Historical voices

Before this I had never cared a great deal about it, but now I learned to love to read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help which it gives, but on account of it as literature.

Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish.

I felt that this was a debt of honour, and that I could hardly bring myself to the point of even trying to enter school again till it was paid.

At night, and between meals, I found considerable time for study and reading; and in this direction I improved myself very much during the summer.

The time is not far distant when the whole South will appreciate this service in a way that it has not yet been able to do.

Whenever it is written—and I hope it will be—the part that the Yankee teachers played in the education of the Negroes immediately after the war will make one of the most thrilling parts of the history off this country.

The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home.

Nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them the need of education.

As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest as these men and women were.

I was determined from the first to make my work as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable.

I learned there for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue.

The history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way into those Negro schools.

I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was but a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting up my race.

He was just as happy in trying to assist some other institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton.

I do not believe he ever had a selfish thought.

I never saw a man who so completely lost sight of himself.

Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and day for the cause to which he had given his life.

Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!

The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.

One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal…

The young men and women were determined to secure an education at any cost.

I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.