Demosthenes in his old age.  The hesitation and stammering of his
+tongue he corrected by practising to speak with pebbles in his mouth;
+and he strengthened his voice by running or walking uphill, and
+pronouncing some passage in an oration or a poem during the difficulty
+of breath which that caused.  He had, moreover, a looking-glass in his
+house before which he used to declaim and adjust all his motions.
+
+It was said that a man came to him one day, and desired him to be his
+advocate against a person from whom he had suffered by assault.  "Not
+you, indeed," said Demosthenes, "you have suffered no such thing."
+"What," said the man, raising his voice, "have I not received those
+blows?"  "Ay, _now_," replied Demosthenes, "you do speak like a person
+that has been injured."  So much in his opinion do the tone of voice
+and the action contribute to gain the speaker credit in what he affirms.
+
+His action pleased the commonalty much; but people of taste (among whom
+was Demetrius the Phalerean) thought there was something in it low,
+inelegant, and unmanly.  Hermippus acquaints us, Aesion being asked his
+opinion of the ancient orators and those of that time, said, "Whoever
+has heard the orators of former times must admire the decorum and
+dignity with which they spoke.  Yet when we read the orations of
+Demosthenes, we must allow they have more art in the composition and
+greater force."  It is needless to mention that in his written orations
+there was something extremely cutting and severe; but in his sudden
+repartees there was also something of humour. . . .
+
+When a rascal surnamed Chalcus attempted to jest upon his late studies
+and long watchings, he said, "I know my lamp offends thee.  But you
+need not wonder, my countryman, that we have so many robberies, when we
+have thieves of brass [_chalcus_] and walls only of clay."  Though more
+of his sayings might be produced, we shall pass them over, and go on to
+seek the rest of his manners and character in his actions and political
+conduct.
+
+He tells us himself that he entered upon public business in the time of
+the Phocian war, and the same may be collected from his Philippics.
+For some of the last of them were delivered after that war was
+finished; and the former relate to the immediate transactions of it.
+It appears, also, that he was thirty-two years old when he was
+preparing his oration against Midias; and yet at that time he had
+attained no name or power in the administration. . . .
+
+He had a glorious subject for his political ambition to defend the
+cause of Greece against Philip.  He defended it like a champion worthy
+of such a charge, and soon gained great reputation both for eloquence
+and for the bold truths which he spoke.  He was admired in Greece, and
+courted by the king of Persia.  Nay, Philip himself had a much higher
+opinion of him than the other orators; and his enemies acknowledged
+that they had to contend with a great man.  For Aeschines and
+Hyperides, in their very accusations, give him such a character.
+
+I wonder, therefore, how Theopompus could say that he was a man of no
+steadiness, who was never long pleased either with the same persons or
+things.  For, on the contrary, it appears that he abode by the party
+and the measures which he first adopted; and was so far from quitting
+them during his life that he forfeited his life rather than he would
+forsake them. . . .
+
+It must be acknowledged, however, that he excelled all the orators of
+his time, except Phocion, in his life and conversation.  And we find in
+his orations that he told the people the boldest truths, that he
+opposed their inclinations and corrected their errors with the greatest
+spirit and freedom.  Theopompus also acquaints us that when the
+Athenians were for having him manager of a certain impeachment, and
+insisted upon it in a tumultuary manner, he would not comply, but rose
+up and said, "My friends, I will be your counsellor whether you will or
+no; but a false accuser I will not be how much soever you may wish it.
+. . ."
+
+Demosthenes, through the whole course of his political conduct, left
+none of the actions of the kin of Macedon undisparaged.  Even in time
+of peace he laid hold on every opportunity to raise suspicions against
+him among the Athenians, and to excite their resentment.  Hence Philip
+looked upon him as a person of the greatest importance in Athens; and
+when he went with nine other deputies to the court of that prince,
+after having given them all audience, he answered the speech of
+Demosthenes with greater care than the rest.  As to other marks of
+honour and respect, Demosthenes had not an equal share in them; they
+were bestowed principally upon Aeschines and Philocrates.  They,
+therefore, were large in the praise of Philip on all occasions, and
+they insisted, in particular, on his eloquence, his beauty, and even
+his being able to drink a great quantity of liquor.  Demosthenes, who
+could not bear to hear him praised, turned these things off as trifles.
+"The first," he said, "was the property of a sophist, the second of a
+woman, and the third of a sponge; and not one of them could do any
+credit to a king."
+
+Afterward, it appeared that nothing was to be expected but war; for, on
+the one hand, Philip knew not how to sit down in tranquillity; and, on
+the other, Demosthenes inflamed the Athenians.  In this case, the first
+step the orator took was to put the people upon sending an armament to
+Euboea, which was brought under the yoke of Philip by its petty
+tyrants.  Accordingly he drew up an edict, in pursuance of which they
+passed over to that peninsula, and drove out the Macedonians.  His
+second operation was the sending succor to the Byzantians and
+Perinthians, with whom Philip was at war.  He persuaded the people to
+drop their resentment, to forget the faults which both those nations
+had committed in the confederate war, and to send a body of troops to
+their assistance.  They did so, and it saved them from ruin.  After
+this, he went ambassador to the states of Greece; and, by his animating
+address, brought them almost all to join in the league against Philip.
+. . .
+
+Meantime Philip, elated with his success at Amphissa, surprised Elatea,
+and possessed himself of Phocis.  The Athenians were struck with
+astonishment, and none of them durst mount the rostrum; no one knew
+what advice to give; but a melancholy silence reigned the city.  In
+this distress Demosthenes alone stood forth, and proposed that
+application should be made to the Thebans.  He likewise animated the
+people in his usual manner, and inspired them with fresh hopes; in
+consequence of which he was sent ambassador to Thebes, some others
+being joined in commission with him.  Philip, too, on his part, as
+Maryas informs us, sent Anyntus and Clearchus, two Macedonians, Doachus
+the Thessalian, Thrasidaeus the Elean, to answer the Athenian deputies.
+The Thebans were not ignorant what way their true interest pointed, but
+each of them had the evils of war before his eyes; for their Phocian
+wounds were still fresh upon them.  However, the powers of the orator,
+as Theopompus tells us, rekindled their courage and ambition so
+effectually that all other objects were disregarded.  They lost sight
+of fear, of caution, of every prior attachment, and, through the force
+of his eloquence, fell with enthusiastic transports into the path of
+honour.
+
+So powerful, indeed, were the efforts of the orator that Philip
+immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to apply for peace.  Greece
+recovered her spirits, whilst she stood waiting for the event; and not
+only the Athenian generals, but the governors of Boeotia, were ready to
+execute the commands of Demosthenes.  All the assemblies, as well those
+of Thebes as those of Athens, were under his direction: he was equally
+beloved, equally powerful, in both places; and, as Theopompus shows, it
+was no more than his merit claimed.  But the superior power of fortune,
+which seems to have been working at revolution, and drawing the
+liberties of Greece to a period at that time, opposed and baffled all
+the measures that could be taken.  The deity discovered many tokens of
+the approaching event.
+
+
+
+
+ELIHU BURRITT
+
+(1810-1879)
+
+"THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH"
+
+This man's career is the star example of the pursuit of knowledge under
+difficulties.  For years, while earning his living at the forge, he
+denied himself all natural pleasures that he might devote every possible
+minute to cramming his head with seemingly useless scraps of knowledge.
+
+The acquisition of knowledge merely for its own sake is of course
+foolishness, but it is a very rare kind of foolishness.  Nearly always
+the learned man pays his debt to society in full measure, if we but give
+him time enough.  So it was with "The Learned Blacksmith."  From his deep
+learning, Elihu Burritt at last drew the inspiration which made him a
+powerful advocate in the cause of the world's peace.
+
+
+From "Captains of Industry," by James Parton.  Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
+1884.
+
+Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
+Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
+Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford.  He was the
+youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children.  His father
+owned and cultivated a small farm, but spent the winters at the
+shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
+that day.  When Elihu was sixteen years of age his father died, and the
+lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native village.
+
+He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to
+gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which
+contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond.  This
+boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he
+thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar
+when his parents were going to have company.
+
+As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time,
+he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship--particularly
+mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good
+surveyor.  He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the
+forge, but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in doing
+sums in his head.  His biographer gives a specimen of these calculations
+which he wrought out without making a single figure:
+
+"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch
+wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it require
+to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how much would
+it all cost at a shilling a yard?"
+
+He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head,
+and report the results to an elder brother, who had worked his way
+through Williams College.  His brother would perform the calculations
+upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.
+
+When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it
+into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance of
+the same elder brother.  In the evenings of one winter he read the Aeneid
+of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few other
+Latin authors, he began Greek.  During the winter months he was obliged
+to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his
+leisure minutes were few and far between.  But he carried his Greek
+grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a
+large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers,
+and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being
+noticed by his fellow-apprentices.
+
+So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated
+himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school, where he
+studied mathematics, Latin, and other languages.  Then he went back to
+the forge, studying hard in the evenings at the same branches, until he
+had saved a little money, when he resolved to go to New Haven and spend a
+winter in study.  It was far from his thoughts, as it was from his means,
+to enter Yale College, but he seems to have had an idea that the very
+atmosphere of the college would assist him.  He was still so timid that
+he determined to work his way without asking the least assistance from a
+professor or tutor.
+
+He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New Haven, and began the very next
+morning a course of heroic study.  As soon as the fire was made in the
+sitting-room of the inn, which was at half-past four in the morning, he
+took possession, and studied German until breakfast-time, which was
+half-past seven.  When the other boarders had gone to business, he sat
+down to Homer's Iliad, of which he knew nothing, and with only a
+dictionary to help him.
+
+"The proudest moment of my life," he once wrote, "was when I had first
+gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work.  I
+took a short triumphal walk, in favor of that exploit."
+
+Just before the boarders came back for their dinner he put away all his
+Greek and Latin books and took up a work in Italian, because it was less
+likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd.  After dinner he fell
+again upon his Greek, and in the evening read Spanish until bedtime.  In
+this way he lived and labored for three months, a solitary student in the
+midst of a community of students; his mind imbued with the grandeurs and
+dignity of the past while eating flapjacks and molasses at a poor tavern.
+
+Returning to his home in New Britain, he obtained the mastership of an
+academy in a town near by, but he could not bear a life wholly sedentary;
+and at the end of a year abandoned his school and became what is called a
+"runner" for one of the manufacturers of New Britain.  This business he
+pursued until he was about twenty-five years of age, when, tired of
+wandering, he came home again, and set up a grocery and provision store,
+in which he invested all the money he had saved.  Soon came the
+commercial crash of 1837, and he was involved in the widespread ruin.  He
+lost the whole of his capital, and had to begin the world anew.
+
+He resolved to return to his studies in the languages of the East.
+Unable to buy or find the necessary books, he tied up his effects in a
+small handkerchief and walked to Boston, one hundred miles distant,
+hoping there to find a ship in which he could work his passage across the
+ocean, and collect oriental works from port to port.  He could not find a
+berth.  He turned back, and walked as far as Worcester, where he found
+work, and found something else which he liked better.  There is an
+antiquarian society at Worcester, with a large and peculiar library,
+containing a great number of books in languages not usually studied, such
+as the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and others.  The
+directors of the society placed all their treasures at his command, and
+he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor at
+the forge.  To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or two
+from his private diary he then kept:
+
+"Monday, June 18.  Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64
+pages French; 11 hours forging.
+
+"Tuesday, June 19.  60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages Cuvier; 8
+lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15
+names of stars; 10 hours forging.
+
+"Wednesday, June 20.  25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging."
+
+
+He spent five years at Worcester in such labors as these.  When work at
+his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than
+usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand,
+when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study.
+After a while he began to think that he might perhaps earn his
+subsistence in part by his knowledge of languages, and thus save much
+waste of time and vitality at the forge.  He wrote a letter to William
+Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and encouraged him; and in this
+letter he gave a short history of his life, and asked whether he could
+not find employment in translating some foreign work into English.  Mr.
+Lincoln was so much struck with his letter that he sent it to Edward
+Everett, and he, having occasion soon after to address a convention of
+teachers, read it to his audience as a wonderful instance of the pursuit
+of knowledge under difficulties.  Mr. Everett prefaced it by saying that
+such a resolute purpose of improvement against such obstacles excited his
+admiration, and even his veneration.
+
+"It is enough," he added, "to make one who has good opportunities for
+education hang his head in shame."
+
+All this, including the whole of the letter, was published in the
+newspapers, with eulogistic comments, in which the student was spoken of
+as the "Learned Blacksmith."  The bashful scholar was overwhelmed with
+shame at finding himself suddenly famous.  However, it led to his
+entering upon public life.  Lecturing was then coming into vogue, and he
+was frequently invited to the platform.  Accordingly, he wrote a lecture,
+entitled "Application and Genius," in which he endeavored to show that
+there is no such thing as genius, but that all extraordinary attainments
+are the results of application.  After delivering this lecture sixty
+times in one season, he went back to his forge at Worcester, mingling
+study with labor in the old way.
+
+On sitting down to write a new lecture for the following season, on the
+"Anatomy of the Earth," a certain impression was made upon his mind which
+changed the current of his life.  Studying the globe, he was impressed
+with the need that one nation has of other nations, and one zone of
+another zone; the tropics producing what assuages life in the northern
+latitudes and northern lands furnishing the means of mitigating tropical
+discomforts.  He felt that the earth was made for friendliness and
+cooeperation, not for fierce competition and bloody wars.
+
+Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture became an eloquent
+plea for peace, and to this object his after life was chiefly devoted.
+The dispute with England upon the Oregon boundary induced him to go to
+England with the design of travelling on foot from village to village,
+preaching peace, and exposing the horrors and folly of war.  His
+addresses attracting attention, he was invited to speak to larger bodies,
+and, in short, he spent twenty years of his life as a lecturer upon
+peace, organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uniform rates of ocean
+postage, and spreading abroad among the people of Europe the feeling
+which issued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute between the
+United States and Great Britain, an event which posterity will, perhaps,
+consider the most important of this century.  He heard Victor Hugo say at
+the Paris Congress of 1850:
+
+"A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just
+as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a
+thing could ever have been. . . ."
+
+Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life upon a little farm which
+he had contrived to buy in his native town.  He was never married, but
+lived with his sister and her daughters.  He was not so very much richer
+in worldly goods than when he started out for Boston, with his property
+wrapped in a small handkerchief.  He died in March, 1879, aged sixty-nine
+years.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN B. GOUGH
+
+(1817-1886)
+
+THE CONQUEST OF A BAD HABIT
+
+Happily few human beings sink to the depths in which John B. Gough
+found himself at the age of twenty-five years.  By sheer force of will
+he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he
+attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of
+exceptional usefulness to society.
+
+His story, as told in his own vivid words, is one of the most absorbing
+in the annals of self-help.  His example must have helped thousands
+among the myriads whom he thrilled by the dramatic recital of his
+experience.
+
+
+From his "Autobiography."
+
+I boarded in Grand Street at this time, and soon after laid the
+foundation of many of my future sorrows.  I possessed a tolerably good
+voice, and sang pretty well, having also the faculty of imitation
+rather strongly developed; and being well stocked with amusing stories,
+I was introduced into the society of thoughtless and dissipated young
+men, to whom my talents made me welcome.  These companions were what is
+termed respectable, but they drank.  I now began to attend the theatres
+frequently, and felt ambitious of strutting my part upon the stage.  By
+slow but sure degrees I forgot the lessons of wisdom which my mother
+had taught me, lost all relish for the great truths of religion,
+neglected my devotions, and considered an actor's situation to be the
+_ne plus ultra_ of greatness.
+
+During my residence at Newburyport my early serious impressions on one
+occasion in a measure revived, and I felt some stinging of conscience
+for my neglect of the Sabbath and religious observances.  I recommenced
+attending a place of worship, and for a short time I attended the Rev.
+Mr. Campbell's church, by whom, as well as by several of his members, I
+was treated with much Christian kindness.  I was often invited to Mr.
+Campbell's house, as well as to the house of some of his hearers, and
+it seemed as if a favorable turning-point or crisis in my fortunes had
+arrived.  Mr. Campbell was good enough to manifest a very great
+interest in my welfare, and frequently expressed a hope that I should
+be enabled, although late in life, to obtain an education.  And this I
+might have acquired had not my evil genius prevented my making any
+efforts to obtain so desirable an end.  My desire for strong liquors
+and company seemed to present an insuperable barrier to all
+improvement; and after a few weeks every aspiration after better things
+had ceased; every bud of promised comfort was crushed.  Again I grieved
+the spirit that had been striving with my spirit, and ere long became
+even more addicted to the use of the infernal draughts, which had
+already wrought me so much woe, than at any previous period of my
+existence.
+
+And now my circumstances began to be desperate indeed.  In vain were
+all my efforts to obtain work, and at last I became so reduced that at
+times I did not know when one meal was ended, where on the face of the
+broad earth I should find another.  Further mortification awaited me,
+and by slow degrees I became aware of it.  The young men with whom I
+had associated, in barrooms and parlors, and who wore a little better
+clothing than I could afford, one after another began to drop my
+acquaintance.  If I walked in the public streets, I too quickly
+perceived the cold look, the averted eye, the half recognition, and to
+a sensitive spirit such as I possessed such treatment was almost past
+endurance.  To add to the mortification caused by such a state of
+things, it happened that those who had laughed the loudest at my songs
+and stories, and who had been social enough with me in the barroom,
+were the very individuals who seemed most ashamed of my acquaintance.
+I felt that I was shunned by the respectable portion of the community
+also; and once, on asking a lad to accompany me in a walk, he informed
+me that his father had cautioned him against associating with me.  This
+was a cutting reproof, and I felt it more deeply than words can
+express.  And could I wonder at it?  No.  Although I may have used
+bitter words against that parent, my conscience told me that he had
+done no more than his duty in preventing his son being influenced by my
+dissipated habits.  Oh! how often have I lain down and bitterly
+remembered many who had hailed my arrival in their company as a joyous
+event.  Their plaudits would resound in my ears, and peals of laughter
+ring again in my deserted chamber; then would succeed stillness, broken
+only by the beatings of my agonized heart, which felt that the gloss of
+respectability had worn off and exposed my threadbare condition.  To
+drown these reflections, I would drink, not from love of the taste of
+the liquor, but to become so stupefied by its fumes as to steep my
+sorrows in a half oblivion; and from this miserable stupor I would wake
+to a fuller consciousness of my situation, and again would I banish my
+reflections by liquor.
+
+There lived in Newburyport at that time a Mr. Law, who was a rum
+seller, and I had spent many a shilling at his bar; he proposed to me
+that he would purchase some tools, and I could start a bindery on my
+own account, paying him by installments.  He did so; and I thought it
+an act of great kindness then, and for some time afterward, till I
+found he had received pay from me for tools he had never paid for
+himself, and I was dunned for the account he had failed to settle.  He
+even borrowed seventy-five dollars from me after I signed the pledge,
+which has never been repaid.  "Such is life."
+
+Despite all that had occurred, my good name was not so far gone but
+that I might have succeeded, by the aid of common industry and
+attention, in my business.  I was a good workman, and found no
+difficulty in procuring employment, and, I have not the slightest
+doubt, should have succeeded in my endeavor to get on in the world but
+for the unhappy love of stimulating drinks, and my craving for society.
+I was now my own master; all restraint was removed, and, as might be
+expected, I did as I pleased in my own shop.  I became careless, was
+often in the barroom when I should have been at my bindery, and instead
+of spending my evenings at home in reading or conversation, they were
+almost invariably passed in the company of the rum bottle, which became
+almost my sole household deity.  Five months only did I remain in
+business, and during that short period I gradually sunk deeper and
+deeper in the scale of degradation.  I was now the slave of a habit
+which had become completely my master, and which fastened its
+remorseless fangs in my very vitals.  Thought was a torturing thing.
+When I looked back, memory drew fearful pictures, the lines of lurid
+flame, and, whenever I dared anticipate the future, hope refused to
+illumine my onward path.  I dwelt in one awful present; nothing to
+solace me--nothing to beckon me onward to a better state.
+
+I knew full well that I was proceeding on a downward course, and
+crossing the sea of time, as it were, on a bridge perilous as that over
+which Mahomet's followers are said to enter paradise.  A terrible
+feeling was ever present that some evil was impending which would soon
+fall on my devoted head, and I would shudder as if the sword of
+Damocles, suspended by its single hair, was about to fall and utterly
+destroy me.
+
+Warnings were not wanting, but they had no voice of terror for me.  I
+was intimately acquainted with a young man in the town, and well
+remember his coming to my shop one morning and asking the loan of
+ninepence with which to buy rum.  I let him have the money, and the
+spirit was soon consumed.  He begged me to lend him a second ninepence,
+but I refused; yet, during my temporary absence, he drank some spirit
+of wine which was in a bottle in the shop, and used by me in my
+business.  He went away, and the next I heard of him was that he had
+died shortly afterward.  Such an awful circumstance as this might well
+have impressed me, but habitual indulgence had almost rendered me
+impervious to salutary impressions.  I was, at this time, deeper in
+degradation than at any period before which I can remember.
+
+My custom now was to purchase my brandy--which, in consequence of my
+limited means, was of the very worst description--and keep it at the
+shop, where, by little and little, I drank it, and continually kept
+myself in a state of excitement.
+
+This course of procedure entirely unfitted me for business, and it not
+unfrequently happened, when I had books to bind, that I would instead
+of attending to business keep my customers waiting, whilst in the
+company of desolute companions I drank during the whole day, to the
+complete ruin of my prospects in life.  So entirely did I give myself
+up to the bottle that those of my companions who fancied they still
+possessed some claims to respectability gradually withdrew from my
+company.  At my house, too, I used to keep a bottle of gin, which was
+in constant requisition.  Indeed, go where I would, stimulant I must
+and did have.  Such a slave was I to the bottle that I resorted to it
+continually, and in vain was every effort which I occasionally made to
+conquer the debasing habit.  I had become a father; but God in his
+mercy removed my little one at so early an age that I did not feel the
+loss as much as if it had lived longer, to engage my affections.
+
+A circumstance now transpired which attracted my attention, and led me
+to consider my situation, and whither I was hurrying.  A lecture was
+advertised to be delivered by the first reformed drunkard, Mr. I. J.
+Johnson, who visited Newburyport, and I was invited by some friends,
+who seemed to feel an interest, to attend and hear what he had to say.
+I determined after some consideration to go and hear what was to be
+said on the subject.  The meeting was held in the Rev. Mr. Campbell's
+church, which was pretty well crowded.  I went to the door, but would
+go no farther; but in the ten minutes I stood there, I heard him in
+graphic and forcible terms depict the misery of the drunkard and the
+awful consequences of his conduct, both as they affected himself and
+those connected with him.  My conscience told that he spoke the
+truth--for what had I not suffered!  I knew he was right, and I turned
+to leave the church when a young man offered me the pledge to sign.  I
+actually turned to sign it; but at that critical moment the appetite
+for strong drink, as if determined to have the mastery over me, came in
+all its force.  Oh, how I wanted it! and remembering that I had a pint
+of brandy at home I deferred signing, and put off to "a more convenient
+season," a proceeding that might have saved me so much after sorrow.
+I, however, compromised the matter with my conscience by inwardly
+resolving that I would drink up what spirit I had by me, and then think
+of leaving off altogether.
+
+I forgot the impressions made upon me by the speaker at the meeting.
+Still, I madly drained the inebriating cup, and speedily my state was
+worse than ever.  Oh, no, I soon ceased to think about it, for my
+master passion, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up every thought and
+feeling opposed to it which I possessed.
+
+My business grew gradually worse, and at length my constitution became
+so impaired that even when I had the will I did not possess the power
+to provide for my daily wants.  My hands would at times tremble so that
+I could not perform the finer operations of my business, the finishing
+and gilding.  How could I letter straight, with a hand burning and
+shaking from the effects of a debauch.  Sometimes, when it was
+absolutely necessary to finish off some work, I have entered the shop
+with a stern determination not to drink a single drop until I completed
+it.  I have bitterly felt that my failing was a matter of common
+conversation in the town, and a burning sense of shame would flush my
+fevered brow at the conviction that I was scorned by the respectable
+portion of the community.  But these feelings passed away like the
+morning cloud or early dew, and I pursued my old course.
+
+One day I thought I would not go to work, and a great inducement to
+remain at home existed in the shape of my enemy, West India rum, of
+which I had a quantity in the house.  Although the morning was by no
+means far advanced, I sat down, intending to do nothing until
+dinner-time.  I could not sit alone without rum, and I drank glass
+after glass until I became so stupefied that I was compelled to lie
+down on the bed, where I soon fell asleep.  When I awoke it was late in
+the afternoon, and then, as I persuaded myself, too late to make a bad
+day's work good.  I invited a neighbor, who, like myself, was a man of
+intemperate habits, to spend the evening with me.  He came, and we sat
+down to our rum, and drank foully together until late that night, when
+he staggered home; and so intoxicated was I that, in moving to go to
+bed, I fell over the table, broke a lamp, and lay on the floor for some
+time, unable to rise.  At last I managed to get to bed, but, oh, I did
+not sleep, only dozed at intervals, for the drunkard never knows the
+blessings of undisturbed repose.  I awoke in the night with a raging
+thirst.  No sooner was one draught taken than the horrible dry feeling
+returned; and so I went on, swallowing repeated glassfuls of the spirit
+until at last I had drained the very last drop which the jug contained.
+My appetite grew by what it fed on; and, having a little money by me, I
+with difficulty got up, made myself look as tidy as possible, and then
+went out to buy more rum, with which I returned to the house.
+
+The fact will, perhaps, seem incredible, but so it was that I drank
+spirits continually without tasting a morsel of food for the next three
+days.  This could not last long; a constitution of iron strength could
+not endure such treatment, and mine was partially broken down by
+previous dissipation.
+
+I began to experience a feeling hitherto unknown to me.  After the
+three days' drinking to which I have just referred, I felt, one night,
+as I lay on my bed, an awful sense of something dreadful coming over
+me.  It was as if I had been partially stunned, and now in an interval
+of consciousness was about to have the fearful blow, which had
+prostrated me, repeated.  There was a craving for sleep, sleep, blessed
+sleep, but my eyelids were as if they could not close.  Every object
+around me I beheld with startling distinctness, and my hearing became
+unnaturally acute.  Then, to the ringing and roaring in my ears would
+suddenly succeed a silence so awful that only the stillness of the
+grave might be compared with it.
+
+At other times, strange voices would whisper unintelligible words, and
+the slightest noise would make me start like a guilty thing.  But the
+horrible, burning thirst was insupportable, and to quench it and induce
+sleep I clutched again and again the rum bottle, hugged my enemy, and
+poured the infernal fluid down my parched throat.  But it was no use,
+none; I could not sleep.  Then I bethought me of tobacco; and
+staggering from my bed to a shelf near by, with great difficulty I
+managed to procure a pipe and some matches.  I could not stand to light
+the latter, so I lay again on the bed, and scraped one on the wall.  I
+began to smoke, and the narcotic leaf produced a stupefaction.  I dozed
+a little, but, feeling a warmth on my face, I awoke and discovered my
+pillow to be on fire!  I had dropped a lighted match on the bed.  By a
+desperate effort I threw the pillow on the floor, and, too exhausted to
+feel annoyed by the burning feathers, I sank into a state of somnolency.
+
+How long I lay, I do not exactly know; but I was roused from my
+lethargy by the neighbors, who, alarmed by the smell of fire, came to
+my room to ascertain the cause.  When they took me from my bed, the
+under part of the straw with which it was stuffed was smouldering, and
+in a quarter of an hour more must have burst into a flame.  Had such
+been the case, how horrible would have been my fate! for it is more
+than probable that, in my half-senseless condition, I should have been
+suffocated, or burned to death.  The fright produced by this incident,
+and a very narrow escape, in some degree sobered me, but what I felt
+more than anything else was the exposure now; all would be known, and I
+feared my name would become, more than ever, a byword and a reproach.
+
+Will it be believed that I again sought refuge in rum?  Yes, so it was.
+Scarcely had I recovered from the fright than I sent out, procured a
+pint of rum, and drank it all in less than an hour.  And now came upon
+me many terrible sensations.  Cramps attacked me in my limbs, which
+raked me with agony, and my temples throbbed as if they would burst.
+So ill was I that I became seriously alarmed, and begged the people of
+the house to send for a physician.  They did so, but I immediately
+repented having summoned him, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to get
+out of his way when he arrived.  He saw at a glance what was the matter
+with me, ordered the persons about me to watch me carefully, and on no
+account to let me have any spirituous liquors.  Everything stimulating
+was vigorously denied me; and there came on the drunkard's remorseless
+torture: delirium tremens, in all its terrors, attacked me.  For three
+days I endured more agony than pen could describe, even were it guided
+by the mind of Dante.  Who can feel the horrors of the horrible malady,
+aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding consciousness that it is
+self-sought.  Hideous faces appeared on the wall and on the ceiling and
+on the floors; foul things crept along the bedclothes, and glaring eyes
+peered into mine.  I was at one time surrounded by millions of
+monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the
+beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would
+shiver until the bed rattled again.  Strange lights would dance before
+my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall
+me by its dense gloom.  All at once, while gazing at a frightful
+creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness.
+I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was
+so pitchy dark.  I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to
+grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone.  I put my hand to
+my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame
+were there.  And then the scene would change!  I was falling--falling
+swiftly as an arrow--far down into some terrible abyss; and so like
+reality was it that as I fell I could see the rocky sides of the
+horrible shaft, where mocking, jibing, fiend-like forms were perched;
+and I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by
+the force of the unwholesome blast.  Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased
+for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, drenched with
+perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of
+the renewal of my torments.
+
+By the mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a
+weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I
+thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the
+instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had
+turned the lessons she had taught me.  I remembered her prayers and
+tears, thought of what I had been but a few short months before, and
+contrasted my situation with what it then was.  Oh! how keen were my
+own rebukes; and in the excitement of the moment I resolved to lead a
+better life, and abstain from the accursed cup.
+
+For about a month, terrified by what I had suffered, I adhered to my
+resolution, then my wife came home, and in my joy at her return I flung
+my good resolutions to the wind, and foolishly fancying that I could
+now restrain my appetite, which had for a whole month remained in
+subjection, I took a glass of brandy.  That glass aroused the
+slumbering demon, who would not be satisfied by so tiny a libation.
+Another and another succeeded, until I was again far advanced in the
+career of intemperance.  The night of my wife's return I went to bed
+intoxicated.
+
+I will not detain the reader by the particulars of my everyday life at
+this time; they may easily be imagined from what has already been
+stated.  My previous bitter experience, one would think, might have
+operated as a warning; but none save the inebriate can tell the almost
+resistless strength of the temptations which assail him.  I did not,
+however, make quite so deep a plunge as before.  My tools I had given
+into the hands of Mr. Gray, for whom I worked, receiving about five
+dollars a week.  My wages were paid me every night, for I was not to be
+trusted with much money at a time, so certain was I to spend a great
+portion of it in drink.  As it was, I regularly got rid of one third of
+what I daily received, for rum.
+
+My wardrobe, as it had, indeed, nearly always been whilst I drank to
+excess, was now exceedingly shabby, and it was with the greatest
+difficulty that I could manage to procure the necessaries of life.  My
+wife became very ill.  Oh! how miserable I was!  Some of the women who
+were in attendance on my wife told me to get two quarts of rum.  I
+procured it, and as it was in the house, and I did not anticipate
+serious consequences, I could not withstand the strong temptation to
+drink.  I did drink, and so freely that the usual effect was produced.
+How much I swallowed I cannot tell, but the quantity, judging from the
+effects, must have been considerable.
+
+Ten long weary days of suspense passed, at the end of which my wife and
+her infant both died.  Then came the terribly oppressive feeling that I
+was forgotten of God, as well as abandoned by man.  All the
+consciousness of my dreadful situation pressed heavily, indeed, upon
+me, and keenly as a sensitive mind could, did I feel the loss I had
+experienced.  I drank now to dispel my gloom, or to drown it in the
+maddening cup.  And soon was it whispered, from one to another, until
+the whole town became aware of it, that my wife and child were lying
+dead, and that I was drunk!  But if ever I was cursed with the faculty
+of thought, in all its intensity, it was then.  And this was the
+degraded condition of one who had been nursed in the lap of piety, and
+whose infant tongue had been taught to utter a prayer against being led
+into temptation.  There in the room where all who had loved me were;
+lying in the unconscious slumber of death was I, gazing, with a maudlin
+melancholy imprinted on my features, on the dead forms of those who
+were flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.  During the miserable hours
+of darkness I would steal from my lonely bed to the place where my dead
+wife and child lay, and, in agony of soul, pass my shaking hand over
+their cold faces, and then return to my bed after a draught of rum,
+which I had obtained and hidden under the pillow of my wretched couch.
+
+How apt the world is to judge of a man pursuing the course I did as one
+destitute of all feeling, with no ambition, no desire for better
+things!  To speak of such a man's pride seems absurd, and yet drink
+does not destroy pride, ambition, or high aspirations.  The sting of
+his misery is that he has ambition but no expectation; desire for
+better things but no hope; pride but no energy; therefore the
+possession of these very qualities is an additional burden to his load
+of agony.  Could he utterly forget his manhood, and wallow with the
+beasts that perish, he would be comparatively happy.  But his curse is
+that he thinks.  He is a man, and must think.  He cannot always drown
+thought or memory.  He may, and does, fly for false solace to the
+drink, and may stun his enemy in the evening, but it will rend him like
+a giant in the morning.  A flower, or half-remembered tune, a child's
+laughter, will sometimes suffice to flood the victim with recollections
+that either madden him to excess or send him crouching to his miserable
+room, to sit with face buried in his hands, while the hot, thin tears
+trickle over his swollen fingers.
+
+I believe this to be one reason why I shrink from society; why I have
+so often refused kind invitations; why, though I love my personal
+friends as strongly and as truly as any man's friends are ever loved, I
+have so steadily withdrawn from social parties, dinners, or
+introductions.  This is the penalty I must ever pay.
+
+A man can never recover from the effects of such a seven years'
+experience, morally or physically.
+
+The month of October had nearly drawn to a close, and on its last
+Sunday evening I wandered out into the streets, pondering as well as I
+was able to do--for I was somewhat intoxicated--on my lone and
+friendless condition.  My frame was much weakened and little fitted to
+bear the cold of winter, which had already begun to come on.  But I had
+no means of protecting myself against the bitter blast, and, as I
+anticipated my coming misery, I staggered along, houseless, aimless,
+and all but hopeless.
+
+Some one tapped me on the shoulder.  An unusual thing that, to occur to
+me, for no one now cared to come in contact with the wretched,
+shabby-looking drunkard.  I was a disgrace, "a living, walking
+disgrace."  I could scarcely believe my own senses when I turned and
+met a kind look; the thing was so unusual, and so entirely unexpected
+that I questioned the reality of it, but so it was.  It was the first
+touch of kindness which I had known for months; and simple and trifling
+as the circumstance may appear to many, it went right to my heart, and
+like the wing of an angel, troubled the waters in that stagnant pool of
+affection, and made them once more reflect a little of the light of
+human love.  The person who touched my shoulder was an entire stranger.
+I looked at him, wondering what his business was with me.  Regarding me
+very earnestly, and apparently with much interest, he said:
+
+"Mr. Gough, I believe?"
+
+"That is my name," I replied, and was passing on.
+
+"You have been drinking to-day," said the stranger, in a kind voice,
+which arrested my attention, and quite dispelled any anger at what I
+might otherwise have considered an officious interference in my affairs.
+
+"Yes, sir," I replied.  "I have----"
+
+"Why do you not sign the pledge?" was the next query.
+
+I considered for a moment or two, and then informed the strange friend
+who had so unexpectedly interested himself in my behalf that I had no
+hope of ever again becoming a sober man, and that I was without a
+single friend in the world who cared for me; that I fully expected to
+die very soon, cared not how soon, or whether I died drunk or sober,
+and, in fact, that I was in a condition of utter recklessness.
+
+The stranger regarded me with a benevolent look, took me by the arm,
+and asked me how I should like to be as I once was, respectable and
+esteemed, well clad, and sitting as I used to, in a place of worship;
+enabled to meet my friends as in old times, and receive from them the
+pleasant nod of recognition as formerly; in fact, become a useful
+member of society?
+
+"Oh," I replied, "I should like all these things first-rate; but I have
+no expectation that such a thing will ever happen.  Such a change
+cannot be possible."
+
+"Only sign our pledge," remarked my friend, "and I will warrant that it
+will be so.  Sign it, and I will introduce you myself to good friends,
+who will feel an interest in your welfare and take a pleasure in
+helping you to keep your good resolution.  Only, Mr. Gough, sign the
+pledge, and all will be as I have said; ay, and more, too!"
+
+Oh! how pleasantly fell these words of kindness and promise on my
+crushed and bruised heart.  I had long been a stranger to feelings such
+as now awoke in my bosom; a chord had been touched which vibrated to
+the tone of woe.  Hope once more dawned; and I began to think, strange
+as it appeared, that such things as my friend promised me might come to
+pass.  On the instant I resolved to try, at least, and said to the
+stranger:
+
+"Well, I will sign it."
+
+"When?" he asked.
+
+"I cannot do so to-night," I replied, "for I must have some more drink
+presently, but I certainly will to-morrow."
+
+"We have a temperance meeting to-morrow evening," he said; "will you
+sign it then?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"That is right," said he, grasping my hand; "I will be there to see
+you."
+
+"You shall," I remarked, and we parted.
+
+I went on my way much touched by the kind interest which at last some
+one had taken in my welfare.  I said to myself: "If it should be the
+last act of my life, I will perform my promise and sign it, even though
+I die in the attempt, for that man has placed confidence in me, and on
+that account I love him."
+
+I then proceeded to a low groggery in Lincoln Square, and in the space
+of half an hour drank several glasses of brandy; this in addition to
+what I had taken before made me very drunk, and I staggered home as
+well as I could.
+
+Arrived there, I threw myself on the bed and lay in a state of
+insensibility until morning.  The first thing which occurred to my mind
+on awaking was the promise I had made on the evening before, to sign
+the pledge; and feeling, as I usually did on the morning succeeding a
+drunken bout, wretched and desolate, I was almost sorry that I had
+agreed to do so.  My tongue was dry, my throat parched, my temples
+throbbed as if they would burst, and I had a horrible burning feeling
+in my stomach which almost maddened me, and I felt that I must have
+some bitters or I should die.  So I yielded to my appetite, which would
+not be appeased, and repaired to the same hotel where I had squandered
+away so many shillings before; there I drank three or four times, until
+my nerves were a little strung, and then I went to work.
+
+All that day the coming event of the evening was continually before my
+mind's eye, and it seemed to me as if the appetite which had so long
+controlled me exerted more power over me than ever.  It grew stronger
+than I had any time known it, now that I was about to rid myself of it.
+Until noon I struggled against its cravings, and then, unable to endure
+my misery any longer, I made some excuse for leaving the shop, and went
+nearly a mile from it in order to procure one more glass wherewith to
+appease the demon who had so tortured me.  The day wore wearily away,
+and when evening came I determined, in spite of many a hesitation, to
+perform the promise I had made to the stranger the night before.  The
+meeting was to be held at the lower town hall, Worcester; and thither,
+clad in an old brown surtout, closely buttoned up to my chin that my
+ragged habiliments beneath might not be visible, I went.  I took a
+place among the rest, and when an opportunity of speaking offered
+itself, I requested permission to be heard, which was readily granted.
+
+When I stood up to relate my story, I was invited to the stand, to
+which I repaired, and on turning to face the audience, I recognized my
+acquaintance who had asked me to sign.  It was Mr. Joel Stratton.  He
+greeted me with a smile of approbation, which nerved and strengthened
+me for my task, as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed upon me.  I
+lifted my quivering hand and then and there told what rum had done for
+me.  I related how I was once respectable and happy, and had a home,
+but that now I was a houseless, miserable, scathed, diseased, and
+blighted outcast from society.  I had scarce a hope remaining to me of
+ever becoming that which I once was, but, having promised to sign the
+pledge, I had determined not to break my word, and would now affix my
+name to it.  In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, and,
+in characters almost as crooked as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the
+Declaration of Independence, I signed the total abstinence pledge, and
+resolved to free myself from the inexorable tyrant.
+
+Although still desponding and hopeless, I felt that I was relieved from
+a part of my heavy load.  It was not because I deemed there was any
+supernatural power in the pledge which would prevent my ever again
+falling into such depths of woe as I had already become acquainted
+with, but the feeling of relief arose from the honest desire I
+entertained to keep a good resolution.  I had exerted a moral power
+which had long remained lying by perfectly useless.  The very idea of
+what I had done strengthened and encouraged me.  Nor was this the only
+impulse given me to proceed in my new pathway, for many who witnessed
+my signing and heard my simple statement came forward, kindly grasped
+my hand, and expressed their satisfaction at the step I had taken.  A
+new and better day seemed already to have dawned upon me.
+
+As I left the hall, agitated and enervated, I remember chuckling to
+myself, with great gratification, "I have done it--I have done it!"
+There was a degree of pleasure in having put my foot on the head of the
+tyrant who had so long led me captive at his will, but although I had
+"scotched the snake," I had not killed him, for every inch of his frame
+was full of venomous vitality, and I felt that all my caution was
+necessary to prevent his stinging me afresh.  I went home, retired to
+bed, but in vain did I try to sleep.  I pondered upon the step I had
+taken, and passed a restless night.  Knowing that I had voluntarily
+renounced drink, I endeavored to support my sufferings, and resist the
+incessant craving of my remorseless appetite as well as I could, but
+the struggle to overcome it was insupportably painful.  When I got up
+in the morning my brain seemed as though it would burst with the
+intensity of its agony; my throat appeared as if it were on fire; and
+in my stomach I experienced a dreadful burning sensation, as if the
+fire of the pit had been kindled there.  My hands trembled so that to
+raise water to my feverish lips was almost impossible.  I craved,
+literally gasped, for my accustomed stimulant, and felt that I should
+die if I did not have it; but I persevered in my resolve, and withstood
+the temptations which assailed me on every hand.
+
+Still, during all this frightful time I experienced a feeling somewhat
+akin to satisfaction at the position I had taken.  I made at least one
+step toward reformation.  I began to think that it was barely possible
+I might see better days, and once more hold up my head in society.
+Such feelings as these would alternate with gloomy forebodings and
+thick coming fancies of approaching ill.  At one time hope, and at
+another fear, would predominate, but the raging, dreadful, continued
+thirst was always present, to torture and tempt me.
+
+After breakfast I proceeded to the shop where I was employed, feeling
+dreadfully ill.  I determined, however, to put a bold face on the
+matter, and, in spite of the cloud which seemed to hang over me,
+attempt work.  I was exceedingly weak, and fancied, as I almost reeled
+about the shop, that every eye was fixed upon me suspiciously, although
+I exerted myself to the utmost to conceal my agitation.  I was
+suffering; and those who have never thus suffered cannot comprehend it.
+The shivering of the spine, then flushes of heat, causing every pore of
+the body to sting, as if punctured with some sharp instrument; the
+horrible whisperings in the ear, combined with a longing cry of the
+whole system for stimulants.  One glass of brandy would steady my
+shaking nerves; I cannot hold my hand still; I cannot stand still.  A
+young man but twenty-five years of age, and I have no control of my
+nerves; one glass of brandy would relieve this gnawing, aching,
+throbbing stomach, but I have signed the pledge.  "I do agree that I
+will not use it; and I must fight it out."  How I got through the day I
+cannot tell.  I went to my employer and said:
+
+"I signed the pledge last night."
+
+"I know you did."
+
+"I mean to keep it."
+
+"So they all say, and I hope you will."
+
+"You do not believe that I will; you have no confidence in me."
+
+"None whatever."
+
+I turned to my work, broken-hearted, crushed in spirit, paralyzed in
+energy, feeling how low I had sunk in the esteem of prudent and
+sober-minded men.  Suddenly the small iron bar I had in my hand began
+to move; I felt it move, I gripped it; still it moved and twisted; I
+gripped still harder; yet the thing would move till I could feel it,
+yes, feel it, tearing the palm out of my hand, then I dropped it, and
+there it lay, a curling, shiny snake!  I could hear the paper shavings
+rustle as the horrible thing writhed before me!  If it had been a snake
+I should not have minded it.  I was never afraid of a snake.  I should
+have called some one to look at it, I could have killed it, I should
+not have been terrified at a thing; but I knew it was a cold dead bar
+of iron, and there it was, with its green eyes, its forked, darting
+tongue, curling in all its shiny loathsomeness, and the horror filled
+me so that my hair seemed to stand up and shiver, and my skin lift from
+the scalp to the ankles, and I groaned out, "I cannot fight this
+through!  Oh! my God, I shall die!" when a gentleman came into the shop
+with a cheerful "Good-morning, Mr. Gough."
+
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"I saw you sign the pledge last night."
+
+"Yes, sir, I did it."
+
+"I was very glad to see you do it, and many young men followed your
+example.  It is such men as you that we want, and I hope you will be
+the means of doing a great deal of good.  My office is in the exchange;
+come in and see me.  I shall be happy to make your acquaintance.  I
+have only a minute or two to spare, but I thought I would just call in
+and tell you to keep up a brave heart.  Good-bye, God bless you.  Come
+in and see me."
+
+That was Jesse Goodrich, then a practising attorney and counselor at
+law, in Worcester, now dead; but to the last of his life my true and
+faithful friend.  It would be impossible to describe how this little
+act of kindness cheered me.  With the exception of Mr. Stratton, who
+was a waiter at a temperance hotel, no one had accosted me for months
+in a manner which would lead me to think any one cared for me, or what
+might be my fate.  Now I was not altogether alone in the world; there
+was a hope of my being rescued from the "slough of despond," where I
+had been so long floundering.  I felt that the fountain of human
+kindness was not utterly sealed up, and again a green spot, an oasis,
+small, indeed, but cheering, appeared in the desert of my life.  I had
+something to live for; a new desire for life seemed suddenly to spring
+up; the universal boundary of human sympathy included even my wretched
+self in its cheering circle.  All these sensations were generated by a
+few kind words at the right time.  Yes, now I can fight; and I did
+fight--six days and six nights--encouraged and helped by a few words of
+sympathy.  He said, "Come in and see me."  I will.  He said he would be
+pleased to make my acquaintance.  He shall.  He said, "Keep up a brave
+heart!"  By God's help I will.  And so encouraged I fought on with not
+one hour of healthy sleep, not one particle of food passing my lips,
+for six days and six nights.
+
+On the evening of the day following that on which I signed the pledge I
+went straight home from my workshop, with a dreadful feeling of some
+impending calamity haunting me.  In spite of the encouragement I had
+received, the presentiment of coming evil was so strong that it bowed
+me almost to the dust with apprehension.  The slakeless thirst still
+clung to me; and water, instead of allaying it, seemed only to increase
+its intensity.
+
+I was fated to encounter one struggle more with my enemy before I
+became free.  Fearful was that struggle.  God in his mercy forbid that
+any young man should endure but a tenth part of the torture which
+racked my frame and agonized my heart.
+
+As in the former attack, horrible faces glared upon me from the
+walls--faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible
+features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of
+burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly.  At one moment
+the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as
+the charnel house.  I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in
+my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably
+bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time;
+and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would
+stretch out all quivering with life.  After a frightful paroxysm of
+this kind I would start like a maniac from my bed, and beg for life,
+life!  What I of late thought so worthless seemed now to be of
+unappreciable value.  I dreaded to die, and clung to existence with a
+feeling that my soul's salvation depended on a little more of life.
+
+In about a week I gained, in a great degree, the mastery over my
+accursed appetite; but the strife had made me dreadfully weak.
+Gradually my health improved, my spirits recovered, and I ceased to
+despair.  Once more was I enabled to crawl into the sunshine; but, oh,
+how changed!  Wan cheeks and hollow eyes, feeble limbs and almost
+powerless hands plainly enough indicated that between me and death
+there had indeed been but a step; and those who saw me might say as was
+said of Dante, when he passed through the streets of France, "There's
+the man that has been in hell."
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+
+(1817-1895)
+
+THE SLAVE WHO STOLE FREEDOM
+
+To Booker T. Washington, the teller of the tale which follows,
+Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation brought freedom when he was but
+three years old.  But Mr. Washington's struggles, first for an
+education, later in behalf of his black brethren, have endowed him with
+understanding and warm sympathy for Douglass, the man who, in his own
+generation, preceded Washington as the foremost colored citizen of the
+United States.
+
+In later days, when the Underground Railway was in full operation, the
+slave who ran away could be sure of aid and comfort at any one of its
+many stations that he might find it possible to reach.  But
+Douglass--pioneer among these dark-skinned adventurers for
+freedom--must needs rely almost wholly upon his own wit and courage in
+making his escape.
+
+
+From "Frederick Douglass," by Booker T. Washington.  Copyright, 1906,
+by George W. Jacobs & Company.
+
+Frederick Douglass was born in the little town of Tuckahoe, in Talbot
+County, on the eastern shore of Maryland, supposedly in the month of
+February, 1817. . . .
+
+Until he was seven years of age, young Fred felt few of the privations
+of slavery.  In these childhood days he probably was as happy and
+carefree as the white children in the "big house."  At liberty to come
+and go and play in the open sunshine, his early life was typical of the
+happier side of the negro life in slavery.  What he missed of a
+mother's affection and a father's care was partly made up to him by the
+indulgent kindness of his good grandmother.
+
+When Fred was between seven and eight years of age his grandmother was
+directed by her master to take her grandson to the Lloyd plantation.
+After the boy arrived at his new home, he was put in charge of a
+slave-woman for whom the only name we know is "Aunt Katy."  This change
+brought him the first real hardship of his life.  As an early
+consequence of it, he lost the care and guidance of his grandmother,
+his freedom to play, good food, and that affection which means so much
+to a child.  When he came under the care of Aunt Katy, he began to feel
+for the first time the sting of unkindness.  He has given a very
+disagreeable picture of this foster-mother.  She was a woman of a
+hateful disposition, and treated the little stranger from Tuckahoe with
+extreme harshness.  Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him
+of food.  Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he
+complained was beaten without mercy.  He has described his misery on
+one particular night.  After being sent supperless to bed, his
+suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody
+else in the cabin was asleep he quietly took some corn and began to
+parch it before the open fireplace.  While thus trying to appease his
+hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, "who but my own
+dear mother should come in?"  The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing
+little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and
+protecting arms.
+
+"I shall never forget," he says, "the indescribable expression of her
+countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would
+starve the life out of me.  There was a deep and tender glance at me,
+and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and
+when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large
+ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.
+That night I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child, but
+somebody's child.  I was grander on my mother's knee than a king upon
+his throne.  But my triumph was short.  I dropped off to sleep and
+waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the
+mercy of the virago in my master's kitchen."
+
+There is no record of another meeting between mother and son.  She
+probably died shortly afterward, because if she had been within walking
+distance, he certainly would have seen her again.  Her memory in his
+child's mind was always that of a real and near personality.  When he
+became older, and conscious of his superiority to his fellows, he was
+wont to say: "I am proud to attribute my love of letters, such as I may
+have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon father, but to my sable,
+unprotected, and uncultivated mother."  Thus, after his mother died,
+his vivid imagination kept before him her image, as she appeared to him
+that last time he saw her, through all his struggles for a fuller and
+freer life for himself and his race.
+
+With the loss of his mother and grandmother, he came more and more to
+realize the peculiar relation in which he and those about him stood to
+Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony.  His active mind soon grasped the
+meaning of "master" and "slave."  While still a lad, longing for a
+mother's care, he began to feel himself within the grasp of the curious
+thing that he afterward learned to know as "slavery."  As he grew older
+in years and understanding, he came also to see what manner of man his
+master was.  He described Captain Anthony as a "sad man."  At times he
+was very gentle, and almost benevolent.  But young Douglass was never
+able to forget that this same kindly slave-holder had refused to
+protect his cousin from a cruel beating by her overseer.  The spectacle
+he had witnessed, when this beautiful young slave was whipped, had made
+a lasting and painful impression upon him.  Vaguely he began to
+recognize the outlines of the institution which at once permitted, and
+to a certain degree made necessary, these cruelties.  It was at this
+point that he began to speculate on the origin and nature of slavery.
+Meanwhile he became, in the course of his life on the plantation, the
+witness of other scenes quite as harrowing, and the memory mingled with
+his reflections, and embittered them.
+
+During this time an event occurred which gave a new direction and a new
+impetus to the thoughts and purposes slowly taking form within him.
+This event was the successful escape of his Aunt Jennie and another
+slave.  It caused a great commotion on the plantation.  Nothing could
+happen in a Southern community that excited so many and such varied
+emotions as the escape of a slave from bondage: terror and revenge,
+hope and fear, mingled with the images of the pursued and the pursuers,
+with speculation in regard to the capture of the fugitive, and with
+prayers for his success in the minds of the slaves. . . .
+
+From now on his quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things
+that formerly never affected him.  The hard and sometimes cruel
+discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of
+ambitions--all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the
+impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy.  He saw
+a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being
+"impudent."  "Crimes" of this nature were committed, as far as he could
+see, with impunity, and the memory of them haunted him by day and by
+night.
+
+Thus far Douglass had not felt the overseer's whip.  He was too small
+for anything except to run errands and to do light chores.  Of course,
+he had been cuffed about by Aunt Katy; he says he seldom got enough to
+eat, and he suffered continually from cold, since his entire wardrobe
+consisted of a tow sack. . . .
+
+When Fred became nine years old the most important event in his life
+occurred.  His master determined to send him to Baltimore to live with
+Hugh Auld, a brother of Thomas Auld.  Baltimore at this time was little
+more than a name to young Douglass.  When he reached the residence of
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld and felt the difference between the plantation cabin
+and this city home, it was to him, for a time, like living in Paradise.
+Mrs. Auld is described as a lady of great kindness of heart, and of a
+gentle disposition.  She at once took a tender interest in the little
+servant from the plantation.  He was much petted and well fed,
+permitted to wear boy's clothes and shoes, and for the first time in
+his life had a good soft bed to sleep in.  His only duty was to take
+care of and play with Tommy Auld, which he found both an easy and
+agreeable task.
+
+Young Douglass yet knew nothing about reading.  A book was as much of a
+mystery to him as the stars at night.  When he heard his mistress read
+aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused.  He felt so secure in
+her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him.
+Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without,
+for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented.  He
+quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of
+three syllables.  But alas, for his young ambition!  When Mr. Auld
+discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
+He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late.  The
+precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning.  He
+quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
+the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
+ignorance.  In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
+you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
+accomplished, he will be running away with himself."  Mr. Douglass,
+referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
+decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
+From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
+freedom."
+
+During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
+of Mr. Auld he was more closely watched than he had been before this
+incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed.
+He declares that he was not allowed to be alone, when this could be
+helped, lest he would attempt to teach himself.  But these were unwise
+precautions, since they but whetted his appetite for learning and
+incited him to many secret schemes to elude the vigilance of his master
+and mistress.  Everything now contributed to his enlightenment and
+prepared him for that freedom for which he thirsted.  His occasional
+contact with free colored people, his visit to the wharves where he
+could watch the vessels going and coming, and his chance acquaintance
+with white boys on the street, all became a part of his education and
+were made to serve his plans.  He got hold of a blue-back speller and
+carried it with him all the time.  He would ask his little white
+friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of
+them.  In this way he soon learned to read.  The first and most
+important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator."  He
+bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street.
+It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham,
+William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan.  These speeches were steeped in the
+sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the "rights of
+man."  They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than was
+included in his mere dream of freedom for himself, and in addition they
+increased his vocabulary of words and phrases.  The reading of this
+book unfitted him longer for restraint.  He became all ears and all
+eyes.  Everything he saw and read suggested to him a larger world lying
+just beyond his reach.  The meaning of the term "Abolition" came to him
+by a chance look at a Baltimore newspaper.
+
+Slavery and Abolition!  The distance between these two points of
+existence seemed to have lessened greatly after he had comprehended
+their meaning.  "When I heard the Word 'Abolition,' I felt the matter
+to be my personal concern.  There was hope in this word."  As he
+afterward went about the city on his ordinary errands, or when at the
+wharf, even performing tasks that were not set for him to do, he was
+like another being.  That word "Abolition" seemed to sing itself into
+his very soul, and when he permitted his thoughts to dwell on the
+possibilities that it opened to him, he was buoyed up with joyous
+expectations.  He tried to find out something from everybody.  He
+learned to write by copying letters on fences and walls and challenging
+his white playmates to find his mistakes; and at night, when no one
+suspected him of being awake, he copied from an old copy-book of his
+young friend Tommy.  Before he had formulated any plans for freedom for
+himself, he learned the important trick of writing "free passes" for
+runaway slaves.
+
+Notwithstanding his progress in gaining knowledge, his considerate
+master and kind mistress, his loving companion in Tommy, his good home,
+food, and clothes, he was not happy or contented.  None of these things
+could stifle his yearning to be free.  He has aptly described his own
+feelings at this time in speaking of Mrs. Auld: "Poor lady, she did not
+understand my trouble, and I could not tell her.  Nature made us
+friends, but slavery made us enemies.  She aimed to keep me ignorant,
+but I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery.
+My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment
+I received.  It was slavery, not its mere incidents, I hated.  Their
+feeding and clothing me well could not atone for taking my liberty from
+me.  The smiles of my master could not remove the deep sorrow that
+dwelt in my young bosom.  We were both victims of the same
+overshadowing evil--she as mistress, I as slave.  I will not censure
+her too harshly. . . ."
+
+After Douglass learned how to write with tolerable ease, he began to
+copy from the Bible and the Methodist hymn books at night when he was
+supposed to be asleep.  He always regarded this religious experience as
+the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only
+of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and
+softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding
+over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race.  He greatly
+needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and
+encourage him to hope for ultimate freedom.
+
+While he was undergoing this, to him, novel religious experience, and
+while he was gradually being adjusted to the situation in which he
+found himself, there came one of those dreaded changes in the fortunes
+of slavemasters that made the status of the slave painfully uncertain.
+His real master, Captain Anthony, died, and this event, complicated
+with some family quarrel, resulted in Douglass being recalled from
+Baltimore to the plantation. . . .
+
+A man named Edward Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from
+the campground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation
+for "breaking in unruly niggers."  Covey was a "poor white" and a farm
+renter.  To this man Douglass was hired out for a year.  In the month
+of January, 1834, he started for his new master, with his little bundle
+of clothes.  From what we have already seen of this sensitive,
+thoughtful young slave of seventeen years, it is not difficult to
+understand his state of mind.  Up to this time he had had a
+comparatively easy life.  He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell
+to the lot of many slaves whom he knew.  To quote his own words: "I was
+now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life.  Starvation made me
+glad to leave Thomas Auld's, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to
+Covey's."  Escape, however, was impossible.  The picture of the
+"slave-driver," painted in the lurid colors that Mr. Douglass's
+indignant memories furnished him, shows the dark side of slavery in the
+South.  During the first six weeks he was with Covey he was whipped,
+either with sticks or cowhides, every week.  With his body one
+continuous ache from his frequent floggings, he was kept at work in
+field or woods from the dawn of day until the darkness of night.  He
+says: "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me in body, soul, and spirit.
+The overwork and the cruel chastisements of which I was the victim,
+combined with the ever-growing and soul-devouring thought, 'I am a
+slave--a slave for life, a slave with no rational ground to hope for
+freedom,' had done their worst."
+
+He confesses that at one time he was strongly tempted to take his own
+life and that of Covey.  Finally, his sufferings of body and soul
+became so great that further endurance seemed impossible.  While in
+this condition he determined upon the daring step of returning to his
+master, Thomas Auld, in order to lay before him the story of abuse.  He
+felt sure that, if for no other reason than the protection of property
+from serious impairment, his master would interfere in his behalf.  He
+even expected sympathy and assurances of future protection.  In all
+this he was grievously disappointed.  Auld not only refused sympathy
+and protection, but would not even listen to his complaints, and
+immediately sent him back to his dreaded master to face the added
+penalty of running away.  The poor, lone boy was plunged into the
+depths of despair.  A feeling that he had been deserted by both God and
+man took possession of him.
+
+Covey was lying in wait for him, knowing full well that he must return
+as defenseless as he went away.  As soon as Douglass came near the
+place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred
+for the purpose of tying him for a flogging.  But Douglass escaped and
+took to the woods, where he concealed himself for a day and a night.
+His condition was desperate.  He felt that he could not endure another
+whipping, and yet there seemed to him no alternative.  His first
+impulse was to pray, but he remembered that Covey also prayed.
+Convinced, at length, that there was no appeal but to his own courage,
+he resolved to go back and face whatever must come to him.  It so
+happened that it was a Sunday morning and, much to his surprise, he met
+Covey, who was on his way to church, and who, when he saw the runaway,
+greeted him with a pleasant smile.  "His religion," says Douglass,
+"prevented him from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my
+bones on any other day of the week."
+
+On Monday morning Douglass was up early, half hoping that he would be
+permitted to resume his work without punishment.  Covey was astir
+betimes, too, and had laid aside his Sunday mildness of manner.  His
+first business was to carry out his fixed purpose of whipping the young
+runaway.  In the meantime Fred had likewise fully decided upon a course
+of action.  He was ready to submit to any kind of work, however hard or
+unreasonable, but determined to defend himself against any attempt at
+another flogging.  In the cold passion that took possession of him, the
+slave-boy became utterly reckless of consequences, reasoning to himself
+that the limit of suffering at the hands of this relentless
+slave-breaker had already been reached.  He was resolved to fight and
+did fight.  He began his morning work in peace, obeying promptly every
+order from his master, and while he was in the act of going up to the
+stable-loft for the purpose of pitching down some hay, he was caught
+and thrown by Covey, in an attempt to get a slip knot about his legs.
+Douglass flew at Covey's throat recklessly, hurled his antagonist to
+the ground, and held him firmly.  Blood followed the nails of the
+infuriated young slave.  He scarcely knew how to account for his
+fighting strength, and his daredevil spirit so dumfounded the master
+that he gaspingly said: "Are you going to resist me, you young
+scoundrel?"  "Yes, sir," was the quick reply.
+
+Finding himself baffled, Covey called for assistance.  His cousin
+Hughes came to aid him, but as he was attempting to put a noose over
+the unruly slave's foot, Douglass promptly gave him a blow in the
+stomach which at once put him out of the combat and he fled.  After
+Hughes had been disabled, Covey called on first one and then another of
+his slaves, but each refused to assist him.  Finding himself fairly
+outdone by his angry antagonist, Covey quit; with the discreet remark:
+"Now, you young scoundrel, you go to work; I would not have whipped you
+half so hard if you had not resisted."
+
+Douglass had thus won his first victory, and was never again threatened
+or flogged by his master.  The effect of this encounter, as far as he
+himself was concerned, was to increase his self-respect, and to give
+him more courage for the future.  He said that, "when a slave cannot be
+flogged, he is more than half free."  To the other slaves he became a
+hero, and Covey was not anxious to advertise his complete failure to
+break in this "unruly nigger."  It speaks well for the natural dignity
+and good sense of young Douglass that he neither boasted of his triumph
+nor did anything rash as a consequence of it, as might have been
+expected from a boy of his age and spirit. . . .
+
+
+[A carefully planned attempt at escape failed dismally, but he remained
+undaunted.]
+
+
+Ever since the first trouble with Auld, he had been pushing his plans
+to redeem his pledge to himself that he would run away on Monday,
+September 3, 1838.  These were anxious days, and many small details had
+to be mastered.  He must carefully avoid anything in manner or word
+which could excite the slightest suspicion.  He had to test the
+fidelity of a number of free colored people whose aid, in secret ways,
+was very essential to him.  Who these persons were has never been
+revealed, and, in fact, it was not until many years after emancipation
+that Mr. Douglass disclosed to the public how he succeeded in making
+his daring escape.  "Murder itself," he says, "was not more severely
+and surely punished in the State of Maryland than aiding and abetting
+the escape of a slave."
+
+Young Douglass's flight had no outward semblance of dramatic incident
+or thrilling episode, and yet, as he modestly says, "the courage that
+could risk betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death,
+if need be, in pursuit of freedom, were features in the undertaking.
+My success was due to address rather than to courage, to good luck
+rather than bravery.  My means of escape were provided by the very
+means which were making laws to hold and bind me more securely to
+slavery."
+
+By the laws of the State of Maryland, every free colored person was
+required to have what were called "free papers," which must be renewed
+frequently, and, of course, a fee was always charged for renewal.  They
+contained a full and minute description of the holder, for the purpose
+of identification.  This device, in some measure, defeated itself,
+since more than one man could be found to answer the general
+description; hence many slaves could get away by impersonating the real
+owners of these passes, which were returned by mail after the borrowers
+had made good their escape.  To use these papers in this manner was
+hazardous both for the fugitives and for the lenders.  Not every
+freeman was willing to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another
+might be free.  It was, however, often done, and the confidence that it
+necessitated was seldom betrayed.  Douglass had not many friends among
+the free colored people in Baltimore who resembled him sufficiently to
+make it safe for him to use their papers.  Fortunately, however, he had
+one who owned a "sailor's protection," a document describing the holder
+and certifying to the fact that he was a "free American sailor."  This
+"protection" did not describe its bearer very accurately.  But it
+called for a man very much darker than himself, and a close examination
+would have betrayed him at the start.  In the face of all these
+conditions young Douglass Was relying upon something besides a dubious
+written passport.  This something was his desperate courage.  He had
+learned to act the part of a freeman so well that no one suspected him
+of being a slave.  He had early acquired the habit of studying human
+nature.  As he grew to understand men, he no longer dreaded them.  No
+one knew better than he the kind of human nature that he had to deal
+with in this perilous undertaking.  He knew the speech, manner, and
+behavior that would excite suspicion; hence he avoided asking for a
+ticket at the railway station, because this would subject him to
+examination.  He so managed that just as the train started he jumped
+on, his bag being thrown after him by some one in waiting.  He knew
+that scrutiny of him in a crowded car en route would be less exacting
+than at the station.  He had borrowed a sailor's shirt, tarpaulin, cap,
+and black cravat, tied in true sailor fashion, and he acted the part of
+an "old salt" so perfectly that he excited no suspicion.  When the
+conductor came to collect his fare and inspected his "free papers,"
+Douglass, in the most natural manner, said that he had none, but
+promptly showed his "sailor's protection," which the railway official
+merely glanced at and passed on without further question.  Twice on the
+trip he thought he was detected.  Once when his car stood opposite a
+south-bound train, Douglass observed a well-known citizen of Baltimore,
+who knew him well, sitting where he could see him distinctly.  At
+another time, while still in Maryland, he was noticed by a man who had
+met him frequently at the shipyards.  In neither of these cases,
+however, was he interfered with or molested.  When he got into the free
+State of Pennsylvania, he felt more joy than he dared express.  He had
+by his cool temerity and address passed every sentinel undetected, and
+no slave, to his knowledge, he afterward said, ever got away from
+bondage on so narrow a margin of safety.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER
+
+(1813-1887)
+
+THE BOY WHO HALF-HEARTEDLY JOINED THE CHURCH
+
+There is great encouragement for the seemingly backward, hesitant youth
+in the story of Henry Ward Beecher's early life.
+
+He tells us that he used to be laughed at for talking as though he had
+pudding in his mouth.  Yet he became one of the greatest orators the
+world has seen.
+
+He joined the church merely because he was expected to do so.  It was
+only "pride and shamefacedness" that prevented him from expressing his
+doubts as to whether he was a Christian.  When he actually came to take
+the step he wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling
+more; and afterward he walked home crying and wishing he knew what he
+ought to do and how he ought to do it.  Yet he became one of the
+greatest religious leaders of his time.
+
+
+From the "Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by W. C. Beecher and
+Scoville.  C. L. Webster Co., 1888.
+
+"If I had had the influence of a discreet, sympathetic Christian person
+to brood over and help and encourage me, I should have been a Christian
+child from my mother's lap, I am persuaded; but I had no such
+influence.  The influences of a Christian family were about me, to be
+sure, but they were generic; and I revolved these speculative
+experiences, my strong religious habitudes taking the form of
+speculation all through my childhood.  I recollect that from the time
+that I was about ten years old I began to have periods when my
+susceptibilities were so profoundly impressed that the outward
+manifestations of my nature were changed.  I remember that when my
+brother George--who was next older than I, and who was beginning to be
+my helpful companion, to whom I looked up--became a Christian, being
+awakened and converted in college, it seemed as though a gulf had come
+between us, and as though he was a saint on one side of it while I was
+a little reprobate on the other side.  It was awful to me.  If there
+had been a total eclipse of the sun I should not have been in more
+profound darkness outwardly than I was inwardly.  I did not know whom
+to go to; I did not dare to go to my father; I had no mother that I
+ever went to at such a time; I did not feel like going to my brother;
+and I did not go to anybody.  I felt that I must try to wrestle out my
+own salvation.
+
+"Once, on coming home, I heard the bell toll, and I learned that it was
+for the funeral of one of my companions with whom I had been accustomed
+to play, and with whom I had grown up.  I did not know that he had been
+sick, but he had dropped into eternity; and the ringing, swinging,
+booming of that bell, if it had been the sound of an angel trumpet of
+the last day, would not have seemed to me more awful.  I went into an
+ecstasy of anguish.  At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and
+prayed.  There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the
+woodhouse, in the carriage-house, or in the barn that was not a scene
+of my crying and praying.  It was piteous that I should be in such a
+state of mind, and that there should be nobody to help me and lead me
+out into the light.  I do not recollect that to that day one word had
+been said to me, or one syllable had been uttered in the pulpit, that
+lead me to think there was any mercy in the heart of God for a sinner
+like me.  For a sinner that had repented it was thought there was
+pardon; but how to repent was the very thing I did not know.  A
+converted sinner might be saved, but for a poor, miserable, faulty boy,
+that pouted, and got mad at his brothers and sisters, and did a great
+many naughty things, there was no salvation so far as I had learned.
+My innumerable shortcomings and misdemeanors were to my mind so many
+pimples that marked my terrible depravity; and I never had the remotest
+idea of God except that he was a sovereign who sat with a sceptre in
+his hand and had his eye on me, and said: 'I see you, and I am after
+you.'  So I used to live in perpetual fear and dread, and often I
+wished myself dead.  I tried to submit and lay down the weapons of my
+rebellion, I tried to surrender everything; but it did not seem to do
+any good, and I thought it was because I did not do it right.  I tried
+to consecrate myself to God, but all to no purpose.  I did everything,
+so far as I could, that others did who professed to be Christians, but
+I did not feel any better.  I passed through two or three revivals.  I
+remember, when Mr. Nettleton was preaching in Litchfield, going to
+carry a note to him from father; and for a sensitive, bashful boy like
+me it was a severe ordeal.  I went to the room where he was speaking,
+with the note in my trembling hand, and had to lay it on the desk
+beside him.  Before I got halfway across the floor I was dazed and
+everything seemed to swim around me, but I made out to get the note to
+him, and he said: 'That's enough; go away, boy,' and I sort of backed
+and stumbled toward the door (I was always stumbling and blundering in
+company) and sat down.  He was preaching in those whispered tones which
+always seem louder than thunder to the conscience, although they are
+only whispers in the ear.  He had not uttered more than three sentences
+before my feelings were excited, and the more I listened the more awful
+I felt; and I said to myself: 'I will stay to the inquiry meeting.'  I
+heard Mr. Nettleton talking about souls writhing under conviction, and
+I thought my soul was writhing under conviction.  I had heard father
+say that after a person had writhed under conviction a week or two they
+began to come out, and I said: 'Perhaps I will get out'; and that
+thought produced in me a sort of half-exhilaration of joy.  I stayed to
+the inquiry meeting, felt better, and trotted home with the hope that I
+was on the way toward conversion.  I went through this revival with
+that hope strengthened; but it did not last long."
+
+It is evident from this chapter that if we would understand Henry Ward
+Beecher and the influences that went to the formation of his character
+and to the success of his life, other things than parentage, home,
+school, or nature must be taken into the account.  The vast things of
+the invisible realm have begun to speak to him, and his nature has
+proved to be peculiarly sensitive to their influence.
+
+He is thus early groping, unresting, and unsatisfied; but it is among
+mountains, and not in marshes or quicksands.  Some day these mountain
+truths, among which he now wanders in darkness, shall be radiant in his
+sight with the Divine Compassion, and his gloom shall give place to
+abiding love, joy, and peace.
+
+It was in 1827, and Henry was fourteen years old, when he entered the
+Mount Pleasant Institute.  "He was admitted to the institution at a
+price about half the usual charge, for one hundred dollars per year.
+His appearance was robust and healthy, rather inclined to fulness of
+form, with a slight pink tinge on his cheeks and a frequent smile upon
+his face.  In his manners and communications he was quiet, orderly, and
+respectful.  He was a good-looking youth."  This is the testimony of
+one of his teachers, Mr. George Montague.
+
+"I think he must have been fond of children, for he was always ready
+for a frolic with me.  I don't remember how he spoke, except that he
+talked a good deal and was full of life and fun."  So says a friend in
+whose home he boarded, in a letter written during the past year.
+
+No place could have been better fitted to the condition of the boy, as
+he then was, than the one chosen.  He was tired of the city with its
+brick walls, stone pavements, and artificial restrictions, and longed
+for the freedom and the freshness of the country.  Amherst at that time
+was only a small village, fighting back with indifferent success the
+country that pressed in upon it from every side, and offering this
+city-sick lad, almost within a stone's throw of the school, the same
+kind of fields and forests that were around him at Litchfield, and
+spreading out for him a landscape equal in beauty to that of his
+childhood home.
+
+Besides, he has an object in view that stirs his blood.  He is to fit
+himself for the navy; his father has promised his influence to get him
+an appointment, if wanted, and Admiral Nelson and all other brave
+admirals and commodores are his models.  For the first time in his life
+he takes hold of study with enthusiasm.
+
+The institution was very popular in its day, and a great advance upon
+the old academy.  It was semi-military in its methods, and in its
+government there was great thoroughness without severity.  Its teachers
+possessed superior qualifications, and all were men of great kindness
+as well as of marked ability.  Among them were two men who especially
+had great influence in directing his energies and preparing him not
+only for Amherst College but for the greater work beyond, and who were
+ever remembered by him with the deepest gratitude.
+
+The first of these was W. P. Fitzgerald, the teacher of mathematics at
+Mount Pleasant School:
+
+"He taught me to conquer in studying.  There is a very hour in which a
+young nature, tugging, discouraged, and weary with books, rises with
+the consciousness of victorious power into masterhood.  For ever after
+he knows that he can learn anything if he pleases.  It is a distinct
+intellectual conversion.
+
+"I first went to the blackboard, uncertain, soft, full of whimpering.
+'That lesson must be learned,' he said, in a very quiet tone, but with
+a terrible intensity and with the certainty of Fate.  All explanations
+and excuses he trod under foot with utter scornfulness.  'I want that
+problem.  I don't want any reasons why I don't get it.'
+
+"'I did study it two hours.'
+
+"'That's nothing to me; I want the lesson.  You need not study it at
+all, or you may study it ten hours--just to suit yourself.  I want the
+lesson.  Underwood, go to the blackboard!'
+
+"'Oh! yes, but Underwood got somebody to _show_ him his lesson.'
+
+"'What do I care _how_ you get it?  That's your business.  But you must
+have it.'
+
+"It was tough for a green boy, but it seasoned him.  In less than a
+month I had the most intense sense of intellectual independence and
+courage to defend my recitations.
+
+"In the midst of a lesson his cold and calm voice would fall upon me in
+the midst of a demonstration--'_No_!'  I hesitated, stopped, and then
+went back to the beginning; and, on reaching the same spot again,
+'_No_!' uttered with the tone of perfect conviction, barred my
+progress.  'The next!' and I sat down in red confusion.  He, too, was
+stopped with 'No!' but went right on, finished, and, as he sat down,
+was rewarded with, 'Very well.'
+
+"'Why,' whimpered I, 'I recited it just as he did, and you said No!'
+
+"'Why didn't you say _Yes_, and stick to it?  It is not enough to know
+your lesson.  You must _know_ that you know it.  You have learned
+nothing until you are _sure_.  If all the world says _No_, your
+business is to say _Yes_ and to _prove it!_'"
+
+The other helper of this period was John E. Lovell.
+
+In a column of the _Christian Union_, of July 14, 1880, devoted to
+"Inquiring Friends," appeared this question with the accompanying
+answer:
+
+
+"We heard Mr. Beecher lecture recently in Boston and found the lecture
+a grand lesson in elocution.  If Mr. Beecher would give through the
+column of 'Inquiring Friends' the methods of instruction and practice
+pursued by him, it would be very thankfully received by a subscriber
+and student.
+
+"E. D. M."
+
+
+"I had from childhood a thickness of speech arising from a large
+palate, so that when a boy I used to be laughed at for talking as if I
+had pudding in my mouth.  When I went to Amherst I was fortunate in
+passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution, and a
+better teacher for my purpose I cannot conceive.  His system consisted
+in drill, or the thorough practice of inflexions by the voice, of
+gesture, posture, and articulation.  Sometimes I was a whole hour
+practising my voice on a word--like 'justice.'  I would have to take a
+posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor.  Then we would go
+through all the gestures, exercising each movement of the arm and the
+throwing open the hand.  All gestures except those of precision go in
+curves, the arm rising from the side, coming to the front, turning to
+the left or right.  I was drilled as to how far the arm should come
+forward, where it should start from, how far go back, and under what
+circumstances these movements should be made.  It was drill, drill,
+drill, until the motions almost became a second nature.  Now I never
+know what movements I shall make.  My gestures are natural, because
+this drill made them natural to me.  The only method of acquiring an
+effective education is by practice, of not less than an hour a day,
+until the student has his voice and himself thoroughly subdued and
+trained to right expression.
+
+"H. W. B."
+
+
+Mr. Montague says: "Mr. Beecher submitted to Mr. Lovell's drilling and
+training with a patience which proved his interest in the study to be
+great.  The piece which was to be spoken was committed to memory from
+Mr. Lovell's mouth, the pupil standing on the stage before him, and
+every sentence and word, accent and pronunciation, position and
+movement of the body, glance of the eye and tone of voice, all were
+subjects of study and criticism.  And day after day, often for several
+weeks in continuance, Mr. Beecher submitted to this drilling upon the
+same piece, until his teacher pronounced him perfect."
+
+His dramatic power was displayed and noted at this early period.  Dr.
+Thomas Field, a classmate in the school, says: "One incident occurred
+during our residence in Mount Pleasant which left an abiding impression
+on my mind.  At the exhibition at the close of the year, either 1828 or
+1829, the drama of 'William Tell' was performed by some of the
+students, and your father took the part of the tyrant Gessler.
+Although sixty years have passed, I think now, as I thought then, that
+it was the most impressive performance I ever witnessed. . . ."
+
+In a letter dated December 24, 1828, addressed to his sister
+Harriet--the first that has come to our hands from Mount Pleasant--he
+gives some account of his manner of life at school, and various
+experiences:
+
+
+DEAR SISTER:
+
+. . . . I have to rise in the morning at half-past five o'clock, and
+after various little duties, such as fixing of room, washing, etc.,
+which occupies about an hour, we proceed to breakfast, from thence to
+chapel, after which we have about ten minutes to prepare for school.
+Then we attend school from eight to twelve.  An hour at noon is allowed
+for diversions of various sorts.  Then dinner.  After that school from
+half-past one to half-past four.  At night we have about an hour and a
+half; then tea.  After tea we have about ten minutes; then we are
+called to our rooms till nine.
+
+Now I will tell you how I occupy my spare time in reading, writing, and
+playing the flute.  We are forming a band here.  I shall play either
+the flute or hautboy.  I enjoy myself _pretty_ well.  In Latin I am
+studying Sallust.  As to ease, all I have to do is study straight
+ahead.  It comes _pretty_ easy.  My Greek is rather hard.  I am as yet
+studying the grammar and Jacob's Greek Reader.  In elocution, we read
+and speak alternately every other day.
+
+. . . . I find it hard to keep as a Christian ought to.  To be sure, I
+find delight in prayer, but I cannot find time to be alone
+sufficiently.  We have in our room only two, one besides myself, but he
+is most of my play-hours practising on some instrument or other.  I
+have some time, to be sure, but it is very irregular, and I never know
+when I shall have an opportunity for private devotions until the time
+comes.  I do not like to read the Bible as well as to pray, but I
+suppose it is the same as it is with a lover, who loves to talk with
+his mistress in person better than to write when she is afar off. . . .
+
+Your affectionate brother,
+  HENRY.
+
+
+His religious experience, of which we have heard nothing, since he left
+Litchfield, the life in Boston apparently not being very favorable to
+it, again attracts our attention at this point.  He says:
+
+"When I was fourteen years of age, I left Boston and went to Mount
+Pleasant.  There broke out while I was there one of those infectious
+religious revivals which have no basis of judicious instruction, but
+spring from inexperienced zeal.  It resulted in many mushroom hopes,
+and I had one of them; but I do not know how or why I was converted.  I
+only know I was in a sort of day-dream, in which I hoped I had given
+myself to Christ.
+
+"I wrote to father expressing this hope; he was overjoyed, and sent me
+a long, kind letter on the subject.  But in the course of three or four
+weeks I was nearly over it; and I never shall forget how I felt, not
+long afterward, when a letter from father was handed me in which he
+said I must anticipate my vacation a week or two and come home and join
+the Church on the next Communion Sabbath.  The serious feelings I had
+were well-nigh gone, and I was beginning to feel quite jolly again, and
+I did not know what to do.  I went home, however, and let them take me
+into the Church.  A kind of pride and shamefacedness kept me from
+saying I did not think I was a Christian, and so I was made a Church
+member."
+
+In an editorial in the _Independent_, written in 1862, upon the
+disbanding of this old church, the Bowdoin Street--originally Hanover
+Street--Church, Boston, he describes this event:
+
+"If somebody will look in the old records of Hanover Street Church
+about 1829 they will find a name there of a boy about fifteen years old
+who was brought into the Church on a sympathetic wave, and who well
+remembers how cold and almost paralyzed he felt while the committee
+questioned him about his 'hope' and 'evidences,' which, upon review,
+amounted to this: that the son of such a father ought to be a good and
+pious boy.  Being tender-hearted and quick to respond to moral
+sympathy, he had been caught and inflamed in a school excitement, but
+was just getting over it when summoned to Boston to join the Church!
+On the morning of the day he went to Church without seeing anything he
+looked at.  He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others,
+and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots
+on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak
+in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as
+if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard
+faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should
+be struck dead for not feeling more--whether he should go to hell for
+touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse;
+spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the
+body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he
+knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to
+do it.  Ah! well, there is a world of things in children's minds that
+grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young."
+
+Unsatisfactory in many respects as was his religious experience, it
+seems to have been powerful enough to change his whole ideal of life.
+We hear no more of his becoming a sailor.  He appears to have yielded
+to the inevitable, and henceforth studies with the ministry in view.
+
+That he became a minister, as did his brothers, by reason of the
+unswerving faith and prayer of the parents, is already well known.
+"Out of six sons not one escaped from the pulpit.  My mother dedicated
+me to the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me,
+wept over me, and set me apart to preach the Gospel among the heathen,
+and I have been doing it all my life long, for it so happens one does
+not need to go far from his own country to find his audience before
+him."
+
+Ushered into the preparation for the ministry by the parental faith,
+stumbling and discouraged and ready to give up the work, another hand
+was not wanting to open still more clearly the way, draw back the
+curtains, and let in the light:
+
+"I beheld Him as a helper, as the soul's mid-wife, as the soul's
+physician, and I felt because I was weak I could come to Him; because I
+did not know how, and, if I did know, I had not the strength, to do the
+things that were right--that was the invitation that He gave to me out
+of my conscious weakness and want.  I will not repeat the scene of that
+morning when light broke fairly on my mind; how one might have thought
+that I was a lunatic escaped from confinement; how I ran up and down
+through the primeval forest of Ohio, shouting, 'Glory, glory!'
+sometimes in loud tones and at other times whispered in an ecstasy of
+joy and surprise.  All the old troubles gone, and light breaking in on
+my mind, I cried: 'I have found my God; I have found my God!'  From
+that hour I consecrated myself to the work of the ministry anew, for
+before that I had about made up my mind to go into some other
+profession."
+
+His early training school for effective preaching was well selected.
+It was, as is well known, one of the little villages on the banks of
+the Ohio River, where the wants of river bargemen and frontiersmen
+demanded his attention.  It was there he decided what his life work
+should be.
+
+"My business shall be to save men, and to bring to bear upon them those
+views that are my comfort, that are the bread of life to me; and I went
+out among them almost entirely cut loose from the ordinary church
+institutions and agencies, knowing nothing but 'Christ, and Him
+crucified,' the sufferer for mankind.  Did not the men round me need
+such a Saviour?  Was there ever such a field as I found?  Every
+sympathy of my being was continually solicited for the ignorance, for
+the rudeness, for the aberrations, for the avarice, for the
+quarrelsomeness of the men among whom I was, and I was trying every
+form and presenting Christ as a medicine to men.  I went through the
+woods and through camp-meetings and over prairies.  Everywhere my
+vacations were all missionary tours, preaching Christ for the hope of
+salvation.  I am not saying this to show you how I came to the
+knowledge of Christ, but to show you how I came to the habits and forms
+of my ministry.  I tried everything on to folks."
+
+Added to the forces of experience and surroundings was always that of
+his own personal, natural endowment.  This he found fault with and
+tried to change, as most people do at some period of their lives, but
+finally accepted and concluded to use as best he could, without
+murmuring, but always conscious of its limitations.
+
+"I have my own peculiar temperament, I have my own method of preaching,
+and my method and temperament necessitate errors.  I am not worthy to
+be related in the hundred-thousandth degree to those more happy men who
+never make a mistake in the pulpit.  I make a great many.  I am
+impetuous.  I am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me.  I
+feel as though all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power
+beyond my words, nor all the thunders that were in the heavens, and it
+is of necessity that such a nature as that should give such intensity
+at times to parts of doctrine as to exaggerate them when you come to
+bring them into connection with a more rounded-out and balanced view.
+I know it--I know it as well as you do.  I would not do it if I could
+help it; but there are times when it is not I that is talking, when I
+am caught up and carried away so that I know not whether I am in the
+body or out of the body, when I think things in the pulpit that I never
+could think in the study, and when I have feelings that are so far
+different from any that belong to the lower or normal condition that I
+neither can regulate them nor understand them.  I see things and I hear
+sounds, and seem, if not in the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that
+leads me to understand what Paul said--that he heard things which it
+was not possible for a man to utter.  I am acting under such a
+temperament as that.  I have got to use it, or not preach at all.  I
+know very well I do not give crystalline views nor thoroughly guarded
+views; there is often an error on this side and an error on that, and I
+cannot stop to correct them.  A man might run around, like a kitten
+after its tail, all his life, if he were going around explaining all
+his expressions and all the things he had written.  Let them go.  They
+will correct themselves.  The average and general influence of a man's
+teaching will be more mighty than any single misconception, or
+misapprehension through misconception.
+
+"There is a deep enjoyment in having devoted yourself, soul and body,
+to the welfare of your fellowmen, so that you have no thought and no
+care but for them.  There is a pleasure in that which is never touched
+by any ordinary experiences in human life.  It is the highest.  I look
+back to my missionary days as being transcendently the happiest period
+of my life.  The sweetest pleasures I have ever known are not those
+that I have now, but those that I remember, when I was unknown, in an
+unknown land, among a scattered people, mostly poor, and to whom I had
+to go and preach the Gospel, man by man, house by house, gathering them
+on Sundays, a few--twenty, fifty, or a hundred as the case might
+be--and preaching the Gospel more formally to them as they were able to
+bear it."
+
+
+
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+(1858-1915)
+
+THE BOY WHO SLEPT UNDER THE SIDEWALK
+
+Two or three years before the outbreak of the Civil War a little black
+baby was born in the slave quarters on a Virginia plantation.  This was
+not a surprising event and nobody except the mother paid it any
+attention.  Even the father of the child ignored it.  For some years
+the boy "just growed," after the manner of Topsy.  Nobody helped him.
+But the boy differed in one way from his thoughtless little playmates.
+There was a mysterious something in him that drove him eagerly to avail
+himself of any opportunity for self-improvement that came along.  If
+the opportunity, as generally happened, _failed_ to "come along," he
+went after it with all his might and main.
+
+He devoted his life unreservedly to the service of his coloured
+brethren, and through his own bitter experience he knew full well the
+best way in which to help them.
+
+
+From "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington.  Doubleday, Page &
+Co., 1901.
+
+I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia.  I am
+not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
+rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.  As
+nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads
+post-office called Hale's Ford and the year was 1858 or 1859.  I do not
+know the month or the day.  The earliest impressions I can now recall
+are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part
+of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.
+
+My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
+and discouraging surroundings.  This was so, however, not because my
+owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
+others.  I was born in a typical log-cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
+feet square.  In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
+sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
+
+Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.  In the slave quarters, and even
+later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
+tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
+mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while
+being conveyed from Africa to America.  I have been unsuccessful in
+securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
+history of my family, beyond my mother.  She, I remember, had a
+half-brother and a half-sister.  In the days of slavery not very much
+attention was given to family history and family records--that is,
+black family records.  My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of
+a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers.  Her addition to the
+slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new
+horse or cow.  Of my father I know even less than of my mother.  I do
+not even know his name.  I have heard reports to the effect that he was
+a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations.  Whoever he
+was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing
+in any way for my rearing.  But I do not find especial fault with him.
+He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the
+Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time. . . .
+
+I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was
+declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation.  Three children--John,
+my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself--had a pallet on the
+dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of
+filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.
+
+From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life
+has been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be
+a more useful man had I had time for sports.  During the period that I
+spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service, still I
+was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to
+the men in the fields, or going to the mill, to which I used to take
+the corn, once a week, to be ground.  The mill was about three miles
+from the plantation.  This work I always dreaded.  The heavy bag of
+corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the corn divided
+about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost without exception,
+on these trips the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and
+would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it.  As I was not
+strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would have to wait,
+sometimes for many hours, till a chance passerby came along who would
+help me out of my trouble.  The hours while waiting for some one were
+usually spent in crying.  The time consumed in this way made me late in
+reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground and reached
+home it would be far into the night.  The road was a lonely one, and
+often led through dense forests.  I was always frightened.  The woods
+were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army, and I
+had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy when
+he found him alone was to cut off his ears.  Besides, when I was late
+in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a
+flogging.
+
+I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
+several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
+young mistresses to carry her books.  The picture of several dozen boys
+and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
+me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
+this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.
+
+So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
+that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being
+discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my
+mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln
+and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her
+children might be free. . . .
+
+I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
+boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and
+God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized
+manner.  On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were
+gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs.  It was a
+piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.  It was a cup of milk at
+one time and some potatoes at another.  Sometimes a portion of our
+family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would
+eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the
+hands with which to hold the food.  When I had grown to sufficient
+size, I was required to go to the "big house" mealtimes to fan the
+flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by
+a pulley.  Naturally much of the conversation of the white people
+turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good
+deal of it.  I remember that at one time I saw two of my young
+mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard.  At
+that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting
+and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I then and there
+resolved that, if I ever got free, the height of my ambition would be
+reached if I could get to the point where I could secure and eat
+ginger-cakes in the way that I saw those ladies doing. . . .
+
+The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones.  They
+had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch
+thick, were of wood.  When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
+besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
+to the natural pressure of the foot.  In wearing them one presented an
+exceedingly awkward appearance.  The most trying ordeal that I was
+forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax
+shirt.  In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use
+flax as part of the clothing for the slaves.  That part of the flax
+from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of
+course, was the cheapest and roughest part.  I can scarcely imagine any
+torture, except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that
+caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time.  It is almost
+equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or
+more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pinpoints in contact with his
+flesh.  Even to this day, I can recall accurately the tortures that I
+underwent when putting on one of these garments.  The fact that my
+flesh was soft and tender added to the pain.  But I had no choice.  I
+had to wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to
+choose, I should have chosen to wear no covering. . . .
+
+Until I had grown to be quite a youth this single garment was all that
+I wore. . . .
+
+From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I
+recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read.  I determined
+when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life,
+I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common
+books and newspapers.  Soon after we got settled in some manner in our
+new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book
+for me.  How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she
+procured an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling-book, which
+contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab,"
+"ba," "ca," "da."  I began at once to devour this book, and I think
+that it was the first one I ever had in my hands.  I had learned from
+somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I
+tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it--all of course
+without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me.  At that time
+there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could
+read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people.  In some
+way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the
+alphabet.  In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my
+ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she
+could.  Though she was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge
+was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large
+fund of good, hard common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and
+master every situation.  If I have done anything in life worth
+attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my
+mother. . . .
+
+The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley brought to me one of
+the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced.  I had been
+working in a salt furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
+discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school
+opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work.  This
+decision seemed to cloud my every ambition.  The disappointment was
+made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work
+was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school,
+morning and afternoons.  Despite this disappointment, however, I
+determined that I would learn something, anyway.  I applied myself with
+greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the
+"blue-back" speller.
+
+My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
+comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
+learn.  After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the
+teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was
+done.  These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more
+at night than the other children did during the day.  My own
+experiences in the night school gave me faith in the night-school idea,
+with which, in after years, had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee.
+But my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day school, and I
+let no opportunity slip to push my case.  Finally I won, and was
+permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the
+understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the
+furnace till nine o'clock, and return immediately after school closed
+in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work.
+
+The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to
+work till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself
+in a difficulty.  School would always be begun before I reached it, and
+sometimes my class had recited.  To get around this difficulty I
+yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn
+me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it.  I have great
+faith in the power and influence of facts.  It is seldom that anything
+is permanently gained by holding back a fact.  There was a large clock,
+in a little office in the furnace.  This clock, of course, all the
+hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of
+beginning and ending the day's work.  I got the idea that the way for
+me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past
+eight up to nine o'clock mark.  This I found myself doing morning after
+morning, till the furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong,
+and locked the clock in a case.  I did not mean to inconvenience
+anybody.  I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.
+
+When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
+found myself confronted with two other difficulties.  In the first
+place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on
+their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap.  In fact, I do not remember
+that up to the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of
+covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else
+had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head.  But,
+of course when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to
+feel quite uncomfortable.  As usual, I put the case before my mother,
+and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a
+"store hat," which was a rather new institution at that time among the
+members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old
+to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty.
+She accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them
+together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap. . . .
+
+My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or, rather, a name.
+From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply
+"Booker."  Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it
+was needful or appropriate to have an additional name.  When I heard
+the school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least
+two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the
+extravagance of having three.  I was in deep perplexity, because I knew
+that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only
+one.  By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an
+idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the
+situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I
+calmly told him "Booker Washington," as if I had been called by that
+name all my life; and by that name I have since been known.  Later in
+my life I found that my mother had given me the name of "Booker
+Taliaferro," soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my
+name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as
+soon as I found out about it I revived it, and, made my full name
+"Booker Taliaferro Washington."  I think there are not many men in our
+country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that
+I have. . . .
+
+The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was
+short, and my attendance was irregular.  It was not long before I had
+to stop attending day school altogether, and devote all of my time
+again to work.  I resorted to the night school again.  In fact, the
+greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered
+through the night school after my day's work was done.  I had
+difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher.  Sometimes, after
+I had secured one to teach me at night, I would find, much to my
+disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than I did.
+Often I would have to walk miles at night in order to recite my
+night-school lessons.  There was never a time in my youth, no matter
+how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not
+continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an
+education at any cost.
+
+After I had worked in the salt furnace for some time, work was secured
+for me in a coal mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of
+securing fuel for the salt furnace. . . .
+
+In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my
+imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely
+no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities.  I used to envy
+the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a
+congressman, governor, bishop, or President by reason of the accident
+of his birth or race.  I used to picture the way that I would act under
+such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising
+until I reached the highest round of success. . . .
+
+One day while at work in the coal mine I happened to overhear two
+miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
+Virginia.  This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
+any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
+coloured school in our town.
+
+In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
+the two men who were talking.  I heard one tell the other that not only
+was the school established for the members of my race, but that
+opportunities were provided by which poor but worthy students could
+work out all or a part of the cost of board, and at the same time be
+taught some trade or industry.
+
+As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be
+the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
+attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
+Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
+I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
+it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
+remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
+that was to go to Hampton.  This thought was with me day and
+night. . . .
+
+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. . . .
+
+Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton.  I had only a
+small, cheap satchel that contained what 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.
+
+The distance from Maiden to Hampton is about five hundred miles.  I had
+not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
+evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to
+Hampton. . . .
+
+By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
+after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
+eighty-two miles from Hampton.  When I reached there, tired, hungry,
+and dirty; it was late in the night.  I had never been in a large city
+before, and this rather added to my misery.  When I reached Richmond I
+was completely out of money.  I had not a single acquaintance in the
+place, and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go.  I
+applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and
+that was what I did not have.  Knowing nothing else better to do, I
+walked the streets.  In doing this I passed by many food-stands where
+fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to
+present a most tempting appearance.  At that time it seemed to me that
+I would have promised all that I expected to possess in the future to
+have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies.
+But I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat.
+
+I must have walked the streets till after midnight.  At last I became
+so exhausted that I could walk no longer.  I was tired, I was hungry, I
+was everything but discouraged.  Just about the time when I reached
+extreme physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where
+the board sidewalk was considerably elevated.  I waited for a few
+minutes, till I was sure that no passersby could see me, and then crept
+under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my
+satchel of clothing for a pillow.  Nearly all night I could hear the
+tramp of feet above my head.  The next morning I found myself somewhat
+refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time
+since I had had sufficient food.  As soon as it became light enough for
+me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and
+that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron.  I went at
+once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload
+the vessel in order to get money for food.  The captain, a white man,
+who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented.  I worked long enough to earn
+money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to
+have been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.
+
+My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
+could continue working for a small amount per day.  This I was very
+glad to do.  I continued working on this vessel for a number of days.
+After buying food with the small wages I received there was not much
+left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton.  In
+order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach
+Hampton in a reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same
+sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. . . .
+
+When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
+Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
+started again.  Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with
+a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education, To
+me it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the
+large, three-story brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for
+all that I had undergone in order to reach the place. . . .
+
+It seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had
+ever seen.  The sight of it seemed to give me new life.  I felt that a
+new kind of existence had now begun--that life would now have a new
+meaning.  I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved
+to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to
+fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.
+
+As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute
+I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class.
+Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of
+clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon
+her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about
+the wisdom of admitting me as a student.  I felt that I could hardly
+blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp.
+For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in
+my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in
+all the ways I could with my worthiness.  In the meantime I saw her
+admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for
+I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I
+could only get a chance to show her what was in me.
+
+After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me, "The
+adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping.  Take the broom and sweep it."
+
+It occurred to me at once that here was my chance.  Never did I receive
+an order with more delight.  I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs.
+Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
+
+I swept the recitation-room three times.  Then I got a dusting-cloth
+and I dusted it four times.  All the woodwork around the walls, every
+bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth.
+Besides every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and
+corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned.  I had the feeling that
+in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon
+the teacher in the cleaning of that room.  When I was through, I
+reported to the head teacher.  She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just
+where to look for dirt.  She went into the room and inspected the floor
+and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the
+woodwork, about the walls, and over the table and benches.  When she
+was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust
+on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked: "I guess you will do to
+enter this institution."
+
+I was one of the happiest souls on earth.  The sweeping of that room
+was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination
+for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine
+satisfaction.  I have passed several examinations since then, but I
+have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed. . . .
+
+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, or
+eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bathtub and of
+the toothbrush, 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.
+
+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 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 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 be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots.  To
+wear one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the
+schoolroom, and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard
+problem for me to solve.  In some way I managed to get on till the
+teachers learned that I was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then
+some of them were kind enough to see that I was partly supplied with
+second-hand clothing that had been sent in barrels from the North.
+These barrels proved a blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving
+students.  Without them I question whether I should ever have gotten
+through Hampton. . . .
+
+I was completely out of money when I graduated.  In company with other
+Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
+in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
+there.  I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I
+knew practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table.  The head
+waiter, however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter.  He soon
+gave me charge of a table at which there sat four or five wealthy and
+rather aristocratic people.  My ignorance of how to wait upon them was
+so apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
+frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
+food.  As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
+that of a dish-carrier.
+
+But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a
+few weeks, and was restored to my former position.  I have had the
+satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
+waiter there.
+
+At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in
+Malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place.
+This was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life.  I
+now felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town
+to a higher life.  I felt from the first that mere book education was
+not all that the young people of that town needed.  I began my work at
+eight o'clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten
+o'clock at night.  In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I
+taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces
+clean, as well as their clothing.  I gave special attention to teaching
+them the proper use of the toothbrush and the bath.
+
+In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the
+toothbrush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of
+civilization that are more far-reaching.
+
+There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
+men and women, who had to work in the daytime but still were craving an
+opportunity for some education, that I soon opened a night school.
+From the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as
+the school that I taught in the day.  The efforts of some of the men
+and women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn,
+were in some cases very pathetic.
+
+My day- and night-school work was not all that I undertook.  I
+established a small reading-room and a debating society.  On Sundays I
+taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
+and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
+Malden.  In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
+men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute.  Without
+regard to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who
+wanted to learn, anything that I could teach him.  I was supremely
+happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else.  I did
+receive, however, a small salary from the public fund for my work as a
+public school teacher. . . .
+
+In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night
+school at Hampton Institute, in a way that I had not dared expect, the
+opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work.  One night in the
+chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong
+referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen
+in Alabama asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was
+to be a normal school for the coloured people in the little town of
+Tuskegee in that State.  These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted
+that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and
+they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place.
+The next day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and,
+much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in
+Alabama.  I told him that I would be willing to try.  Accordingly he
+wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he
+did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing
+to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend.  In this
+letter he gave them my name.
+
+Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.
+Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a
+messenger came in and handed the General a telegram.  At the end of the
+exercises he read the telegram to the school.  In substance, these were
+its words: "Booker T. Washington will suit us.  Send him at once. . . ."
+
+I reached Tuskegee early in June, 1881.  The first month I spent in
+finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through
+Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in
+the country districts, and in getting the school advertised among the
+class of people that I wanted to have attend it.  The most of my
+travelling was done over the country road, with a mule and a cart or a
+mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance.  I ate and slept with the people
+in their little cabins.  I saw their farms, their schools, their
+churches.  Since in the case of the most of these visits there had been
+no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, I had the
+advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people. . . .
+
+I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation
+left me with a very heavy heart.  The work to be done in order to lift
+these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing.  I was only one
+person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put
+forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results.  I
+wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for
+me to try.
+
+On one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending
+this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that
+was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than
+merely to imitate New England education as it then existed.  I saw more
+clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had
+inaugurated at Hampton.  To take the children of such people as I had
+been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book
+education, I felt would be almost a waste of time.
+
+After consultation with the citizens of Tuskegee, I set July 4, 1881,
+as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and
+church which had been secured for its accommodation.  The white people,
+as well as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the
+new school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest
+discussion.  There were not a few white people in the vicinity of
+Tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project.  They
+questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it
+might result in bringing about trouble between the races.  Some had the
+feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same
+proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the State.
+These people feared the result of education would be that the Negroes
+would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them
+for domestic service.
+
+The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school
+had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro, with
+a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid
+gloves, fancy boots, and what not--in a word, a man who was determined
+to live by his wits.  It was difficult for these people to see how
+education would produce any other kind of a coloured man. . . .
+
+On the morning that the school opened thirty students reported for
+admission.  I was the only teacher.  The students were about equally
+divided between the sexes. . . .  The greater part of the thirty were
+public school teachers, and some of them were nearly forty years of age.
+
+At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the
+school as a co-teacher.  This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later
+became my wife. . . .
+
+Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school
+from the first.  The students were making progress in learning books
+and in developing their minds; but it became apparent at once, that, if
+we were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
+for training, we must do something besides teach them mere books.  The
+students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
+lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies.  With few
+exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
+but little improvement upon those from which they had come.  We wanted
+to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
+clothing.  We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
+properly, and how to care for their rooms.  Aside from this, we wanted
+to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together
+with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be
+sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us.  We wanted
+to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone. . . .
+
+We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large
+proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to
+return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put
+new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual
+and moral and religious life of the people.
+
+All these ideals and needs crowded themselves upon us with a
+seriousness that seemed well-nigh overwhelming.  What were we to do?
+We had only the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the
+good coloured people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for
+the accommodation of the classes.  The number of students was
+increasing daily.  The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled
+through the country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were
+reaching, to only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom
+we wanted to lift up through the medium of the students whom we should
+educate and send out as leaders.
+
+The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from
+several parts of the State, the more we found that the chief ambition
+among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
+would not have to work any longer with their hands. . . .
+
+About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time
+when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into
+the market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated
+about a mile from the town of Tuskegee.  The mansion house--or "big
+house," as it would have been called--which had been occupied by the
+owners during slavery, had been burned.  After making a careful
+examination of this place, it seemed to be just the location that we
+wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent.
+
+But how were we to get it?  The price asked for it was very
+little--only five hundred dollars--but we had no money, and we were
+strangers in the town and had no credit.  The owner of the land agreed
+to let us occupy the place if we could make a payment of two hundred
+and fifty dollars down, with the understanding that the remaining two
+hundred and fifty dollars must be paid within a year.  Although five
+hundred dollars was cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did
+not have any part of it.
+
+In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
+wrote to my friend General J. F. B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the
+Hampton Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him
+to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal
+responsibility.  Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he
+had no authority to lend me money belonging to the Hampton Institute,
+but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his own
+personal funds. . . .
+
+I lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm.
+At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin,
+formerly used as the dining-room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old
+hen-house.  Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use.
+The stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very
+presently the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose. . . .
+
+Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school
+purposes was done by the students after school was over in the
+afternoon.  As soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used I
+determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop.  When I
+explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not seem to
+take to it very kindly.  It was hard for them to see the connection
+between clearing land and education.  Besides, many of them had been
+school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would
+be in keeping with their dignity.  In order to relieve them from any
+embarrassment, each afternoon after school I took my axe and led the
+way to the woods.  When they saw that I was not afraid or ashamed to
+work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm.  We kept at the work
+each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted
+a crop.
+
+At the end of three months enough was secured to repay the loan of two
+hundred and fifty dollars to General Marshall, and within two months
+more we had secured the entire five hundred dollars and had received a
+deed of the one hundred acres of land. . . .
+
+Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of
+the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time
+give the students training in agriculture.  All the industries at
+Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of
+the needs of a community settlement.  We began with farming, because we
+wanted something to eat.
+
+Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few
+weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
+their board.  Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
+industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
+of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
+to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school
+year. . . .
+
+From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
+students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have
+them erect their own building.  My plan was to have them, while
+performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour,
+so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but
+the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in
+labour, but beauty and dignity would be taught, in fact, how to lift
+labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for
+its own sake.  My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way,
+but to show them how to make the forces of nature--air, water, steam,
+electricity, horsepower--assist them in their labour. . . .
+
+I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
+excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
+than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
+called National.  I refer to the address which I delivered at the
+opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition at
+Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895. . . .
+
+In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from a prominent citizen in
+Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to Washington
+for the purpose of appearing before a committee of Congress in the
+interest of securing Government help for the Exposition.  The committee
+was composed of about twenty-five of the most prominent and most
+influential white men of Georgia.  All the members of this committee
+were white men except Bishop Grant, Bishop Gaines, and myself.  The
+Mayor and several other city and State officials spoke before the
+committee.  They were followed by the two coloured bishops.  My name
+was the last on the list of speakers.  I had never before appeared
+before such a committee, nor had I ever delivered any address in the
+capital of the Nation.  I had many misgivings as to what I ought to
+say, and as to the impression that my address would make.  While I
+cannot recall in detail what I said, I remember that I tried to impress
+upon the committee, with all the earnestness and plainness of any
+language that I could command, that if Congress wanted to do something
+which would assist in ridding the South of the race question and making
+friends between the two races, it should in every proper way encourage
+the material and intellectual growth of both races.  I said that the
+Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show
+what advance they had made since freedom, and would at the same time
+afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.
+
+I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be
+deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone
+would not save him, and that back of the ballot he must have property,
+industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race
+without these elements could permanently succeed.  I said that in
+granting the appropriation Congress could do something that would prove
+to be of real and lasting value to both races, and that it was the
+first great opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the
+close of the Civil War.
+
+I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close
+of my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia
+committee and of the members of Congress who were present.  The
+committee was unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few
+days the bill passed Congress.  With the passing of this bill the
+success of the Atlanta Exposition was assured.
+
+Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition
+decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to
+erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to
+showing the progress of the Negro since freedom.  It was further
+decided to have the building designed and erected wholly by Negro
+mechanics.  This plan was carried out.  In design, beauty, and general
+finish the Negro Building was equal to the others a on the
+grounds. . . .
+
+As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
+Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises.  In
+the discussion from day to day of the various features of this
+programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a
+member of the Negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since the
+Negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the Exposition.
+It was argued, further, that such recognition would mark the good
+feeling prevailing between the two races.  Of course there were those
+who were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the Negro,
+but the Board of Directors, composed of men who represented the best
+and most progressive element in the South, had their way, and voted to
+invite a black man to speak on the opening day.  The next thing was to
+decide upon the person who was thus to represent the Negro race.  After
+the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted
+unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and
+in a few days after that I received the official invitation.
+
+The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of
+responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my
+position to appreciate.  What were my feelings when this invitation
+came to me?  I remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years
+had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that
+I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as
+this.  It was only a few years before that time that any white man in
+the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily
+possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me
+speak.
+
+I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the
+Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same
+platform with white Southern men and women on any important National
+occasion.  I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the
+wealth and culture of the white South, the representative of my former
+masters.  I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would
+be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large
+number of Northern white, as well as a great many men and women of my
+own race.
+
+I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of
+my heart to be true and right.  When the invitation came to me, there
+was not one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what I
+should omit.  In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a
+tribute to me.  They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in
+a large degree, the success of the Exposition.  I was also painfully
+conscious of the fact that, while I must be true to my own race in my
+utterances, I had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as
+would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a
+black men again for years to come.  I was equally determined to be true
+to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in
+what I had to say.
+
+The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
+speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more
+and more widespread.  Not a few of the Southern white papers were
+unfriendly to the idea of my speaking.  From my own race I received
+many suggestions as to what I ought to say.  I prepared myself as best
+I could for the address, but as the eighteenth of September drew
+nearer, the heavier my heart became, and the more I feared that my
+effort would prove a failure and disappointment.
+
+The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school
+work, as it was the beginning of our school year.  After preparing my
+address, I went through it, as I usually do with all those utterances
+which I consider particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she
+approved of what I intended to say.  On the sixteenth of September, the
+day before I was to start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers
+expressed a desire to hear my address that I consented to read it to
+them in a body.  When I had done so, and had heard their criticisms and
+comments, I felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of
+what I had to say.
+
+In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured and
+white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with
+perfect freedom, in my hearing, what was going to take place the next
+day.  We were met by a committee in Atlanta.  Almost the first thing I
+heard when I got off the train in that city was an expression something
+like this, from an old coloured man near by: "Dat's de man of my race
+what's gwine to make a speech at de Exposition to-morrow.  I'se sho'
+gwine to hear him."
+
+Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts
+of the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as
+well as with military and civic organizations.  The afternoon papers
+had forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines.  All
+this tended to add to my burden.  I did not sleep much that night.  The
+next morning, before day, I went carefully over what I intended to say.
+I also kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort.  Right
+here, perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before
+an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon
+what I want to say. . . .
+
+Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the
+procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds.
+
+The procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition
+grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us
+disagreeably hot.  When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with
+my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse,
+and to feel that my address was not going to be a success.  When I
+entered the audience-room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom
+to top, and there were thousands outside who could not get in.
+
+The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking.  When I
+entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion
+of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people.  I had
+been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people
+were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity, and
+that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me,
+there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of
+those who were going to be present for the purpose of hearing me make a
+fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing, so
+that they could say to the officials who had invited me to speak, "I
+told you so!"
+
+One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal
+friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., was at the time General Manager of
+the Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day.  He
+was so nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the
+effect that my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself
+to go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds
+outside until the opening exercises were over. . . .
+
+Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, "We have with us to-day
+a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization."
+
+When I arose to speak there was considerable cheering, especially from
+the coloured people.  As I remember it now, the thing that was
+uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement
+the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooeperation between
+them.  So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing
+that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up I saw thousands of
+eyes looking intently into my face.
+
+
+
+
+BEN B. LINDSEY
+
+(1869-____)
+
+THE MAN WHO FIGHTS "THE BEAST"
+
+[Judge Lindsey is known all the world over for his work in the Juvenile
+Court in Denver, Colorado.  To his courtroom there come visitors from
+every State in this nation, investigators from Europe and officials
+from China and Japan to study his laws and observe his methods.  But to
+himself, his famous Juvenile Court is side issue, a small detail in his
+career.  For years he has been engaged in a fight of which the founding
+of his Juvenile Court was only a skirmish.
+
+Without money, without powerful friends, without personal popularity,
+this one man has codified laws, instituted reforms, founded charities,
+and balked corruption.]
+
+
+From "The Beast," by Ben B. Lindsey and Harvey J. O'Higgins.
+Doubleday, Page & Company, 1910.
+
+FINDING THE CAT
+
+I came to Denver in the spring of 1880, at the age of eleven, as mildly
+inoffensive a small boy as ever left a farm--undersized and weakly, so
+that at the age of seventeen I commonly passed as twelve, and so
+unaccustomed to the sight of buildings that I thought the five-story
+Windsor Hotel a miracle of height and magnificence.  I had been living
+with my maternal grandfather and aunt on a farm in Jackson, Tennessee,
+where I had been born; and I had come with my younger brother to join
+my parents, who had finally decided that Denver was to be their
+permanent home.  The conductors on the trains had taken care of us,
+because my father was a railroad man, at the head of the telegraph
+system; and we had been entertained on the way by the stories of an old
+forty-niner with a gray moustache, who told us how he had shot buffalo
+on those prairies where we now saw only antelope.  I was not
+precocious; his stories interested me more than anything else on the
+journey; and I stared so hard at the old pioneer that I should
+recognize him now, I believe, if I saw him on the street.
+
+My schooling was not peculiar; there was nothing "holier than thou" in
+my bringing up.  My father, being a Roman Catholic convert from the
+Episcopalian Church, sent me to Notre Dame, Indiana, to be educated;
+and there, to be sure, I read the "Lives of the Saints," aspired to be
+a saint, and put pebbles in my small shoes to "mortify the flesh,"
+because I was told that a good priest, Father Hudson--whom I all but
+worshipped--used to do so.  But even at Notre Dame, and much more in
+Denver, I was homesick for the farm; and at last I was allowed to
+return to Jackson to be cared for by my Protestant relatives.  They
+sent me to a Baptist school till I was seventeen.  And when I was
+recalled to Denver, because of the failure of my father's health, I
+went to work to help earn for the household, with no strong attachment
+for any church and with no recognized membership in any.
+
+I suppose there is no one who does not look back upon his past and
+wonder what he should have become in life if this or that crucial event
+had not occurred to set his destiny.  It seems to me that if it had not
+been for the sudden death of my father I, too, might have found our
+jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey without
+realizing what I was about.  I should have been a lawyer, I know; for I
+had had the ambition from my earliest boyhood, and I had been confirmed
+in it by my success in debating at school.  (Once, at Notre Dame, I
+spoke for a full hour in successful defence of the proposition that
+Colorado was the "greatest state in the Union," and proved at least
+that I had a lawyer's "wind.")  But I should probably have been a
+lawyer who has learned his pleasant theories of life in the colleges.
+And on the night that my father died, the crushing realities of poverty
+put out an awful and compelling hand on me, and my struggle with them
+began.
+
+I was eighteen years old, the eldest of four children.  I had been
+"writing proofs" in the Denver land office, for claimants who had filed
+on Government land; and I had saved $150 of my salary before my work
+there ceased.  I found, after my father's death, that this $150 was all
+we had in the world, and $130 of it went for funeral expenses.  His
+life had been insured for $15,000, and we believed that the premiums
+had all been paid, but we could not find the last receipt; the agent
+denied having received the payment; the policy had lapsed on the day
+before my father's death; and we got nothing.  Our furniture had been
+mortgaged; we were allowed only enough of it to furnish a little house
+on Santa Fe Avenue; and later we moved to a cottage on lower West
+Colfax Avenue, in which Negroes have since lived.
+
+I went to work at a salary of $10 a month, in a real estate office--as
+office boy--and carried a "route" of newspapers in the morning before
+the office opened, and did janitor work at night when it closed.  After
+a month of that, I got a better place, as office boy, with a mining
+company, at a salary of $25 a month.  And finally, my younger brother
+found work in a law office and I "swapped jobs" with him--because I
+wished to study law!
+
+It was the office of Mr. R. D. Thompson, who still practises in Denver;
+and his example as an incorruptibly honest lawyer has been one of the
+best and strongest influences of my life.
+
+I had that one ambition--to be a lawyer.  Associated with it I seem to
+have had an unusual curiosity about politics.  And where I got either
+the ambition or the curiosity, I have no idea.  My father's mother was
+a Greenleaf,[1] and related to the author of "Greenleaf on Evidence,"
+but my father himself had nothing of the legal mind.  As a boy, living
+in Mississippi, he had joined the Confederate army when he was
+preparing for the University of Virginia, had attained the rank of
+captain, had become General Forrest's private secretary, and had
+written--or largely helped to write--General Forrest's autobiography.
+He was idealistic, enthusiastic, of an inventive genius, with a really
+remarkable command of English, and an absorbing love of books.  My
+mother's father was a Barr, from the north of Ireland, a Scotch-Irish
+Presbyterian, her mother was a Woodfalk of Jackson County, Tennessee, a
+Methodist.  The members of the family were practical, strong-willed,
+able men and women, but with no bent, that I know of, toward either law
+or politics.
+
+And yet, one of the most vivid memories of my childhood in Jackson is
+of attending a political rally with my grandfather and hearing a Civil
+War veteran declaim against Republicans who "waved the bloody shirt"--a
+memory so strong that for years afterward I never saw a Republican
+without expecting to see the gory shirt on his back, and wondering
+vaguely why he was not in jail.  When I came to Denver, where the
+Republicans were dominant, I felt myself in the land of the enemy.  And
+when I "swapped" myself into Mr. Thompson's office, I was surprised to
+find that my employer, though a Republican from Pittsburg, was so human
+that one of the first things he did was to give me a suit of clothes.
+If there is anything more ridiculously dangerous than to blind a
+child's mind with such prejudices, I do not know what it is.
+
+However, my own observations of what was going on about me were already
+opening my eyes.  I had read, in the newspapers, of how the Denver
+Republicans won the elections by fraud--by ballot-box stuffing and what
+not--and I had followed one "Soapy" Smith on the streets, from precinct
+to precinct, with his gang of election thieves, and had seen them vote
+not once but five times openly.  I had seen a young man, whom I knew,
+knocked down and arrested for "raising a disturbance" when he objected
+to "Soapy" Smith's proceeding; and the policeman who arrested him did
+it with a smile and a wink.
+
+When I came to Mr. Thompson to ask him how he, a Republican, could
+countenance such things, he assured me that much of what I had been
+reading and hearing of election frauds was a lie--the mere "whine" of
+the defeated party--and I saw that he believed what he said.  I knew
+that he was an honest, upright man; and I was puzzled.  What puzzled me
+still more was this: although the ministers in the churches and
+"prominent citizens" in all walks of life denounced the "election
+crooks" with the most laudable fervor, the election returns showed that
+the best people in the churches joined the worst people in the dives to
+vote the same ticket, and vote it "straight."  And I was most of all
+puzzled to find that when the elections were over, the opposition
+newspaper ceased its scolding, the voice of ministerial denunciation
+died away, and the crimes of the election thieves were condoned and
+forgotten.
+
+I was puzzled.  I saw the jungle of vice and party prejudice, but I did
+not yet see "the Cat."  I saw its ears and its eyes there in the
+underbrush, but I did not know what they were.  I thought they were
+connected with the Republican party.
+
+And then I came upon some more of the brute's anatomy.  Members of the
+Legislature in Denver were accused of fraud in the purchase of state
+supplies, and--some months later--members of the city government were
+accused of committing similar frauds with the aid of civic officials
+and prominent business men.  It was proved in court, for example, that
+bills for $3 had been raised to $300, that $200 had been paid for a
+bundle of hay worth $2, and $50 for a yard of cheesecloth worth five
+cents; barrels of ink had been bought for each legislator, though a
+pint would have sufficed; and an official of the Police Department was
+found guilty of conniving with a gambler named "Jim" Marshall to rob an
+express train.  I watched the cases in court.  I applauded at the
+meetings of leading citizens who denounced the grafters and passed
+resolutions in support of the candidates of the opposition party.  I
+waited to see the criminals punished.  And they were not punished.
+Their crimes were not denied.  They were publicly denounced by the
+courts and by the investigating committees, but somehow, for reasons
+not clear, they all went scot-free, on appeals.  Some mysterious power
+protected them, and I, in the boyish ardor of my ignorance, concluded
+that they were protected by the Republican "bloody shirt"--and I rushed
+into that (to me) great confederation of righteousness and all-decent
+government, the Democratic party.
+
+It would be laughable to me now, if it were not so "sort of sad."
+
+Meanwhile, I was busy about the office, copying letters, running
+errands, carrying books to and from the court rooms, reading law in the
+intervals, and at night scrubbing the floors.  I was pale, thin,
+big-headed, with the body of an underfed child, and an ambition that
+kept me up half the night with Von Holst's "Constitutional Law,"
+Walker's "American Law," or a sheepskin volume of Lawson's "Leading
+Cases in Equity."  I was so mad to save every penny I could earn that
+instead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ate molasses and
+gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn
+my law that I did not take my sleep when I could get it.  The result
+was that I was stupid at my tasks, moody, melancholy, and so sensitive
+that my employer's natural dissatisfaction with my work put me into
+agonies of shame and despair of myself.  I became, as the boys say,
+"dopy."  I remember that one night, after I had scrubbed the floors of
+our offices, I took off the old trousers in which I had been working,
+hung them in a closet, and started home; and it was not until the cold
+wind struck my bare knees that I realized I was on the street in my
+shirt.  Often, when I was given a brief to work up for Mr. Thompson, I
+would slave over it until the small hours of the morning and then, to
+his disgust--and my unspeakable mortification--find that my work was
+valueless, that I had not seized the fundamental points of the case, or
+that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension of the law.
+
+Worse than that, I was unhappy at home.  Poverty was fraying us all
+out.  If it was not exactly brutalizing us, it was warping us, breaking
+our healths, and ruining our dispositions.  My good mother--married out
+of a beautiful Southern home where she had lived a life that (as I
+remembered it) was all horseback rides and Negro servants--had started
+out bravely in this debasing existence in a shanty, but it was wearing
+her out.  She was passing through a critical period of her life, and
+she had no care, no comforts.  I have often since been ashamed of
+myself that I did not sympathize with her and understand her, but I was
+too young to understand, and too miserable myself to sympathize.  It
+seemed to me that my life was not worth living--that every one had lost
+faith in me--that I should never succeed in the law or anything
+else--that I had no brains--that I should never do anything but scrub
+floors and run messages.  And after a day that had been more than
+usually discouraging in the office and an evening of exasperated misery
+at home, I got a revolver and some cartridges, locked myself in my
+room, confronted myself desperately in the mirror, put the muzzle of
+the loaded pistol to my temple, and pulled the trigger.
+
+The hammer snapped sharply on the cartridge; a great wave of horror and
+revulsion swept over me in a rush of blood to my head, and I dropped
+the revolver on the floor and threw myself on my bed.
+
+By some miracle the cartridge had not exploded; but the nervous shock
+of that instant when I felt the trigger yield and the muzzle rap
+against my forehead with the impact of the hammer--that shock was
+almost as great as a very bullet in the brain.  I realized my folly, my
+weakness; and I went back to my life with something of a man's
+determination to crush the circumstances that had almost crushed me.
+
+Why do I tell that?  Because there are so many people in the world who
+believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy
+of the slums is as callous as he seems dull.  Because so many people
+believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a
+weak and vicious man.  Because I came out of that morbid period of
+adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible
+one of the first courts established in America for the protection as
+well as the correction of children.  Because I was never afterward as
+afraid of anything as of my own weakness, my own cowardice--so that
+when the agents of the Beast in the courts and in politics threatened
+me with all the abominations of their rage if I did not commit moral
+suicide for _them_, my fear of yielding to them was so great that I
+attacked them more desperately than ever.
+
+It was about this time, too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws
+of our metaphorical man-eater.  That was during the conflict between
+Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver.  He had the
+appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law,
+and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise
+enforce the laws against vice in Denver, he read them out of office.
+They refused to go, and defied him, with the police at their backs.  He
+threatened to call out the militia and drive them from the City Hall.
+The whole town was in an uproar.
+
+One night, in the previous summer, I had followed the excited crowds to
+Coliseum Hall to hear the Governor speak, and I had seen him rise like
+some old Hebrew prophet, with his long white beard and patriarchal head
+of hair, and denounce iniquity and political injustice and the
+oppressions of the predatory rich.  He appealed to the Bible in a calm
+prediction that, if the reign of lawlessness did not cease, in time to
+come "blood would flow in the land even unto the horses' bridles."
+(And he earned for himself, thereby, the nickname of "Bloody Bridles"
+Waite.)
+
+Now it began to appear that his prediction was about to come true; for
+he called out the militia, and the Board armed the police.  My brother
+was a militiaman, and I kept pace with him as his regiment marched from
+the Armouries to attack the City Hall.  There were riflemen on the
+towers and in the windows of that building; and on the roofs of the
+houses for blocks around were sharpshooters and armed gamblers and the
+defiant agents of the powers who were behind the Police Board in their
+fight.  Gatling guns were rushed through the streets; cannon were
+trained on the City Hall; the long lines of militia were drawn up
+before the building; and amid the excited tumult of the mob and the
+eleventh-hour conferences of the Committee of Public Safety, and the
+hurry of mounted officers and the marching of troops, we all waited
+with our hearts in our mouths for the report of the first shot.
+Suddenly, in the silence that expected the storm, we heard the sound of
+bugles from the direction of the railroad station, and at the head of
+another army--a body of Federal soldiers ordered from Fort Logan by
+President Cleveland, at the frantic call of the Committee of Public
+Safety--a mounted officer rode between the lines of militia and police,
+and in the name of the President commanded peace.
+
+The militia withdrew.  The crowds dispersed.  The police and their
+partisans put up their guns, and the Beast, still defiant, went back
+sullenly to cover.  Not until the Supreme Court had decided that
+Governor Waite had the right and the power to unseat the Board--not
+till then was the City Hall surrendered; and even so, at the next
+election (the Beast turning polecat), "Bloody Bridles" Waite was
+defeated after a campaign of lies, ridicule, and abuse, and the men
+whom he had opposed were returned to office.
+
+I had eyes, but I did not see.  I thought the whole quarrel was a
+personal matter between the Police Board and Governor Waite, who seemed
+determined merely to show them that he was master; and if my young
+brother had been shot down by a policeman that night, I suppose I
+should have joined in the curses upon poor old "Bloody Bridles."
+
+However, my prospects in the office had begun to improve.  I had had my
+salary raised, and I had ceased doing janitor work.  I had become more
+of a clerk and less of an office boy.  A number of us "kids" had got up
+a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of
+another room in the old Denver University building, where, in the
+gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes" and defend imaginary cases.
+(That, by the way, was the beginning of the Denver University Law
+School.)  I read my Blackstone, Kent, Parsons--working night and
+day--and I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law."  Long
+before I had passed my examinations and been called to the bar, Mr.
+Thompson would give me demurrers to argue in court; and, having been
+told that I had only a pretty poor sort of legal mind, I worked twice
+as hard to make up for my deficiencies.  I argued my first case, a
+damage suit, when I was nineteen.  And at last there happened one of
+those lucky turns common in jury cases, and it set me on my feet.
+
+A man had been held by the law on several counts of obtaining goods
+under false pretences.  He had been tried on the first count by an
+assistant district attorney, and the jury had acquitted him.  He had
+been tried on the second count by another assistant, who was one of our
+great criminal lawyers, and the jury had disagreed.  There was a debate
+as to whether it was worth while to try him for a third time, and I
+proposed that I should take the case, since I had been working on it
+and thought there was still a chance of convicting him.  They let me
+have my way, and though the evidence in the third charge was the same
+as before--except as to the person defrauded--the jury, by good luck,
+found against him.  It was the turning point in my struggle.  It gave
+me confidence in myself; and it taught me never to give up.
+
+And now I began to come upon "the Cat" again.
+
+I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at
+the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of
+the great smelter companies of Colorado.  The boy had suffered a
+fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon--because of a hasty and
+ill-considered diagnosis, I believed--had treated him for a bruised
+hip.  The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to
+damages, called me a blackmailer--and that was enough.  I forced the
+case to trial.
+
+I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young
+fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]--though that was not his
+name--and this was to be our first case.  We were opposed by Charles J.
+Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was
+puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of
+prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to
+dismiss it.  The judge refused the motion, and for so doing--as he
+afterward told me himself--he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose
+presence in the court had puzzled me.  After a three weeks' trial, in
+which we worked night and day for the plaintiff--with X-ray photographs
+and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the
+medical school where I prepared them--the jury stood eleven to one in
+our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again.  The second
+time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we
+did not give up.  It had been all fun for us--and for the town.  The
+word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting
+the corporation heavyweights.  It's more fun than a circus."  And we
+were confident that we could win; we knew that we were right.
+
+One evening after dinner, when we were sitting in the dingy little back
+room on Champa Street that served us as an office, A. M.
+Stevenson--"Big Steve"--politician and attorney for the Denver City
+Tramway Company, came shouldering in to see us--a heavy-jowled,
+heavy-waisted, red-faced bulk of good-humour--looking as if he had just
+walked out of a political cartoon.  "Hello, boys," he said jovially.
+"How's she going?  Making a record for yourselves up in court, eh?
+Making a record for yourselves.  Well!"
+
+He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smiled at us, with his
+inevitable cigarette in his mouth--his ridiculously inadequate
+cigarette.  (When he puffed it, he looked like a fat boy blowing
+bubbles.)  "Wearing yourselves out, eh?  Working night and day?  Ain't
+you getting about tired of it?"
+
+"We got eleven to one each time," I said.  "We'll win yet."
+
+"Uh-huh.  You will, eh?"  He laughed amusedly.  "One man stood out
+against you each time, wasn't there?"
+
+There was.
+
+"Well," he said, "there always will be.  You ain't going to get a
+verdict in this case.  You can't.  Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't
+I?  Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case.  Get
+something for your work.  Don't be a pair of fools.  Settle it."
+
+"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.
+
+He winked a fat eye.  "Jury'll hang.  Every time.  I'm here to tell you
+so.  Better settle it." [3]
+
+We refused to.  What was the use of courts if we could not get justice
+for this crippled boy?  What was the use of practising law if we could
+not get a verdict on evidence that would convince a blind man?  Settle
+it?  Never!
+
+So they went to our client and persuaded the boy to give up.
+
+"Big Steve," attorney for the tramway company!  The gas company's
+officers in court!  The business men insulting the judge in his Club!
+The defendant's brother at the head of one of the smelter companies!  I
+began to "connect up" "the Cat."
+
+Gardener and I held a council of war.  If it was possible for these men
+to "hang" juries whenever they chose, there was need of a law to make
+something less than a unanimous decision by a jury sufficient to give a
+verdict in civil cases.  Colorado needed a "three-fourths jury law."
+Gardener was a popular young man, a good "mixer," a member of several
+fraternal orders, a hail-fellow-well-met, and as interested as I was in
+politics.  He had been in the insurance business before he took up law,
+and he had friends everywhere.  Why should he not go into politics?--as
+he had often spoken of doing.
+
+In the intervals of the Smith suit, we had had a case in which a
+mother, whose child had been killed by a street car, had been unable to
+recover damages from the tramway company, because the company claimed,
+under the law, that her child was worthless alive or dead; and there
+was need of a statute permitting such as she to recover damages for
+distress and anguish of mind.  We had had another case in which a young
+factory worker had been injured by the bursting of an emery wheel; and
+the law held that the boy was guilty of "contributory negligence"
+because he had continued to work at the wheel after he had found a flaw
+in it--although he had had no choice except to work at it or leave the
+factory and find employment elsewhere.  There was need of a law giving
+workmen better protection in such circumstances.  Why should not
+Gardener enter the Legislature and introduce these bills?--which I was
+eager to draft.  Why not, indeed!  The state needed them; the people
+wanted them; the courts were crippled and justice was balked because of
+the lack of them.  Here was an opportunity for worthy ambition to serve
+the community and help his fellow-man.
+
+That night, with all the high hopes and generous ideals and merciful
+ignorance of youth, we decided--without knowing what we were about--to
+go into the jungle and attack the Beast!
+
+
+THE CAT PURRS
+
+Denver was then, as it is now, a beautiful city, built on a slope,
+between the prairies and mountains, always sunny, cool, and clear-skyed
+with the very sparkle of happiness in its air; and on the crown of its
+hill, facing the romantic prospect of the Rockies, the State Capitol
+raised its dome--as proud as the ambition of a liberty-loving
+people--the symbol of an aspiration and the expression of its power.
+That Capitol, I confess, was to me a sort of granite temple erected by
+the Commonwealth of Colorado to law, to justice, to the ideals of
+self-government that have made our republic the promised land of all
+the oppressed of Europe; and I could conceive of no nobler work than to
+serve those ideals in the assembly halls of that building, with those
+eternal mountains on the horizon and that sun of freedom overhead.
+Surely a man may confess so much, without shame, of his youth and his
+inexperience. . . .  It is not merely the gold on the dome of the
+Capitol that has given it another look to me now.
+
+It was the year 1897.  I was about twenty-eight years old, and my
+partner, Gardener, was three years younger.  He was more worldly-wise
+than I was, even then; for while I had been busy with briefs and
+court-work, he had been the "business head" of the firm, out among
+business friends and acquaintances--"mixing," as they say--and through
+his innumerable connections, here and there, with this man and that
+fraternity, bringing in the cases that kept us employed.  He was a
+"Silver Republican"; I, a Democrat.  But we both knew that if he was to
+get into politics it must be with the backing of the party
+"organization" and the endorsement of the party "boss."
+
+The "Silver Republican" boss of the day was a man whom we both
+admired--George Graham.  Everybody admired him.  Everybody was fond of
+him.  "Why," they would tell you, "there isn't a man in town who is
+kinder to his family.  He's such a good man in his home!  And he's so
+charitable!"  At Christmas time, when free baskets of food were
+distributed to the poor, George Graham was chairman of the committee
+for their distribution.  He was prominent in the fraternal orders and
+used his political power to help the needy, the widow, and the orphan.
+He had an engaging manner of fellowship, a personal magnetism, a kindly
+interest in aspiring young men, a pleasant appearance--smooth and dark
+in complexion, with a gentle way of smiling.  I liked him; and he
+seemed to discover an affection for both Gardener and me, as we became
+more intimate with him, in the course of Gardener's progress toward his
+coveted nomination by the party.
+
+That progress was so rapid and easy that it surprised us.  We knew, of
+course, that we had attracted some public attention and much newspaper
+notice by our legal battles with "the corporation heavyweights" in our
+three big cases against the surgeon, the tramway company, and the
+factory owner.  But this did not account to us for the ease with which
+Gardener penetrated to the inner circles of the Boss's court.  It did
+not explain why Graham should come to see us in our office, and call us
+by our first names.  The explanation that we tacitly accepted was one
+more personal and flattering to us.  And when Gardener would come back
+from a chat with Graham, full of "inside information" about the party's
+plans--about who was to be nominated for this office at the coming
+convention, and what chance So-and-so had for that one--the sure proofs
+(to us) that he was being admitted to the intimate secrets of the party
+and found worthy of the confidence of those in power--I was as proud of
+Gardener as only a young man can be of a friend who has all the
+brilliant qualities that he himself lacks.  Gardener was a handsome
+fellow, well built, always well dressed, self-assured and ambitious; I
+did not wonder that the politicians admired him and made much of him.
+I accepted his success as a tribute to those qualities in him that had
+already attached me to him with an affection rather more than brotherly.
+
+We said nothing to the politicians about our projected bills.  Indeed,
+from the first, my interest in our measures of reform was greater than
+Gardener's.  His desire to be in the Legislature Was due to a natural
+ambition to "get on" in life, to acquire power in the community as well
+as the wealth and distinction that come with power.  Such ambitions
+were, of course, beyond me; I had none of the qualities that would make
+them possible; and I could only enjoy them, as it were, by proxy, in
+Gardener's person.  I enjoyed, in the same way, his gradual penetration
+behind the scenes in politics.  I saw, with him, that the party
+convention, to which we had at first looked as the source of honours,
+was really only a sort of puppet show of which the Boss held the wires.
+All the candidates for nomination were selected by Graham in
+advance--in secret caucus with his ward leaders, executive
+committeemen, and such other "practical" politicians as "Big
+Steve"--and the convention, with more or less show of independence, did
+nothing but ratify his choice.  When I spoke of canvassing some of the
+chosen delegates of the convention, Gardener said: "What's the use of
+talking to those small fry?  If we can get the big fellows, we've got
+the rest.  They do what the big ones tell them--and won't do anything
+they aren't told.  You leave it to me."  I had only hoped to see him in
+the Lower House, but he, with his wiser audacity, soon proclaimed
+himself a candidate for the Senate.  "We can get the big thing as easy
+as the little one," he said.  "I'm going to tell Graham it's the Senate
+or nothing for me."  And he got his promise.  And when we knew, at
+last, that his name was really on "the slate" of candidates to be
+presented to the convention, we were ready to throw up our hats and
+cheer for ourselves--and for the Boss.
+
+The convention met in September, 1898.  There had been a fusion of
+Silver Republicans, Democrats, and Populists, that year, and the
+political offices had been apportioned out among the faithful
+machine-men of these parties.  Gardener was nominated by "Big Steve,"
+in a eulogistic speech that was part of the farce; and the convention
+ratified the nomination with the unanimity of a stage mob.  We knew
+that his election was as sure as sunrise, and I set to work looking up
+models for my bills with all the enthusiasm of the first reformer.
+
+Meanwhile there was the question of the campaign and of the campaign
+expenses.  Gardener had been assessed $500 by the committee as his
+share of the legitimate costs of the election, and Boss Graham
+generously offered to get the money for him "from friends."  We were
+rather inclined to let Graham do so, feeling a certain delicacy about
+refusing his generosity and being aware, too, that we were not
+millionaires.  But Graham was not the only one who made the offer; for
+example, Ed. Chase, since head of the gambler's syndicate in Denver,
+made similar proposals of kindly aid; and we decided, at last, that
+perhaps it would be well to be quite independent.  Our law practice was
+improving.  Doubtless, it would continue to improve now that we were
+"in right" with the political powers.  We put up $250 each and paid the
+assessment.
+
+The usual business of political rallies, mass-meetings, and campaign
+speeches followed in due course, and in November, 1898, Gardener was
+elected a State Senator on the fusion ticket.  I had been busy with my
+"three-fourths jury" bill, studying the constitution of the State of
+Colorado, comparing it with those of the other states, and making
+myself certain that such a law as we proposed was possible.  Unlike
+most of the state constitutions, Colorado's preserved inviolate the
+right of jury trial in criminal cases only, and therefore it seemed to
+me that the Legislature had plenary power to regulate it in civil
+suits.  I found that the Supreme Court of the state had so decided in
+two cases, and I felt very properly elated; there seemed to be nothing
+to prevent us having a law that should make "hung" juries practically
+impossible in Colorado and relieve the courts of an abuse that thwarted
+justice in scores of cases.  At the same time I prepared a bill
+allowing parents to recover damages for "anguish of mind" when a child
+of theirs was killed in an accident; and, after much study, I worked up
+an "employer's liability" bill to protect men who were compelled by
+necessity to work under needlessly dangerous conditions.  With these
+three bills in his pocket, Senator Gardener went up to the Capitol,
+like another David, and I went joyfully with him to aid and abet.
+
+Happy?  I was as happy as if Gardener had been elected President and I
+was to be his Secretary of State.  I was as happy as a man who has
+found his proper work and knows that it is for the good of his fellows.
+I would not have changed places that day with any genius of the fine
+arts who had three masterpieces to unveil to an admiring world.
+
+I did not know, of course--but I was soon to learn--that the
+Legislature's time was almost wholly taken up with the routine work of
+government, that most of the bills passed were concerned with
+appropriations and such necessary details of administration, and that
+only twenty or thirty bills such as ours--dealing with other
+matters--could possibly be passed, among the hundreds offered.  It was
+Boss Graham who warned us that we had better concentrate on one
+measure, if we wished to succeed with any at all, and we decided to put
+all our strength behind the "three-fourths jury" bill.  Since Graham
+seemed to doubt its constitutionality, I went to the Attorney General
+for his opinion, and he referred me to his assistant--whom I convinced.
+I came back with the assistant's decision that the Legislature had
+power to pass such a law, and Gardener promptly introduced it in the
+Senate.
+
+It proved at once mildly unpopular, and after a preliminary debate, in
+which the senators rather laughed at it as visionary and
+unconstitutional, it was referred to the Attorney General for his
+opinion.  We waited, confidently.  To our amazement he reported it
+unconstitutional, and the very assistant who had given me a favourable
+opinion before, now conducted the case against it.  Nothing daunted,
+Gardener fought to get it referred to the Supreme Court, under the law;
+and the Senate sent it there.  I got up an elaborate brief, had it
+printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing it before the
+Supreme Court judges.  They held that the Court had already twice found
+the Legislature possessed of plenary powers in such matters, and
+Gardener brought the bill back into the Senate triumphantly, and got a
+favourable report from the Judiciary Committee.
+
+By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed.  He had warned
+Gardener that the bill was distasteful to him and to those whom he
+called his "friends."  It was particularly distasteful, it seemed, to
+the Denver City Tramway Company.  And he could promise, he said, that
+if we dropped the bill, the railway company would see that we got at
+least four thousand dollars' worth of litigation a year to handle.  To
+both Gardener and myself, flushed with success and roused to the
+battle, this offer seemed an amusing confession of defeat on the part
+of the opposition; and we went ahead more gaily than ever.
+
+We were enjoying ourselves.  If we had been a pair of chums in college,
+we could not have had a better time.  Whenever I could get away from my
+court cases and my office work, I rushed up to watch the fight in the
+Senate, as eagerly as a Freshman hurrying from his studies to see his
+athletic room-mate carry everything before him in a football game.  The
+whole atmosphere of the Capitol--with its corridors of coloured marble,
+its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal balustrades, its
+great staircases--all its majesty of rich grandeur and solidity of
+power--affected me with an increased respect for the functions of
+government that were discharged there and for the men who had them to
+discharge.  I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon
+myself when I was introduced as "Senator Gardener's law partner, sir";
+and I accepted the bows and greetings of lobbyists and legislators with
+all the pleasure in the world.
+
+When Gardener got our bill up for its final reading in the Senate, I
+was there to watch, and it tickled me to the heart to see him.  He made
+a fine figure of an orator, the handsomest man in the Senate; and he
+was not afraid to raise his voice and look as independent and
+determined as his words.  He had given the senators to understand that
+any one who opposed his bill would have him as an obstinate opponent on
+every other measure; and the Senate evidently realized that it would be
+wise to let him have his way.  The bill was passed.  But it had to go
+through the Lower House, too, and it was sent there, to be taken care
+of by its opponents--with the tongue in the cheek, no doubt.
+
+I met Boss Graham in the corridor.  "Hello, Ben," he greeted me.
+"What's the matter with that partner of yours?" I laughed; he looked
+worried.  "Come in here," he said.  "I'd like to have a talk with you."
+He led me into a quiet side room and shut the door.  "Now look here,"
+he said.  "Did you boys ever stop to think what a boat you'll be in
+with this law that you're trying to get, if you ever have to defend a
+corporation in a jury suit?  Now they tell me down at the tramway
+offices"--the offices of the Denver City Tramway Company--"that they're
+going to need a lot more legal help.  There's every prospect that
+they'll appoint you boys assistant counsel.  But they can't expect to
+do much, even with you bright boys as counsel, if they have this law
+against them.  You know that all the money there is in law is in
+corporation business.  I don't see what you're fighting for."
+
+I explained, as well as I could, that we were fighting for the bill
+because we thought it was right--that it was needed.  He did not seem
+to believe me; he objected that this sort of talk was not "practical."
+
+"Well," I ended, "we've made up our minds to put it through.  And we're
+going to try."
+
+"You'll find you're making a mistake, boy," he warned me.  "You'll find
+you're making a mistake."
+
+We laughed over it together--Gardener and I.  It was another proof to
+us that we had our opponents on their knees.  We thought we understood
+Graham's position in the matter; he had made no disguise of the fact
+that he was intimate and friendly with Mr. William G. Evans--the great
+"Bill" Evans--head of the tramway company and an acknowledged power in
+politics.  And it was natural to us that Graham should do what he could
+to induce us to spare his friends.  That was all very well, but we had
+made no pledges; we were under no obligations to any one except the
+public whom we served.  Gardener was making himself felt.  He did not
+intend to stultify himself, even for Graham's good "friends."  I, of
+course, went along with him, rejoicing.
+
+He had another bill in hand (House Bill 235) to raise the tax on large
+foreign insurance companies so as to help replenish the depleted
+treasury of the state.  Governor Thomas had been appealing for money;
+the increased tax was conceded to be just, and it would add at least
+$100,000 in revenue to the public coffers.  Gardener handled it well in
+the Senate, and--though we were indirectly offered a bribe of $2,500 to
+drop it--he got it passed and returned it to the Lower House.  He had
+two other bills--one our "anguish of mind" provision and the second a
+bill regulating the telephone companies; but he was not able to move
+them out of committee.  The opposition was silent but solid.
+
+It became my duty to watch the two bills that we had been able to get
+as far as the House calendar on final passage--to see that they were
+given their turn for consideration.  The jury bill came to the top very
+soon, but it was passed over, and next day it was on the bottom of the
+list.  This happened more than once.  And once it disappeared from the
+calendar altogether.  The Clerk of the House, when I demanded an
+explanation, said that it was an oversight--a clerical error--and put
+it back at the foot.  I began to suspect jugglery, but I was not yet
+sure of it.
+
+One day while I was on this sentry duty, a lobbyist who was a member of
+a fraternal order to which I belonged, came to me with the fraternal
+greeting and a thousand dollars in bills.  "Lindsey," he said, "this is
+a legal fee for an argument we want you to make before the committee,
+as a lawyer, against that insurance bill.  It's perfectly legitimate.
+We don't want you to do anything except in a legal way.  You know our
+other lawyer has made an able argument, showing how the extra tax will
+come out of the people in increased premiums"--and so on.  I refused
+the money and continued trying to push along the bill.  In a few days
+he came back to me, with a grin.  "Too bad you didn't take that money,"
+he said.  "There's lots of it going round.  But the joke of it is, I
+got the whole thing fixed up for $250.  Watch Cannon."  I watched
+Cannon--Wilbur F. Cannon, a member of the House and a "floor leader"
+there.  He had already voted in favour of the bill.  But--to anticipate
+somewhat the sequence of events--I saw Wilbur F. Cannon, in the
+confusion and excitement of the closing moments of the session, rush
+down the aisle toward the Speaker's chair and make a motion concerning
+the insurance bill--to what effect I could not hear.  The motion was
+put, in the midst of the uproar, and declared carried; and the bill was
+killed.  It was killed so neatly that there is to-day no record of its
+decease in the official account of the proceedings of the House!
+Expert treason, bold and skilful! [4]
+
+Meanwhile, I had been standing by our jury bill.  It went up and it
+went down on the calendar, and at last when it arrived at a hearing it
+was referred back to the Judiciary Committee with two other
+anti-corporation bills.  The session was drawing toward the day
+provided by the constitution for its closing, and we could no longer
+doubt that we were being juggled out of our last chance by the Clerk
+and the Speaker--who was Mr. William G. Smith, since known as "Tramway
+Bill." [5]
+
+"All right," Gardener said.  "Not one of Speaker Smith's House bills
+will get through the Senate until he lets our jury bill get to a vote."
+He told Speaker Smith what he intended to do and next day he began to
+do it.
+
+That afternoon, tired out, I was resting, during a recess of the House,
+in a chair that stood in a shadowed corner, when the Speaker hurried by
+heavily, evidently unaware of me, and rang a telephone.  I heard him
+mention the name of "Mr. Evans," in a low, husky voice.  I heard,
+sleepily, not consciously listening; and I did note at first connect
+"Mr. Evans" with William G. Evans of the tramway company.  But a little
+later I heard the Speaker say: "Well, unless Gardener can be pulled
+off, we'll have to let that 'three-fourths' bill out.  He's raising
+hell with a lot of our measures over in the Senate. . .  What? . . .
+Yes. . . .  Well, get at it pretty quick."
+
+Those hoarse, significant words wakened like the thrill of an electric
+shock--wakened to an understanding of the strength of "special
+interests" that were opposed to us--and wakened in me, too, the anger
+of a determination to fight to a finish.  The Powers that had "fixed"
+our juries, were now fixing Legislature.  They had laughed at us in the
+courts; they were going to laugh at us in the Capitol!
+
+Speaker Smith came lumbering out.  He was a heavily built man, with a
+big jaw.  And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed
+from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt--lowering
+his head like a bull--as if he were saying to himself: "What!  That
+d---- little devil!  I'll bet he heard me!"  But he did not speak.  And
+neither did I.  He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and
+I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had
+heard.
+
+When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of
+course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby.
+Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone
+conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was
+"reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a
+vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the
+session to death.  Smith fumed and blustered, but Gardener, with the
+blood in his face, out-blustered and out-fumed him.  The Speaker, later
+in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject
+me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist.  But he had to allow the
+bill to come up, and it was finally passed, with very little
+opposition--for reasons which I was afterward to understand.
+
+It had yet to be signed by the Speaker; and it had to be signed before
+the close of the session or it could not become a law.  I heard rumours
+that some anti-corporation bills were going to be "lost" by the Chief
+Clerk, so that they might not be signed; and I kept my eye on him.  He
+was a fat-faced, stupid-looking, flabby creature--by name D. H.
+Dickason--who did not appear capable of doing anything very daring.  I
+saw the chairman of the Enrolling Committee place our bill on
+Dickason's desk, among those waiting for the Speaker's signature;
+and--while the House was busy--I withdrew it from the pile and placed
+it to one side, conspicuously, so that I could see it from a distance.
+
+When the time came for signing--sure enough! the Clerk was missing, and
+some bills were missing with him.  The House was crowded--floor and
+galleries--and the whole place went into an uproar at once.  Nobody
+seemed to know which bills were gone; every member who had an
+anti-corporation bill thought it was his that had been stolen; and they
+all together broke out into denunciations of the Speaker, the Clerk,
+and everybody else whom they thought concerned in the outrage.  One man
+jumped up on his chair and tried to dominate the pandemonium, shouting
+and waving his hands.  The galleries went wild with noisy excitement.
+Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House,
+cursing and shaking their fists.  Others rushed here and there trying
+to find some trace of the Clerk.  The Speaker, breathless from calling
+for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them
+rage.
+
+At last, from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I
+saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a
+blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an
+abject terror.  He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin,
+providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works;
+but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to
+the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and
+it was the Senator now who had him by the neck.
+
+They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and
+with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody
+concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the
+desperate haste of men working against time.  And our jury bill was
+signed!
+
+It was signed; and we had won!  (At least we thought so.)  And I walked
+out of the crowded glare of the session's close, into an April midnight
+that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet.  It seemed to me that
+the stars, even in Colorado, had never been brighter; they sparkled in
+the clear blackness of the sky with a joyful brilliancy.  A cool breeze
+drew down from the mountains as peacefully as the breath in sleep.  It
+was a night to make a man take on his hat and breathe out his last
+vexation in a sigh.
+
+We had won.  What did it matter that the Boss, the Speaker, the Clerk
+and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in
+selfishness?  That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth
+and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that
+arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol.  Had not even
+we, two "boys"--as they called us--put a just law before them and made
+them take up the pen and sign it?  If we had done so much without even
+a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to
+aid and back us, what would the future not do when we found the help
+that an aroused community would surely give us?  Hope?  The whole night
+was hushed and peaceful with hope.  The very houses that I
+passed--walking home up the tree-lined streets--seemed to me in some
+way so quiet because they were so sure.  All was right with the world.
+We had won.
+
+
+
+[1] A New England family, to which the poet Whittier was related.
+
+[2] This is one of the few fictitious names used in the story.  Judge
+Lindsey wishes it disguised "for old sake's sake."
+
+[3] Many of the conversations reported in this volume are given from
+memory, and they are liable to errors of memory in the use of a word or
+a turn of expression.  But they are not liable to error in substance.
+They are the unadorned truth, clearly recollected.--B. B. L.
+
+[4] Wilbur F. Cannon is now Pure Food Commissioner in Colorado.
+
+[5] Smith is now tax agent in the tramway offices.
+
+
+
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