"Dr. Washington has been in my home in Jacksonville; I have now had the honor of not only shaking hands with him, but of having him as my special guest. I know I am going to make one break here now, I'm going to say something that my little modest wife may not like me to say, but I hope she will excuse just this one time--(laughter)--for everybody knows that I ain't very bright anyhow--not really responsible. (Prolonged laughter.) I want to say this, not in a boasting way--I live in the best home of any Negro in this country I have so far seen. (Hearty applause.) I live in a home--we call it 'Blodgett Villa'; we have flowers and lawns and vines and shrubbery, a nice greenhouse and all those things that go to make up for higher civilization. I surrounded myself with all these things to show that the Negro has the same taste, the same yearning for higher civilization that the white man has whenever he has the money to afford it. (Applause.) You know they have been saying all these years that the Negro is coarse and vicious, that he is kin to the monkey--(laughter)--and that we do not appreciate those things that make for higher civilization such as flowers, hothouses, neatly kept houses and lawns, automobiles, and such things, so I went and got them. (Applause.) When you step inside of Mrs. Blodgett's home there you will find art and music and literature, and if you can find anything in there that does not tend toward the higher civilization, you have my promise and consent to throw it outdoors. (Laughter and applause.)... "I remember when I was a drayman on the streets of Jacksonville; I was a great big man, even heavier than I am now: I wore a pair of magnificent feet appropriate to my size, and when I drove along everybody whistled and called me 'Old Big One.' Since that time I have graduated from a drayman to what the program calls me: a 'Builder and Contractor,' and when they see me now riding through the streets of Jacksonville in my $5,500 Packard automobile, if one of those Negroes should call me 'Old Big One,' I would put him in jail. (Laughter and applause.) I am interested in business with white men, and I tell you when a Negro gets to the point where he makes cash deposits in a white man's bank--say $5,000 this week, $2,000 next week, and so on, they will begin to discover you, honor and respect you. If you deposit $2,000 this week, the bank president will know about it, and when it gets to the place that you have got in the bank $25,000, why this man even (pointing to an ebony black man in the audience) will have become a bright mulatto!"