Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/153

137 people of the town of Tuskegee to an unusual extent and often acted as ambassadors of good will between the head of the school and his white neighbors, when from time to time the latter showed a disposition to look askance at the rapidly growing institution on the hill beyond the town.

"Another intimate friend of Mr. Washington's was Charles L. Diggs, known affectionately on the school grounds as 'Old man' Diggs. The old man had been body servant to a Union officer in the Civil War, and after the war had been carried to Boston, where he became the butler in a fashionable Back Bay family. When Mr. Washington first visited Boston, as an humble and obscure young negro school-teacher, pleading for his struggling school, he met Diggs, and Diggs succeeded in interesting his employers in the sincere and earnest young teacher. When, years afterward, the Institute had grown to the dignity of needing stewards, Mr. Washington employed his old friend as steward of the Teachers' Home. In all the years thereafter hardly a day passed when Mr. Washington was at the school without having some kind of powwow with 'O d man' Diggs regarding some matter affecting the interests of the school.

"To the despair of his family Booker Washington seemed to go out of his way to find forlorn old people whom he could befriend. He sent provisions weekly to an humble old black couple from whom he had bought a tract of land for the school.