r 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 Mal