little realization. That came only with the after-years. Now it was the
choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! At last, I was going beyond
the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily.

There came a little pause,--a singular pause. I was given to understand
that I was almost too young for the world. Harvard was the goal of my
dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were
silent. Harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even
the mill owners' sons had aimed lower. Finally it was tactfully
explained that the place for me was in the South among my people. A
scholarship had been already arranged at Fisk, and my summer earnings
would pay the fare. My relatives grumbled, but after a twinge I felt a
strange delight! I forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious
irony by which I was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town,
with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land
among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) "mine own
people."

Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I
entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that
first supper at Fisk with the world "colored" and opposite two of the
most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen. I
promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy!

As I peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly,
but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, I seem to
view my life divided into four distinct parts: the Age of Miracles, the
Days of Disillusion, the Discipline of Work and Play, and the Second
Miracle Age.