Here was a school for colored people—he would go there! That night he told his mother about it. She laughed, patted his kinky head, and indulged him in his dream.
She was only a poor black woman; she could not spell ab, nor count to ten, but she had a plan for her boy—he would some day be a preacher.
This was the very height of her imagination—a preacher! Beyond this there was nothing in human achievement. The night-school came after a day of fourteen hours' work. Little Booker sat on a bench, his feet dangling about a foot from the floor. As he sat there one night trying hard to drink in knowledge, he went to sleep. He nodded, braced up, nodded again, and then pitched over in a heap on the floor, to the great amusement of the class, and his own eternal shame.
The next day, however, as he was feeling very sorrowful over his sad experience, he heard that Mrs. Ruffner wanted a boy for general work at the big house.
Here was a chance. Mrs. Ruffner was a Vermont Yankee, which meant that she had a great nose for dirt, and would not stand for a "sassy nigger." Her reputation had gone abroad, and of how she pinched the ears of her "help," and got them up at exactly a certain hour, and made them use soap and water at least once a day, and even compelled them to use a toothbrush; all this was history, well defined.
Booker said he could please her, even if she was a Yankee. He applied for the job and got it, with wages fixed at a dollar a week, with a promise of twenty-five cents extra every week, if he did his work without talking back and breaking a tray of dishes.
enius! No hovel is safe from it!" says Whistler.
Genius consists in doing the right thing without being told more than three times.
Booker silently studied the awful Yankee woman to see what she really wanted. He finally decided that she desired her servants to have clean skins, fairly neat clothing, do things promptly, finish the job and keep still when they had nothing to say.