"When Margaret Murray was fourteen years old the good Quaker teacher said one day, 'Margaret, would thee like to teach?' That very day the little girl borrowed a long skirt and went downtown to the office of Judge Ames, and took her examination. It was not a severe examination. Judge Ames had known Margaret all her life and he had known her father, and in those days white people were more lenient with Negro teachers than they are now. They did not expect so much of them. And so, the next day, Margaret Murray stepped into the schoolroom where she had been the day before a pupil and became a teacher.... "Then Margaret heard of the school at Nashville--Fisk University--and she went there. She had a little money when she started to school, and with that and what she was able to earn at the school and by teaching during vacations she managed to work her way as--what was termed rather contemptuously in those days--a 'half-rater.' It was not the fashion at that time, in spite of the poverty of the colored people, for students to work their way through school. "In those days very little had been heard at Fisk of Tuskegee, of Hampton, or of Booker T. Washington. Students who expected to be teachers were looking forward to going to Texas. Texas has always been more favorable to Negro education than other Southern States and has always got the best of Negro public school teachers. "But upon graduation day, June, 1889, Booker T. Washington was at Fisk, and he sat opposite Margaret Murray at table. About that time it was arranged that she should go to Texas, but, without knowing just how it came about, she decided to go to Tuskegee and become what was then called the Lady Principal of the school. Mrs. Washington has been at Tuskegee ever since. "Mrs. Washington's duties as the wife of the Principal of the Tuskegee Institute are many and various. She has charge of all the industries for girls. She gives much time to the extension work of the school, which includes the 'Mothers' meetings' in the town of Tuskegee and the 'plantation settlement' nearby. Her most characteristic trait, however, is a boundless sympathy which has made her a sort of Mother Confessor to students and teachers of the Institute. All go to her for comfort and advice.