ine sweet potato crop
which has been produced. It is certainly the finest crop
produced in the history of the school.

You deserve equal commendation, especially in view of the
season you have had to contend with, in connection with the
fine hay crop, the pea crop, and the peanut crop.

I wish you would let the members of your force know how I
feel regarding their work.

I believe if the farm goes on under present conditions, that
at the end of the year it will very much please the Trustees
to note the results accomplished especially so far as the
Budget is concerned.

[Signed] BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Principal.

His quick mind and his keen sense of humor would sometimes lead him to
make fun in a kindly way of his slower colleagues. The members of the
Executive Council and the Faculty sometimes felt he treated them
rather too much as if he were the teacher and they the pupils. His
frequent humorous sallies and stories exasperated some of the more
serious-minded members of his staff very much as Lincoln's sallies and
stories exasperated some of the members of his Cabinet, particularly
Secretary Stanton. This sense of humor was undoubtedly with Booker
Washington as with Abraham Lincoln one of the great safety valves
without which he could not have carried his heavy burden as long as he
did.

Among other things he always insisted that the human element be put
into the work of the institution and kept in it. He would reprimand a
subordinate just as sharply for failure to be human as for a specific
neglect of duty. He was particularly insistent that all letters to the
parents of the students should be intimate and friendly rather than
formal and stereotyped. He believed that nothing would more quickly or
more surely kill the effectiveness of the school than the application
of cut-and-dried theories and formulas to the handling of the students
and their problems. He never lost sight of the fact that the most
perfect educational machine becomes worthless if the soul goes out of
it.

On his return from trips he would write a personal letter about their
boy or girl to each parent whom he had met while away. After he had
addressed a meeting and was shaking hands with those who came forward
to meet him a man would say, as one once did, with embarrassed pride,
"I 'spec you know my boy--he's down to your school. He's a tall, black
boy an' wears a derby hat." When Mr