head, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong, determined mouth,
with big white teeth, piercing eyes, and a commanding manner. The sinews
stood out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in
the air, with a lead-pencil grasped in the clinched brown fist. His big
feet were planted squarely, with the heels together and the toes turned
out. His voice range out clear and true, and he paused impressively as
he made each point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of
enthusiasm--handkerchiefs were waved, canes were flourished, hats were
tossed in the air. The fairest women of Georgia stood up and cheered. It
was as if the orator had bewitched them.

And when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the fingers
stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the South on
behalf of his race, "In all things that are purely social we can be as
separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential
to mutual progress," the great wave of sound dashed itself against the
walls, and the whole audience was on its feet in a delirium of applause,
and I thought at that moment of the night when Henry Grady stood among
the curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke in Delmonico's banquet-hall and
said, "I am a Cavalier among Roundheads."

I have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even Gladstone
himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate power than did
this angular Negro, standing in a nimbus of sunshine, surrounded by the
men who once fought to keep his race in bondage. The roar might swell
ever so high, but the expression of his earnest face never changed.

A ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles,
watched the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the
supreme burst of applause came, and then the tears ran down his face.
Most of the Negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing
just why.

At the close of the speech Governor Bullock rushed across the stage and
seized the orator's hand. Another shout greeted this demonstration, and
for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand.

So far as I could spare the time from the immediate work at Tuskegee,
after my Atlanta address, I accepted some of the invitations to speak
in public which came to me, especially those that would take me into
territory where I thought it would pay to plead the cause of my race,
but I always did this with the under