Part 19 (2/2)

She a.s.signed me to one of the lowest cla.s.ses in the night-school. I bought books which cost $1.70, and had fifty-two cents left. I soon spent the fifty cents.

For seven months during my first year's stay my only possession was represented by a two-cent stamp. I had had many ”good friends” before going to Tuskegee, and debated long as to which of them I should devote the two-cent stamp, trusting to receive some financial aid. Finally I decided on one of these ”good friends.” I used the stamp, and have not heard from him from that day to this.

While carpentry was my special trade, I found the opportunity to get information as to the other industries on the grounds. All of this supplemental study has proved most helpful to me in my present work.

Most persons who enter school for the first time, and especially industrial schools, get wrong impressions at the start. Notwithstanding the fact that I was a young man who had ”knocked about” the world quite a little, I thought I had made a mistake in entering school, and did not begin to see that I had done properly until I had been there for eight or nine months. I asked for an excuse to leave school early in the first term; it was denied me. I tried to sell my trunk for $7, so that I might run away. I had a penchant for running away from disagreeable surroundings. I was offered $6, but for the sake of the difference of $1 I decided to remain.

I do not hesitate to say that each day I live in my heart I most heartily thank the good friends who have made it possible for Tuskegee to be; I am also most grateful that I was able to reach it and receive the training which I received there. I did nothing great while at Tuskegee, but I remember with pride that I gave no trouble in any way during my sojourn.

I used my spare hours making picture-frames, repairing window-shades, making flower-stands and flower-boxes, and working flower-gardens for the various Faculty families. The money received I saved until the end of the school term. At the end of each term there were always a large number of students who cared nothing for their books, and all but gave them away. Looking three months ahead, I bought these books and sold them to new students who entered the following year.

One year alone I cleared $40 in this way. The second-hand book business among the students began from this effort on my part to add to my little pile of cash money.

Having completed the course with a cla.s.s of thirty-one members, May 26, 1896, I started straight for my home, Meridian, Miss.

For six years, as a student, I had been at Tuskegee and under its influences; now I had only my conscience to dictate to me and to keep me straight. Feeling that I could not do much good at Meridian, I started for Texas, having had a position promised me.

I reached Mobile, Ala., while en route, and heard that Miss Mary Clinton, previously mentioned, was in Tampa, Fla. Feeling that she still had some interest in me, I again decided to go to her for advice.

I reached the city of Tampa with but a small sum in my pocket. The town was undergoing a ”boom,” and I was certain that it would not be long before I would be earning something, but, to my disappointment, I found about thirty men looking for every job in sight. After much wearying search I became thoroughly convinced that Tampa was too large a city not to give me something to do besides ”looking up into the air.” Finally, one rainy morning I secured work at a freight-house.

It was my lot to go first up the wet, steep, and slippery gang-plank.

Not being used to such a task, I fell, the truck with 350 pounds narrowly escaping me. I got up and made a second attempt to carry my load, and with success. I had been there two months when the agent wanted some new shelves built in the storehouse. He told one of his employees to go for a carpenter. He replied, ”This man Calhoun can do any such work you want done.” The agent had me get my tools and do the work. A few days afterward he wanted a first-cla.s.s cook to prepare and serve a special Christmas dinner. The same employee told him, ”Calhoun can do it.”

The motto of my cla.s.s was, ”We Conquer by Labor.”

On April 29, 1897, both Miss Clinton and myself were called to a school in South Carolina, and in a simple way, with $50 saved, we married and boarded the train for our new field of labor. After giving up our work and reaching Sanford, 125 miles away, we received a letter asking us to defer our coming until the following October.

This was a very, very sad disappointment and trial to us. It was two weeks before the State examinations would be held. We prepared as best we could, and as a result of the examination we were sent to Eatonville, Fla., to take charge of the public school there. Eatonville is a Negro town with colored officers, a colored postmaster, and colored merchants.

There is not a single white person living within the incorporated city; it promises to be a unique community. It is situated near the center of Orange county, six miles from Orlando, the county seat, and is two miles from the Seaboard Air-Line Railroad, and one and one-half miles from the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

It was said by the late Bishop H. B. Whipple, of Wisconsin--whose winter home for a number of years was a half mile from this place--who had helped the people of this community, and who was a constant helper and adviser to my wife and me in our work until his death, that you might travel the whole State over and not find a more healthy place. We were here but a few days when we decided that this was the place for us to begin putting into practise the lessons taught us at Tuskegee. We felt that we wanted to do something toward helping our people. We decided to cast our lot permanently at Eatonville.

Our first ”industrial” service was done with the aid of the school children: we cleaned the street of tin cans and other rubbish.

We found the lessons in economy which we had received at Tuskegee very valuable to us at this trying time. We felt that if we would properly impress the lessons most needed we should own a home, a cow, some chickens, a horse, and a garden; we felt that there should be tangible owners.h.i.+p on the part of the people of some of these things, at any rate.

These things we started to get as soon as possible. We wanted to teach the people by example.

After talking in a general way for some days of the value of industrial education, coupled with that of intelligent cla.s.s-room instruction, Mrs.

Calhoun succeeded in getting four girls to come to her home for sewing lessons. That was the first step.

Incidentally, we heard of the philanthropic instincts of a gentleman, Mr. E. C. Hungerford, living at Chester, Conn., who had conditionally offered to another school twenty acres of land, and whose offer was not met. I wrote to him asking if he would give us the land. He replied that he would be glad to give us forty acres if we would use it for school purposes.

On February 24, 1899, having the deed in hand, a board of trustees was selected, and, with the aid of nine men who cleared one and one-half acres of land while their wives furnished the dinner, we started what is now the Robert C. Hungerford Industrial School. The new school now owns 280 acres of land secured as follows: From Mr. and Mrs. E. C.

Hungerford, 160 acres; from Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Cleavland, 40 acres; from Mrs. Nancy B. Hungerford, 40 acres; by purchase, an additional 40 acres.

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