The students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent.

They seemed to give more attention to mere outward appearances.

In a word, they did not appear to me to be beginning at the bottom, on a real, solid foundation, to the extent that they were at Hampton.

They knew more about Latin and Greek when they left school, but they seemed to know less about life and its conditions as they would meet it at their homes.

Having lived for a number of years in the midst of comfortable surroundings, they were not as much inclined as the Hampton students to go into the country districts of the South, where there was little of comfort, to take up work for our people, and they were more inclined to yield to the temptation to become hotel waiters and Pullman-car porters as their life-work.
During the time I was a student at Washington the city was crowded with coloured people, many of whom had recently come from the South.