BY REV. SPENCER SNELL.

My first lessons from books I received in night school. At this time I
was employed as dining-room servant by a family in Mobile. I did my work
during the day, taking a little time here and there for study as best I
could, and went to school at night. I was first employed at $3.50 per
month. Fifty cents of this I took each month to pay tuition. The tuition
in this school was one dollar per month, but I was receiving such small
wages that a woman who was employed in the same yard, and who went to
the same school, persuaded the teacher to let me go for fifty cents. I
remained with this family about four years, and went to night school
much of the time. I suppose they considered my services more and more
valuable as I became more enlightened, for, during the four years, my
wages were increased from $3.50 to $10 per month. As my wages increased,
I had more tuition to pay also, for during my study in the night school
I had several teachers and paid some of them as much as two dollars per
month, and so anxious was I to acquire an education that I would have
paid five dollars had it been required, even at a time when it would
have taken all my wages to do so. While I was a student in one of these
night schools, I chanced one day to see a newspaper which a colored man
who knew me had thrown into the yard for me. In this paper I read an
article telling about Emerson Institute, a school of the American
Missionary Association, and the commencement exercises soon to occur
there. The school had been in Mobile for several years, but I had heard
nothing of it till now. As soon as I read of these exercises, I
determined to see them, for I had never heard of such exercises before.
When the time came, I went one night, accompanied by a few of my fellow
night-school students. We were well pleased with what we saw, and I said
to them that I meant to enter that school when it opened the next fall,