my own fig tree,1 and a happy series of accidents thereafter gave me the opportunity to meet him often and to know him well.

He was the embodiment of simplicity, integrity, and courage; every inch a general, a soldier, and a man; but in the circumstances of his last illness, a figure of heroic proportions for the contemplation of the ages. I recall nothing in history so sublime as the spectacle of that brave spirit, broken in fortune and in health, with the dread hand of the dark angel clutched about his throat, struggling with every breath to hold the clumsy, unfamiliar weapon with which he sought to wrest from the jaws of death a little something for the support of wife and children when he was gone! 2 If he had done nothing else, that would have made his exit from the world an immortal epic!

A little while after I came home from the last scene of all, I found that woman's hand had collected the insignia I had worn in the magnificent, melancholy pageant, — the orders assigning me to duty and the funeral scarfs and badges, and had grouped and framed them, unbidden, silently, tenderly; and when I reflected that the hands that did this were those of a loving Southern woman, whose father had fallen on the Confederate side of the battle, I said, "The war indeed is over; let us have peace!"

1 "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree." Micah iv. 4.

2 In his last days General Grant was involved in financial difficulties by the failure of a firm with which he was connected. He started to pay off his debts in full by publishing his memoirs. His widow received about $500,000 from the copyright. The unfamiliar weapon was, of course, his pen.

Gentlemen, soldiers, comrades, the silken folds that entwine about us here, for all their soft and careless grace, are yet as strong as hooks of steel! They hold together a united people and a great nation; for, realizing the truth at last, - with no wounds to be healed and no stings of defeat to remember, -the South says to the North as simply and as truly as was said three thousand years ago in that far-away meadow upon the margin of the mystic sea, "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." 1

EVER PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 2

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

(1895)

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1857- ), educator, was born a slave near Hale's Ford, Virginia. He was educated at Hampton Normal Institute. In 1880 he became prin

cipal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which position he still holds.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen the signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket

1 Ruth i. 16.

2 From an address at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition, 1895. By permission of Dr. Booker T. Washington.

AM. ORATORY- 15

where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, "Cast down your bucket where you are" -cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.

And in this connection it is well to bear in mind, that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, that when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that, in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life, shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper

till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongues and habits, for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight million negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when, to have proved treacherous, meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them, as you are doing on these grounds, to educate head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future in our humble way we shall

stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races as one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed, — "blessing him that gives and him that takes." 1

1 From Portia's speech on mercy. Court Scene, "Merchant of

Venice."