Largely because of his intimate knowledge of the plain people Booker Washington appealed to the great of the earth. In his books, "Up from Slavery," "The Story of My Life and Work," and "My Larger Education," he tells of taking tea with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, of his association with Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, of his introduction to Prince Henry of Prussia, of his dining with the King and Queen of Denmark, and of his long friendships with William H. Baldwin, Jr., Robert C. Ogden, Henry H. Rogers, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. He was of value and interest to such people largely because of his closeness to his own people. His power to interest such people was largely because he was so close to the rank and file of his own people. After the death of Henry H. Rogers, Mr. Washington said of him in an interview published at the time in the New York _Evening Post_: "The more experiences I have of the world, the more I am convinced that the only proper and the only safe way to judge any one is at first hand and by your actual experience. It seems to me that, outside of the immediate members of my family, I knew the late Henry H. Rogers during the last fifteen years as well as I could know any one. Of all the men that I have ever known intimately, no matter what their station in life, Mr. Rogers always impressed me as being among the kindest and gentlest. That was the impression he made upon me the first time I ever met him, and during the fifteen years that I knew him that impression was deepened every time I met him." (And this was Booker Washington's impression of the second greatest figure in the building up of the huge, world-powerful corporation whose methods during its period of rapid expansion had at that time been only recently described in _McClure's Magazine_ by Ida M. Tarbell.) "I am sure that the members of his family will forgive me for telling, now that he has laid down his great work and gone to rest, some things about him which I feel that the public should know but which he always forbade me to mention while he lived. "The first time I ever met Mr. Rogers was in this manner: about fifteen years ago a large meeting was held in Madison Square Garden concert hall, to obtain funds for the Tuskegee Institute. Mr. Rogers attended the meeting, but came so late that, as the auditorium was crowded, he could not get a seat. He stood in the back part of the hall, however, and listened to the speaking.