o find things of
value. My mother made it her business to hunt for bullets, and at length
the number she gathered herself and took from us boys was so great that
she was able to purchase a cow with the money they brought.

"A benevolent gentleman living in New York at this time soon after
secured the Government buildings on the top of the mountain that had
been used for the sick soldiers, and fitted them up nicely for Northern
teachers, who opened a boarding-school for white students. I took milk
to the institution from our cow, every morning, and how I wished that I
might gain admittance to the school and procure an education! One day I
heard the scholars reciting in concert, 'Ask and ye shall receive, seek
and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' It came over
me most powerfully and I repeated it again and again. I said it to my
mother, and inquired of her what it meant, and why it impressed me so,
and who it was that said it.

"She replied, 'I dunno. I reckon I'se heard dem words afore. 'Pears like
dey was spoke by the bressed Lord.'

"The more I thought of it, the more undecided I was what I could do, or
what my mother could do for me, I knew, however, that the Lord could do
everything.

"Well, the nest time I met the good-natured teacher who managed the
school, I made bold to ask him to allow me to tell him all about it, and
this was his reply. 'Our Lord made that promise long before the
discovery of America and the establishment of the peculiar institutions
of this country. If he had lived at this day, I reckon,' he continued
with a look of drollery, 'he would have said "Ask and ye shall
receive--if you aint a nigger." I can't take you into my school because
you are black, but I'll send you down to the American Missionary school
at Chattanooga. You can ask and receive there whether you are black or
white.'

"So, shortly after he told my experience to the teacher in the town, who
arranged that my mother should take me and the cow to a little farm just
out of the city, giving me an opportunity to attend his school regularly
until I was fitted to enter an institution of a higher grade. I then
went away and pursued a course of study for six years, teaching during
the summer and receiving aid from my mother, who kept the cow all the
while for her own support and my assistance. I asked, I received, but
not just in the way I hoped."

When he had finished speaking, I took him heartily by the hand,