Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/45

Rh Now he could pay back the money he owed at Hampton. However, he thought he ought to tell the proprietor about finding the ten dollars. He did so, and the proprietor coolly took the ten-dollar bill, saying that, since the place belonged to him, everything that was found in it naturally belonged to him.

After vacation was over, he returned to Hampton and was told that he could have as long to pay the sixteen dollars as he wanted, and that he could have a job as janitor again. So, his second year passed much the same as the first. He devoted much of his time this year and the next to the debating societies. He says that he never missed a single meeting while he was at Hampton. He also organized a new society. He had twenty minutes every night after supper before work began. Most of the students, he observed, wasted this time. He proposed that good use be made of this period in reading and speaking, and he organized a society for that purpose. He says that no time he spent in college was more valuable than this.

After the close of his second year, he went home to Malden to spend his vacation. His brother John had sent him some money, and he had earned some extra money. So he had enough to take him home. Everybody was delighted to see him, but most of all, his mother. All the neighbors insisted on his visiting them and taking a meal with them