in time so that I can spend
thirty or forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting seeds, in
digging about the plants, I feel that I am coming into contact with
something that is giving me strength for the many duties and hard places
that await me out in the big world. I pity the man or woman who has
never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of
it.

Aside from the large number of fowls and animals kept by the school, I
keep individually a number of pigs and fowls of the best grades, and
in raising these I take a great deal of pleasure. I think the pig is
my favourite animal. Few things are more satisfactory to me than a
high-grade Berkshire or Poland China pig.

Games I care little for. I have never seen a game of football. In cards
I do not know one card from another. A game of old-fashioned marbles
with my two boys, once in a while, is all I care for in this direction.
I suppose I would care for games now if I had had any time in my youth
to give to them, but that was not possible.

Chapter XVI. Europe

In 1893 I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray, a native of
Mississippi, and a graduate of Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., who
had come to Tuskegee as a teacher several years before, and at the time
we were married was filling the position of Lady Principal. Not only is
Mrs. Washington completely one with me in the work directly connected
with the school, relieving me of many burdens and perplexities, but
aside from her work on the school grounds, she carries on a mothers'
meeting in the town of Tuskegee, and a plantation work among the women,
children, and men who live in a settlement connected with a large
plantation about eight miles from Tuskegee. Both the mothers' meeting
and the plantation work are carried on, not only with a view to helping
those who are directly reached, but also for the purpose of furnishing
object-lessons in these two kinds of work that may be followed by our
students when they go out into the world for their own life-work.

Aside from these two enterprises, Mrs. Washington is also largely
responsible for a woman's club at the school which brings together,
twice a month, the women who live on the school grounds and those who
live near, for the discussion of some important topic. She is also
the President of what is known as the Federation of Southern Coloured
Women's Clubs, and is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the
National Federati