consent to leave and go to Hampton.

When he started she gave him a comb, a toothbrush, two handkerchiefs and
a pair of shoes. He had been working for her for a year, and she
thought, of course, he saved his wages. He never told her that his money
had gone to keep the family, because his stepfather had been on a strike
and therefore out of work.

So the boy started away for Hampton. It was five hundred miles away. He
didn't know how far five hundred miles is--nobody does unless he has
walked it.

He had three dollars, so he gaily paid for a seat in the stage. At the
end of the first day he was forty miles from home and out of money. He
slept in a barn, and a colored woman handed him a ham-bone and a chunk
of bread out of the kitchen-window, and looked the other way.

He trudged on east--always and forever east--towards the rising sun.

He walked weeks--months--years, he thought. He kept no track of the
days. He carried his shoes as a matter of economy.

Finally he sold the shoes for four dollars to a man who paid him ten
cents cash down, and promised to pay the rest when they should meet at
Hampton. Nearly forty years have passed and they have never met.

On he walked--on and on--east, and always forever east.

He reached the city of Richmond, the first big city he had ever seen.
The wide streets--the sidewalks--the street-lamps entranced him. It was
just like heaven. But he was hungry and penniless, and when he looked
wistfully at a pile of cold fried chicken on a street-stand and asked
the price of a drumstick, at the same time telling he had no money, he
discovered he was not in heaven at all. He was called a lazy nigger and
told to move on.

Later he made the discovery that a "nigger" is a colored person who has
no money.

He pulled the piece of rope that served him for a belt a little tighter,
and when no one was looking, crawled under a sidewalk and went to
sleep, disturbed only by the trampling overhead.

When he awoke he saw he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its
bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the
boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was the
gruff answer.

He got in line and went staggering under the heavy loads.

He was little, but strong, and best of all, willing, yet he reeled at
the work.

"Have you had any breakfast? Yes, you liver-colored boy--you, I say,
have you had your breakfast?"

"No, sir," said the boy; "and