he 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 sch