k that time
and events have vindicated the wisdom of my decision.

After giving my employer two weeks' notice of my intention to give up my
work, I hastened to arrange my affairs, fearing that procrastination
might allow some event to change my mind and thus alter the whole course
of my life. Two weeks after giving notice to my employer, I started for
Tuskegee. I bought a ticket to Atlanta, where I spent the night. The
next morning I went to the station and asked for a ticket to Tuskegee.
The agent, on looking over his guide-books, said to me: "There is no
such place as Tuskegee in the guide-books." I walked away from the
window, thinking that, after all, Tuskegee was some place that existed
only on paper.

Not wishing to give it up, I turned and approached the agent again. He
got out maps and guides, and finally found Tuskegee, but said he could
not sell me a ticket to that place as it was not on a railroad, and that
the best thing for me to do was to purchase a ticket to Chehaw, Ala. So
my ticket read, From Atlanta to Chehaw. On turning to leave the
ticket-agent, I inquired how I could get to Tuskegee from Chehaw. He
replied that he did not know. But I got there, going from Chehaw over a
narrow-gauge road. The engine that pulled the one coach composing the
train was named the "Klu-Klux," a thing I had heard of but had not
understood. That there should be many new things to me in the world was
not to be wondered at, when it was known that I had never before been
out of the county in which I was born except on three occasions, when my
trips extended only to adjoining counties.

It was in the month of March, 1886, while passing through the town of
Tuskegee, that I beheld for the first time, standing at a distance, the
institution that has, in my opinion, done more than any other one agency
to elevate the Negroes of the South. About eight o'clock P. M. I arrived
on the campus and was assigned to a room by the commandant, through the
officer of the day.[2] For about thirty minutes I was alone in the
room, the student body being at devotional exercises--the Tuskegee
Institute holding its daily devotions at night, instead of in the
morning like most schools. This is done on account of the day- and
night-school system, it being impossible to get all the students of the
school together except at night after the night-school session.

While sitting and thinking of home, of the past, and of the future, I
took out my pocketbo