shortly after "the surrender," we were told, and more recently the poor white population has been gradually trickling away to the factories at Danville and elsewhere. It was the middle of the afternoon before we reached the old Burroughs place, an old run-down plantation in the midst of a now barren and desolate countryside. The plantation house, which had never been an imposing structure, had fallen into decay. The Burroughs family had not belonged to the slave-holding aristocracy, but had been well-to-do people of the small slave-holding class. Frederick Douglass, the first distinguished leader of the negro race, had belonged to a proud and aristocratic family that owned hundreds of slaves and thousands of acres of land; but Booker Washington did not even inherit the distinction of being the slave of a rich man.
The announcement that the former slave and present negro leader was coming back to visit his old home had preceded the party, and a little crowd of people, among them a member of the Burroughs family, and one or two of the old slaves, was waiting to welcome Dr. Washington when he arrived.
Some little time was spent in reviewing old acquaintances, exchanging reminiscences and identifying remembered places. Many of the old landmarks had disappeared. The old outdoor kitchen, in one corner of which Washington was born, had gone, but the site of it was found. Nearby stood an old willow tree and Dr. Washington remembered that from this tree his master had cut the switch with which he gave him his first whipping. The old dining room, with its big swinging fan, suspended from a beam in the ceiling, was still there, just as it had been nearly fifty years before, when Aunt Jane's "Booker" used to operate it. It was the first work Booker Washington ever did and is worth remembering of the man who, on the whole, has probably done as much real work as any other person living. It is a tradition at Tuskegee that the principal never stops work and that he rests only when he is on a railway train, speeding over the country to one or another of his various appointments.
Of this early life on the plantation Booker Washington has told in his autobiography. Two incidents in particular were
