It is an inspiring sight when one stands
on the platform there and sees before him eleven or twelve
hundred earnest young men and women; and one cannot but feel that
it is a privilege to help to guide them to a higher and more
useful life.
In the spring of 1899 there came to me what I might describe as
almost the greatest surprise of my life. Some good ladies in
Boston arranged a public meeting in the interests of Tuskegee, to
be held in the Hollis Street Theatre. This meeting was attended
by large numbers of the best people of Boston, of both races.
Bishop Lawrence presided. In addition to an address made by
myself, Mr. Paul Lawrence Dunbar read from his poems, and Dr.
W.E.B. Du Bois read an original sketch.
Some of those who attended this meeting noticed that I seemed
unusually tired, and some little time after the close of the
meeting, one of the ladies who had been interested in it asked me
in a casual way if I had ever been to Europe. I replied that I
never had. She asked me if I had ever thought of going, and I
told her no; that it was something entirely beyond me. This
conversation soon passed out of my mind, but a few days afterward
I was informed that some friends in Boston, including Mr. Francis
J. Garrison, had raised a sum of money sufficient to pay all the
expenses of Mrs.
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