The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 93, Nov. 1880, U. of Illinois Press

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NOVEMBER · 1880 they had failed to agree upon or to understand during the day. One was noticed to carry a broken piece of slate about with him on which he could work examples while the wheel-barrow of dirt he had loaded, was being emptied. Their looks were in their hands at every spare moment. No teacher ever had a more interesting class. With all their zeal for study, they made excellent workers, and the superintendent of the Industrial works, by whom most of them were employed, showed his appreciation of their services by making each one a nice present at the end of the year. For such study to amount to anything, it must, of course, be very systematic. The young men seemed to understand this, for their attendance was remarkably regular, some I think, not missing more than two nights in the year. They were willing to shut themselves out from the world awhile for an education. Whether the weather was good or bad, their attendance and earnestness were the same. They not only did well during the coldest winter months, but through the months of July and August, up to the middle of September, their zeal did not abate in the least. The first week in October, they entered the day-schaol, seven passing an examination for the Middle class, the others for the Junior Class. It is doubtful if Hampton teachers ever received more glad and earnest faces into their classes. These young men not only enter school with enough knowledge to pay them for this year's work, but they have saved an average of seventy dollars apiece, after buying their clothes. This amount, with their earnings during school and in vacation, will keep them in school two years. Thus, seven have saved enough in one year to graduate them at the institution, and the others enough to take them into their senior year. What these have done, others can do. With such privileges offered to our young men, poverty can no longer be pleaded as an excuse for ignorance. There are thousands of young men all over this country who could, if they would sacrifice a few evenings' pleasure for a while, open the door to a respectable education. How much better this would be than to be compelled by ignorance to spend the remainder of their lives as the lowest kind of servants ! They would not then go through the world as mere pretenders to an education, as so many do, nor would they then feel the necessity of spending all their money for fine clothes with which they vainly hope to hide the poverty of the inner man. Give a man a chance to work out his own education, and, as a gen93