Mr. Hosmer, my high school principal, talked to a Rev. C. C. Painter who was a Congregational minister. His son was a classmate of mine. They put together a plan for a scholarship for me.

Rev. Painter made an arrangement with my mother's Congregational Church, and three other churches in Connecticut that he had once pastored. They were to furnish me with $25 per year for the duration of my college life.

In the fall of 1885 I was seventeen years old. My plans for attending Harvard would have to wait. I gathered my personal and I headed off to Nashville, Tennessee, the home of Fisk University.