“One of our students in his commencement oration last May gave a description of how he planted and raised an acre of cabbages. Piled high upon the platform by his side were some of the largest and finest cabbages I have ever seen. He told how and where he had obtained the seed; he described his method of preparing and enriching the soil, of working the land, and harvesting the crop; and he summed up by giving the cost of the whole operation. In the course of his account of this comparatively simple operation, this student had made use of much that he had learned in composition, grammar, mathematics, chemistry, and agriculture. He had not merely woven into his narrative all these various elements that I have referred to, but he had given the audience (which was made up largely of colored farmers from the surrounding country) some useful and practical information in regard to a subject which they understood and were interested in. I wish that any one who does not believe it possible to make a subject like cabbages interesting in a commencement oration could have heard the hearty cheers which greeted the speaker when, at the close of his speech, he held up one of the largest cabbages on the platform for the audience to look at and admire. As a matter of fact there is just as much that is interesting, strange, mysterious and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is edifying, broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of Latin. There is, however, this distinction; it will make very little difference to the world whether one negro boy, more or less, learns to construe a page of Latin. On the other hand, as soon as one negro boy has been taught to apply thought and study and ideas to the growing of cabbages, he has started a process which, if it goes on and continues, will eventually transform the whole face of things as they exist in the South to-day.”[28] It can be readily seen from these two accounts just what kind of education Washington believed in and tried to give his students at Tuskegee. It was quite different from most of the training that had been given the negro after the war. In those early days of freedom, many of the negroes seemed to have the idea that the bigger the book and the harder the words in it, the better the education was that they secured. Some of them thought, too, that they were not educated unless they studied Latin and Greek and higher mathematics, and other similar subjects. Booker Washington did not mean that history, literature, and foreign languages should not be studied and had no value. What he was emphasizing was the fact that boys and girls should first get a clear idea of things about them. Then they would be able better to understand and appreciate such subjects as history and literature.