elight and
recreation. The only trouble is that I read too many of them. Fiction
I care little for. Frequently I have to almost force myself to read a
novel that is on every one's lips. The kind of reading that I have the
greatest fondness for is biography. I like to be sure that I am reading
about a real man or a real thing. I think I do not go too far when I say
that I have read nearly every book and magazine article that has been
written about Abraham Lincoln. In literature he is my patron saint.

Out of the twelve months in a year I suppose that, on an average, I
spend six months away from Tuskegee. While my being absent from the
school so much unquestionably has its disadvantages, yet there are at
the same time some compensations. The change of work brings a certain
kind of rest. I enjoy a ride of a long distance on the cars, when I am
permitted to ride where I can be comfortable. I get rest on the cars,
except when the inevitable individual who seems to be on every
train approaches me with the now familiar phrase: "Isn't this Booker
Washington? I want to introduce myself to you." Absence from the school
enables me to lose sight of the unimportant details of the work, and
study it in a broader and more comprehensive manner than I could do on
the grounds. This absence also brings me into contact with the best
work being done in educational lines, and into contact with the best
educators in the land.

But, after all this is said, the time when I get the most solid rest and
recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee, and, after our evening meal is
over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and Portia and Baker
and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns in
telling a story. To me there is nothing on earth equal to that, although
what is nearly equal to it is to go with them for an hour or more, as we
like to do on Sunday afternoons, into the woods, where we can live for
a while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us,
surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the
sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp
of the crickets and the songs of the birds. This is solid rest.

My garden, also, what little time I can be at Tuskegee, is another
source of rest and enjoyment. Somehow I like, as often as possible, to
touch nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but
the real thing. When I can leave my office