ousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I
would place my services at its disposal for a given period. To all these
communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and that
whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school and my
race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a
mere commercial value upon my services.

Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the
President of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland. I received
from him the following autograph reply:--

Gray Gables, Buzzard's Bay, Mass.,

October 6, 1895.

Booker T. Washington, Esq.:

My Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered
at the Atlanta Exposition.

I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read
it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully
justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its
delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish
well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your
utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every
valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange
indeed.

Yours very truly,

Grover Cleveland.

Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he
visited the Atlanta Exposition. At the request of myself and others he
consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose
of inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in
attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. As soon as I met Mr.
Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged
honesty. I have met him many times since then, both at public functions
and at his private residence in Princeton, and the more I see of him
the more I admire him. When he visited the Negro Building in Atlanta he
seemed to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured
people. He seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old coloured
"auntie" clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure in doing
so, as if he were greeting some millionaire. Many of the coloured people
took advantage of the occasion to get him to write his name in a book or
on a slip of paper. He was as careful and patient in doing this as if he
were putting his signature to some great state document.

Mr. Cleveland has not only shown h