To the despair of his family Booker Washington seemed to go out of his way to find forlorn old people whom he could befriend. He sent provisions weekly to an humble old black couple from whom he had bought a tract of land for the school. He did the same for old Aunt Harriet and her deaf, dumb, and lame son, except that to them he provided fuel as well. On any particularly cold day he would send one or more students over to Aunt Harriet's to find out if she and her poor helpless son were comfortable. Also every Sunday afternoon, to the joy of this pathetic couple, a particularly appetizing Sunday dinner unfailingly made its appearance. And these were only a few of the pensioners and semi-pensioners whom Booker Washington accumulated as he went about his kindly way. One means of keeping in touch with the masses of his people which he never neglected was through attending the annual National Negro Baptist Conventions. At these great gatherings he came in touch with the religious leaders of two million Negroes. Notwithstanding the fact that he practically collapsed at the annual meeting of the National Negro Business League held in Boston in August, 1915, and had to be nursed for some weeks following before he was even strong enough to return to Tuskegee, he insisted in spite of the admonitions of physicians and the pleadings of friends, family, and colleagues, in keeping his engagement to speak before this great convention in Chicago in September. To all protests he replied, "It would do me more harm to stay away than to go." With these words, and rallying the rapidly waning dregs of his once great strength he went and made an address which ranks with the most powerful he ever delivered to his people. A threatened split in the Baptist denomination in part accounted for his insistence upon attending this convention. In this address, delivered only two months before he died of sheer exhaustion, and the last he made before any great body of his own people, he said in part: "My only excuse for accepting your invitation to appear before you in these annual gatherings is that I am deeply interested in all that this National Baptist Convention stands for. It is in my opinion the largest and most representative body of colored people anywhere in the world.... I believe most profoundly in the work of this convention because it represents the common masses of all our people, those who are the foundation of our success as a race. I believe in you because you do not pretend to represent the classes but the masses of our people. I am here, too, because the Baptist Church among our people throughout the country is affording them an opportunity to get lessons in self-government in a degree that is true of few other organizations.