ranks as one of the greatest establishments of
the kind in the British Isles.

No youthful aspirant thirsting for an education ever completed a more
toilsome, and even painful, journey in order to reach the college he
desired to enter than Booker Washington, when he actually got over the
five hundred miles between Malden and Hampton. It is still more
remarkable that, although he was undoubtedly one of the most daring and
doggedly persevering youths that could have been found among the
coloured people, he was still not a solitary example of a negro boy
literally making stepping-stones of difficulties. There were other black
youngsters who were quite as determined, and their efforts were also
destined to be crowned with success.

Still, our wonder is increased when we remember that this journey, with
its formidable difficulties, was boldly hazarded without there being any
certainty of his being received as a student in the institution. No one
in the house even knew that he was on the road and was about to present
himself as a candidate for admission. When at length he arrived and
confronted the chief matron, a less shrewd and sympathetic person than
she was would hardly have been impressed in Booker Washington's favour.
Footsore, travel-stained, hungry, with not more than two shillings in
his pocket, he was, in point of fact, so completely, though
unintentionally, disguised, that an ordinary observer would have had
difficulty in deciding what he was. He might have been one of that
class, who abound in the United States, who prefer a wandering vagabond
life to honest work, and who thus thought that a brief acquaintance
with the college might add to the diversity or excitement of life. But,
happily, there is something in the human eye which surely betokens
character. Cheats and impostors of all kinds cannot control their eyes.
It would seem that the chief matron thought that there might be
something in the adventurous applicant. At all events she decided that
he might be tested, and, as the training included the teaching of
various industries, what more effective test could be applied than the
"doing up" of a room. The work was so perfectly done that Booker
Washington was found to have something in him.

We may naturally infer that this aspiring negro lad now began fully to
reap the benefit of having been for many months subjected to the
uncompromising discipline of the domestic martinet--the general's
wife--at Malden. I