intention of returning. But to his surprise he found he had lost his relish for the sort of life that he led when working in the iron mill. He had had a taste of something better, and at the beginning of the next term he was ready to return, with the purpose of getting a good education. His mother helped him a little, but he was mostly dependent on his own efforts for support, and often reached the point where it seemed that he must give up his studies. But a Sunday-school class in Elgin, Illinois, the old home of one of the officers of the University, pledged him a dollar a week and he earned $6 a month by ringing the college bell for the hourly recitations, and keeping up the fires in the dormitory furnace.
When far enough advanced in study to teach in the common schools, he went to Mississippi and taught for four months. His salary of $50 a month seemed to him like a fortune; but when he got back to Nashville he found that his board, travel, and other unavoidable expenses had left him but $70 out of his $200, and from that he had to get at once a new outfit of clothing. In 1875 he left his studies to go out with the Jubilee Singers on their new campaign.
Mabel Lewis was born, as she supposes, in New Orleans. But of her parentage, and the date of her birth, she knows nothing beyond vague supposition. She has reason to think that her mother was a slave and her father a slave-holder, and that it was owing to the interest her father felt in her that she was sent North, when two years old, and carefully reared in a wealthy family. Her earliest recollection is of
