BY EMMETT J. SCOTT                    11

valued not justice less; who knew justice and val-
ued not wisdom less."
            HE WAS A MAN OF VISION
  Our friend was a man of vision. His life was a
life of triumph, a real triumph, if you will permit
me to say so, of democracy itself. The picture of
the newly-freed slave sleeping under a wooden
pavement in Richmond, Virginia; a waif keeping
body and soul together as best he could, with a
burning thirst for education and a desire to get
ahead in the world, together with the achievements
of his lifetime and the triumphs of his marvelous
career, prove that in truth his life was a triumph
of democracy. The story of his rise from slavery
reads like some stirring romance. He drank to its
very lees all that poverty and servitude, with their
discouraging handicaps, could offer. We may be-
moan the fate which condemns a Lincoln, a Gar-
field, a Douglass, to penury and to struggle, and
yet, as a great orator has said, "Poverty is a hard
but oftentimes a loving nurse. If fortune denies the
luxuries of wealth, she makes greater compensa-
tion in that greater love which they alone can ever
know who have faced privations together. The
child may shiver in the fury of the blast which no
maternal tenderness can shield him from, but he
may feel a helpless tear drop upon his cheek which
will keep him warm till the snows of time have
covered his hair. It is not wealth that counts in the




			

OHS Archives/Library Pamphlet Collection

Memorial Address [on Booker T. Washington] Delivered by Emmett J. Scott, Secretary, at 17th Annual Session

J.