oking forward to going to Texas. Texas has always been
more favorable to Negro education than other Southern States and has
always got the best of Negro public school teachers.

"But upon graduation day, June, 1889, Booker T. Washington was at
Fisk, and he sat opposite Margaret Murray at table. About that time it
was arranged that she should go to Texas, but, without knowing just
how it came about, she decided to go to Tuskegee and become what was
then called the Lady Principal of the school. Mrs. Washington has been
at Tuskegee ever since.

"Mrs. Washington's duties as the wife of the Principal of the Tuskegee
Institute are many and various. She has charge of all the industries
for girls. She gives much time to the extension work of the school,
which includes the 'Mothers' meetings' in the town of Tuskegee and the
'plantation settlement' nearby. Her most characteristic trait,
however, is a boundless sympathy which has made her a sort of Mother
Confessor to students and teachers of the Institute. All go to her
for comfort and advice.

"The 'mothers' meetings' grew out of the first Tuskegee Negro
Conference held at Tuskegee in February, 1892. Mrs. Washington, as she
sat in the first meeting of Negro farmers and heard what they had to
say, was impressed with the fact that history was repeating itself.
Here again, as in the early days of the woman's suffrage movement,
women had no place worth mentioning in the important concerns of life
outside the household. While there were many women present at this
first conference, they did not seem to realize that they had any
interest in the practical affairs that were being discussed by their
sons and husbands. While her husband was trying to give these farmers
new ideas, new hopes, new aspirations, the thought came to Mrs.
Washington that the Tuskegee village was the place for her to begin a
work which should eventually include all the women of the county and
of the neighboring counties. The country colored women crowd into the
villages of the South on Saturday, seeking to vary the monotony of
their hard and cheerless lives. Mrs. Washington determined to get hold
of these women and utilize the time spent in town to some good
purpose. Accordingly, the first mothers' meeting was organized in the
upper story of an old store which then stood on the main street of the
village. The stairs were so rickety that the women were almost afraid
to ascend them. It answered the purpose tempor