“Old man Harry Varner was the night watchman of the school in its early days, and a man upon whom Mr. Washington very much depended. He lived in a cabin opposite the school grounds. After hearing many talks about the importance of living in a real house instead of a one- or two-room cabin, old Uncle Harry finally decided that he must have a real house. Accordingly he came to his employer, told him his feeling in the matter, and laid before him his meagre savings, which he had determined to spend for a real house. Mr. Washington went with him to select the lot and added enough out of his own pocket to the scant savings to enable the old man to buy a cow and a pig and a garden plot as well as the house. From then on, for weeks, he and old Uncle Harry would have long and mysterious conferences over the planning of that little four-room cottage. It is doubtful if Mr. Washington ever devoted more time or thought to planning any of the great buildings of the Institute. No potentate was ever half as proud of his palace as Uncle Harry of his four-room cottage, when it was finally finished and painted and stood forth in all its glory to be admired of all men. And Booker Washington was scarcely less proud than Uncle Harry. “With Uncle Harry Varner, ‘Old man’ Brannum, the original cook of the school, and Lewis Adams, of the town of Tuskegee, whom Mr. Washington mentions in ‘Up from Slavery,’ as one of his chief advisers, all unlettered-before-the-war negroes, his relationship was always particularly intimate. These three old men enjoyed the confidence of the white 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 ‘Old man’ Diggs regarding some matter affecting the interests of the school.