white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the
white man's language, and professes the white man's religion.

When the difficulty of learning the English language was subtracted, I
found that in the matter of learning trades and in mastering academic
studies there was little difference between the coloured and Indian
students. It was a constant delight to me to note the interest which
the coloured students took in trying to help the Indians in every way
possible. There were a few of the coloured students who felt that the
Indians ought not to be admitted to Hampton, but these were in the
minority. Whenever they were asked to do so, the Negro students gladly
took the Indians as room-mates, in order that they might teach them to
speak English and to acquire civilized habits.

I have often wondered if there was a white institution in this country
whose students would have welcomed the incoming of more than a hundred
companions of another race in the cordial way that these black students
at Hampton welcomed the red ones. How often I have wanted to say to
white students that they lift themselves up in proportion as they help
to lift others, and the more unfortunate the race, and the lower in the
scale of civilization, the more does one raise one's self by giving the
assistance.

This reminds me of a conversation which I once had with the Hon.
Frederick Douglass. At one time Mr. Douglass was travelling in the state
of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in
the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price
for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the
white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and
one of them said to him: "I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been
degraded in this manner," Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on
the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "They cannot degrade
Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I
am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but
those who are inflicting it upon me."

In one part of the country, where the law demands the separation of
the races on the railroad trains, I saw at one time a rather amusing
instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know where the
black begins and the white ends.

There was a man who was well known in his community as a Negro, but who
was so white that even an expert