all night. For several nights I did not go to bed at all, but would lie
down upon the doorstep that I might get up often through the night and
go down the hill to pray, for we were instructed to "go down in the
valley." Of course after a few days I became tired, sleepy and
discouraged, and gave up. I did not make another attempt till I became a
student in Emerson Institute. One of the lady teachers in that school
became interested in my soul's salvation. She read the Bible to me,
talked to me, and prayed for me, and made the way of life and salvation
seem so plain and simple that it was not long before I accepted the Lord
Jesus as my Saviour.

My heart overflows with gratitude to that Christian lady whenever I
think of my conversion. There is no favor which one person can do for
another so great as that of leading him to Christ.

Soon after I was converted I felt inclined to enter the ministry, and
was advised to go to Talladega College and there take a theological
course. I wanted to go but did not see any way to get there, to say
nothing of how I was to stay there, but a lady from the North had been
visiting one of our lady teachers at Mobile, and heard me deliver an
oration in a prize contest. She said she liked it, and after she went
back home she sent me $25 to help me in my education. I had been praying
that a way might open for me to go to Talladega, and I felt that the $25
came in answer to prayer. I used up the money in getting ready and in
going to Talladega. I wrote Dr. G.W. Andrews, who has for a number of
years been instructor in theology there, that I was anxious to go and
enter his department, but I had no money, and he wrote me, if I had
money enough to get there, to come on. Thank God that I went, and that a
way was provided for me to stay there and finish the course of study;
and now I am out in the ministry and trying to do something for Him who