Having resolved to resign a situation which he valued, and which, most probably, his mother would have been well content for him to retain, the would-be student prepared to start, being unhampered by anything in the way of luggage beyond a bundle that could easily be carried in one hand. The journey alone was a very formidable undertaking, much more so at that time than would be the case to-day. As might have been expected, the ambitious youth soon made the painful discovery that he was very inadequately equipped for his journey. The difficulties of the way were also greatly increased by the fact that he belonged to a proscribed race. The distance was so great that money was wanted for food and for travelling fares; but the scant available supply very speedily ran out. Of course, there were roadside houses of rest and of refreshment into which negroes could not gain admittance, even though he might carry a good supply of cash. He soon found out that a boy of colour could not hope to find lodging in an hotel intended for white people; and on reaching Richmond, footsore and famished with hunger, he was so utterly impecunious that, for some nights in succession, after earning a little by day, he had to repeat the experience of "sleeping out." The wonder is that, in the case of so young a boy, all of this suffering did not damp his ardour and discourage his still persevering. So far as can be discovered, however, he never did lose his hold of the anchor of hope. Is it not a singular and a suggestive thing that quite a number of well-known men, who afterwards won literary fame or distinguished commercial success, were correspondingly adventurous in having to "sleep out," or to walk the streets through the livelong night in order to keep themselves warm, because they lacked the money wherewith to pay for a bed? Dr Johnson went through this experience before he became the literary autocrat of the eighteenth century. So also did John Cassell when he came to London, with only a few pence in his pocket, not so very long before the founding of that printing and publishing house, still named after him, which ranks as one of the greatest establishments of the kind in the British Isles. No youthful aspirant thirsting for an education ever completed a more toilsome, and even painful, journey in order to reach the college he desired to enter than Booker Washington, when he actually got over the five hundred miles between Malden and Hampton. It is still more remarkable that, although he was undoubtedly one of the most daring and doggedly persevering youths that could have been found among the coloured people, he was still not a solitary example of a negro boy literally making stepping-stones of difficulties. There were other black youngsters who were quite as determined, and their efforts were also destined to be crowned with success.