was the equal of General
Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave plantation
and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be permitted to
come into direct contact with such a character as General Armstrong. I
shall always remember that the first time I went into his presence he
made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: I was made to
feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It was my
privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered Hampton
till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in my
estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings,
class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there
the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and
that alone would have been a liberal education. The older I grow, the
more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from
books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten
from contact with great men and women. Instead of studying books so
constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to
study men and things!

General Armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my
home at Tuskegee. At that time he was paralyzed to the extent that
he had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree.
Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and
day for the cause to which he had given his life. I never saw a man
who so completely lost sight of himself. I do not believe he ever had
a selfish thought. He was just as happy in trying to assist some other
institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton. Although he
fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him
utter a bitter word against him afterward. On the other hand, he was
constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the
Southern whites.

It would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the students
at Hampton, or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was worshipped by
his students. It never occurred to me that General Armstrong could fail
in anything that he undertook. There is almost no request that he could
have made that would not have been complied with. When he was a guest at
my home in Alabama, and was so badly paralyzed that he had to be wheeled
about in an invalid's chair, I recall that one of the General's former
students had