An idiot could pick cotton when the bag was fastened on his back. All he needed was one hand. All he had to do was to bend, hour after hour, day after day, until it became the habit of life and the ache stopped.
He could see this now, for himself. He smiled at the quiet wisdom of his father. He certainly knew how to manage boys. He must acknowledge that. He was quiet and considerate about it, too. He didn't dictate. He only suggested things for consideration and choice. It was easy to meet the views of that kind of a father. He treated a boy with the dignity of a man.
When the cotton was weighed, the Boy faced his father:
"I've thought it all over, sir, and I'd like to go back to school."
"All right, my son, you can return in the morning."
He made no comment. He indulged in no smile at the Boy's expense. He received his decision with the serious dignity of a judge of the Supreme Court of Life.
The rebellion ended for all time. Teachers and schools took on a new meaning. A lesson was no longer a hard task set by a heartless fool who had been accidentally placed in a position of power. School meant the training of his mind for a higher and more useful life.
Progress now was steady. The next year a new teacher came, a real teacher, the Rev. John Shaw from Boston, Massachusetts—a man of even temper, just, gentle, a profound scholar with a mind whose contagious enthusiasm drew the spirits of the young as a magnet.
The Boy learned more under his guidance within a year than in all his life before, and next full was ready to enter Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky.
The polite, handsome boy from Mississippi who had served an apprenticeship with his father's negroes in a cotton field, gave the professors no trouble. Good-natured, prudent, joyous, kind, manly, he attended to his lessons and his own business. He neither gambled nor drank, nor mingled with the rowdy set. He had come there for something else.