At last the meal was over; and it seemed the longest one that I had ever eaten.

When we were through, I decided to get myself out of the embarrassing situation and go to the smoking-room, where most of the men were by that time, to see how the land lay.

In the meantime, however, it had become known in some way throughout the car who I was.

When I went into the smoking-room I was never more surprised in my life than when each man, nearly every one of them a citizen of Georgia, came up and introduced himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that I was trying to do for the whole South.

This was not flattery, because each one of these individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying to flatter me.
From the first I have sought to impress the students with the idea that Tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of the trustees or instructors.