present forty-five young people in
the boarding department, including seven teachers, three of whom have
come from Tuskegee; a large enrolment of students from the immediate
community and from the surrounding territory.

I have not said very much regarding the difficulties, the struggles, to
plant this work, but I am glad to say that from the beginning we have
had the friendliest support and advice from all the white people of this
section, officials and citizens alike.

I owe much of my success in the work here to the cheerful and freely
given counsel at all times of Hon. W. L. Palmer, Representative in the
State Legislature, and to the members of the Board of Public Instruction
of this (Orange) county.

The colored people have had little to give in cash, but have been most
liberal in their contributions of labor. They have been willing to help
themselves.

My constant, my most earnest desire is to prove myself worthy of my
opportunities, that I may continue to be a worthy representative of
Tuskegee. I feel that I owe all that I am, all that I can hope to be, to
the training of my mother, to the constant help and counsel of my wife,
and to Tuskegee, my Tuskegee, from which I have received so many lessons
that have been of incalculable help to me. I look back to my lessons in
carpentry, as well as to all the others, with gratitude for the
thoroughness insisted upon in all directions. I was rescued from a life
of aimlessness, and put in the way of doing something of good for my
fellows.

XVII

THE EVOLUTION OF A SHOEMAKER

BY CHARLES L. MARSHALL

I was born in the town of Henderson, State of Kentucky, January 1, 1867.
My father and mother were both slaves. My father rendered service during
the Civil War as a Union soldier.

As early as I can remember there was in Henderson a public free school
for colored children. In 1872 there came to our town a young man from
Louisville, Ky., John K. Mason by name, to take charge of the school.
How he secured his education I never learned, but that he devoted his
life to the uplift of his race is everywhere in that section clearly in
evidence. Unfortunately, I was not permitted as a boy to go to school,
but became a factory lad instead; for, almost before I was old enough to
begin my education, I was put to work in a tobacco factory, and there I
remained. From childhood to manhood I think I spent, all told, not more
than three years in school.

Somehow I had a f