Booker T. Washington：Up from Slavery, Excerpt 26

The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to work till nine o’clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself in a difficulty. School would always be begun before I reached it, and sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day’s work. I got the idea that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past eight up to the nine o’clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after morning, till the furnace “boss” discovered that something was wrong, and locked the clock in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2376
Locator：Excerpt 26 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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