Let me take this opportunity of congratulating you most heartily
and sincerely upon the great success of the exercises provided
for and entertainment furnished us under your auspices during our
visit to Tuskegee. Every feature of the programme was perfectly
executed and was viewed or participated in with the heartiest
satisfaction by every visitor present. The unique exhibition
which you gave of your pupils engaged in their industrial
vocations was not only artistic but thoroughly impressive. The
tribute paid by the President and his Cabinet to your work was
none too high, and forms a most encouraging augury, I think, for
the future prosperity of your institution. I cannot close without
assuring you that the modesty shown by yourself in the exercises
was most favourably commented upon by all the members of our
party.
With best wishes for the continued advance of your most useful
and patriotic undertaking, kind personal regards, and the
compliments of the season, believe me, always,
Very sincerely yours,
John Addison Porter,
Secretary to the President.
To President Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.
Twenty years have now passed since I made the first humble effort
at Tuskegee, in a broken-down shanty and an old hen-house,
without owning a dollar's worth of property, and with but one
teacher and thirty students.
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