s brother stood by
him, and not only gave him their sympathy, but all the help that was
possible. At the present moment that brother, as well as a friend, who
as a child was adopted by the family, are valued assistants in the
Tuskegee Institution.

As the college course came to an end, and Booker Washington returned to
his old haunts with their memories of coal mining and salt production,
he was now a man of education to be looked up to and respected; and as
the coloured people were ambitious of having a school established with a
competent master, a fully-equipped graduate from Hampton Institute was
no small acquisition. When the school was established the classes were
soon crowded by those who, on account of their anxiety to improve,
deserved to be distinguished as the most diligent and persevering of
learners. There were a host of others also who, through having to attend
to their daily labour were unable to attend school by day, were still
not content to remain uninstructed in such good times as had dawned upon
them. For these evening classes were provided, so that the tutor's time
was occupied from early morning until late at night.

While at Malden he saw something of the doings of the members of the
somewhat mysterious Ku-Klux Klan, which in the _Cyclopaedia of Names_ is
thus described:--"A former secret organisation in the Southern United
States, of which the object was to intimidate the negroes,
carpet-baggers and 'scalawags,' and to prevent them from political
action. It arose probably in 1867; was guilty of numerous outrages; and
was suppressed in consequence of an Act of Congress--the Force
Bill--passed in 1871." Street fights occurred, and the progress made
since that day is seen in the fact that even the best part of the
Southern public sentiment would not now tolerate the existence of such
an association.

Had the policy of the Ku-Klux Klan been continued, and had public
sympathy been accorded to its warfare, the cause of the negroes must
have gone down until the race became a very genuine danger to the
Government. The change in public opinion in the South is not only one of
the most cheering signs of the times, but many of Booker Washington's
most earnest sympathisers and helpers are actually found in the former
slave States. In the _Southern Letter_ for May 1901, a little monthly
newspaper which the founder of the Tuskegee Institution issues from his
headquarters, a Southern lady of position, who was