Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/158

142 finally to tell on him. But he kept on. He had wonderful will power, and he would drive himself to his work from day to day, when other men would have taken to their beds. He could not admit to himself that he was losing strength. Right up to the last, he did an enormous amount of work.

In the early fall of 1915, he went North to deliver an address before the National Council of Congregational Churches, held in New Haven, Connecticut. Although he had not been entirely well for some time, no one had any idea that he was seriously ill. Shortly after the address in New Haven, he collapsed. His friends in New York City had him removed to St. Luke's Hospital there.

The physicians made a careful examination and frankly told him that he was critically ill and could live but a few hours. When he learned that he must die, he insisted on starting for home at once. The doctors told him that he could not go; that it would mean certain death; that he could not live through the journey. His reply was: "I was born in the South, I have lived and labored in the South, and I expect to die and be buried in the South."

Arrangements were hurriedly made for the journey to Tuskegee. No one believed that he would reach there alive. One of the doctors had said that it was "uncanny to see a man up and