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.
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