Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/136

120 He said that he certainly would, but he did not ever expect to have such a pleasure. A day or two later some of his friends came to him and told him they had a little surprise for him, that they had made arrangements for him and his wife to go to Europe in the summer and spend several months on a vacation.

Washington was very greatly surprised. He thanked his friends very cordially for their interest but told them that he could not afford to take the trip. Whereupon they told him that all the money for the expenses of the trip had already been raised, and that it would not cost him a cent. He thanked them again very sincerely but told them he could not think of leaving his work that long,—that money had to be raised for Tuskegee, and that he had to stay right on the job to get it. Then they told him that a group of his friends had already raised enough money to keep Tuskegee going until he got back. He then gave another excuse. He was afraid people would say that he was "stuck up"; that since he had made some success in the world he was trying to show off and play the big man. His friends told him that sensible people would not think such a thing, and that he need not bother about the people who had no sense. Washington thought, too, that he had no right to quit work so long. He had worked all his life. There was a world of work yet he had to do. To go off on a vacation of several months,