and useful work in this whole wide world.
They are the true leaders of the people. I often wish that I were
one of them. They inspire me as nobody else does. They are the army
of our salvation.

Write me what they are doing. Write me about the wonderful
educational progress. And write me about the peach trees and the
budding imminence of spring; and about the children who now live
all day outdoors and grow brown and plump. And never mind that
queer sect, "The Excoriators." They and their stage thunder will be
forgotten to-morrow. Meantime let us live and work for things
nobler than any controversies, for things that are larger than the
poor mission of any sect; and let us have charity and a patient
pity for those that think they serve God by abusing their
fellow-men. I wish I saw some way to help them to a broader and a
higher life.

Faithfully yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

III

That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" at the time this
letter was written--in April, 1902--was not surprising, for his
educational campaign and that of his friends was now bearing fruit.
"Write me about the wonderful educational progress," he says to this
correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming over North
Carolina and the South generally seemed to be tinged with the
miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly
coming into their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's Greensboro
address, a small group of educational enthusiasts met at Capon Springs,
West Virginia, to discuss the general situation in the South. The leader
of this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New York merchant
who for many years had been President of the Board of Hampton Institute.
Out of this meeting grew the Southern Educational Conference, which was
little more than an annual meeting for advertising broadcast the
educational needs of the South. Each year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad
train; a hundred or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the
like became his guests; the train moved through the Southern States,
pausing now and then to investigate some particular institution or
locality; and at some Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or
Winston-Salem, a stop of several days would be made, a public building
engaged, and long meetings held. In all these proceedings Page was an
active figure, as he b