The papers in all parts of the United States published the address in full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial references to it.  Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the following, “I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T. Washington’s address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches, both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever delivered to a Southern audience.  The address was a revelation.  The whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each other.”

The Boston Transcript said editorially:  “The speech of Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta Exposition, this week, seems to have dwarfed all the other proceedings and the Exposition itself.  The sensation that it has caused in the press has never been equalled.”

I very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture platform, and to write articles.  One lecture bureau offered me fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I would place my services at its disposal for a given period.  To all these communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and that whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school and my race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a mere commercial value upon my services.

Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the President of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland.  I received from him the following autograph reply:—­

Gray Gables, Buzzard’s Bay, Mass.,

October 6, 1895.

Booker T. Washington, Esq.: 

My Dear Sir:  I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the Atlanta Exposition.

I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address.  I have read it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery.  Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed.

Yours very truly,

Grover Cleveland.

Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he visited the Atlanta Exposition.  At the request of myself and others he consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose of inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him.  As soon as I met Mr. Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged honesty.  I have met him many times since then, both at public functions and at his private