me to
England, where they were entertained by a number of friends.

On Monday, July 3, Dr and Mrs Brooke Herford gave a reception to meet Mr
and Mrs Booker Washington, which took place at Essex Hall, Essex Street,
Strand, and after this reception a meeting, at which a number of
well-known and distinguished persons were present, also took place, and
at which Mr J. H. Choate, the United States Ambassador, presided. The
many who attended, and the quality of a large number, gave significance
to this meeting, and testified in no equivocal manner to the esteem in
which Booker Washington and his work were held in Great Britain. The
following summary of the American Ambassador's speech on this occasion
was given in _The Times_:--

"The Chairman expressed the pleasure which he felt at having been asked
to preside and to introduce to the meeting his friend, Mr Booker T.
Washington. There were 10,000,000 coloured persons in the United States
living side by side with some 60,000,000 of whites. The freedom of which
the negroes had been deprived for more than 200 years had been restored
to them, but the question was how best they could be enabled to take
advantage of it. The blacks were an interesting race. Fidelity was their
great characteristic. During the Civil War, when the South was stripped
of every man and almost every boy to sustain their cause in arms, the
women and children were left in the sole care, he might say, of these
slaves, and no instance of violence or outrage that he had been able to
learn was ever reported. He thought it would be admitted, therefore,
that on that occasion they amply manifested their loyalty and fidelity
to their masters. The black people had done much for themselves. About
one-tenth of the men had acquired some portion of land, and they had
made a certain advance. Mr Washington was a pupil of the late General
Armstrong, who devoted many years of his life to the establishment and
maintenance of the leading school at Hampton, Virginia. Mr Washington
had qualified himself to follow in Armstrong's path. He also had founded
a school, or training college, at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the pupils
were not only given a primary education, but were afforded the means of
earning a livelihood. There were now 1100 pupils in the school. About
half the number of those who passed through it went out as teachers to
spread the light and the knowledge they had acquired there among their
own race, and the other half