went to pay it.

This was the penalty for making the transit from a lower to a higher
civilization. When I went without undergarments at home, my health was
saved because of uniformity of habit. Now it was injured because I could
wear them this week, but might not be able to do so the
next--irregularity of habit. Then, too, Tuskegee gave me such
living-rooms as I had never lived in, or hoped to. I had lived in log
houses, which are self-ventilating. Now I had either overventilated or
failed to ventilate my room. It is a difficult matter to make the
transit from a lower to a higher civilization. There are many obstacles,
and many have fallen by the way.

I went home to recuperate, but returned to Tuskegee in a few weeks, and
as I had no money I was again permitted to enter the night-school and
work during the day. This time I took up the printers' trade. Here I
broke over the conventional rule of acting "devil" six months, and began
setting type after one month in the office. In six months I was one of
the school's regular compositors; and in one term I had sufficient
credit with the treasurer to enter the day-school.

But I was not yet to enter. A letter came from my father, saying, "If
you wish to see me again alive, I think it would be well to come at
once." I went. My father died a few days after I got home, June 27,
1893.

All hope of future schooling seemed now at an end. My only concern was
to do the best I could with the exceedingly heavy load now left on my
hands. I pulled off my school-clothes, went to the field, and finished
the crop father had left. There was a heavy debt, and I began to teach
school to pay this debt. Of course I knew very little, but I taught what
I knew--and, I suppose, some things I didn't know.

I think even now that I did the people some good. I had not learned much
at Tuskegee in books, but I had learned much from Mr. Washington's
Sunday evening talks in the chapel. I had listened carefully to him and
had treasured up in my heart what he had said from time to time. Now I
was teaching it to others. I felt I was to this little community what
Mr. Washington was to Tuskegee. So I made the people whitewash their
fences and fix up their houses and premises generally. They were very
poor, and when the school closed they could not pay me. I told them I
would take corn, peas, potatoes, sirup, pork, shucks, cotton-seed--in
fact, anything with which they wished to pay me.

Wagons were secur