“I went first to Nashville--a beautiful city. The Fisk University, one of the marvels of the world, is there. It is really a very remarkable building, and it is very nobly manned. The whole of it has been sung into existence by men and women that had been in slavery. And, do you know, they look upon you at this church as being the author of their success. For you will recollect that the ‘Jubilee Singers’ came here impoverished and discouraged, hoping that they might raise a little money by singing. They were hardly able to meet their expenses in getting here. In this lecture-room, on a Friday evening, they were asked to sing some of their songs; and you said, after hearing them, ‘Those songs must be heard in the great church’; and when Sunday came they sang there; the fire was kindled, and invitations came in to them to sing in other places. Dr. Cuyler opened his church for them, and other churches were opened. Then they began to have calls from New England; and finally they went abroad. The result was that they earned over $200,000 singing through America, England, Germany, and France; and they have built with their breath that great collegiate institution, where five hundred of their kind are being instructed. “Talk about old Rome, her achievements and her cathedrals. They are grand; but I will point to the rearing of the Fisk University by ex-slaves and their singing, and say, ‘It is the most wonderful thing that has yet been done in architecture.’ “I went the next day to Memphis. I shall never be President of the United States--I have made up my mind to that; but I had a taste of what it would be to be President, for they gave me twenty-one guns when I went into the town. I thought to myself, ‘Am I on earth? and am I in Memphis, on the Mississippi River, clear down in the southwest corner of the State of Tennessee, and only twelve miles from the State of Mississippi? And are these twenty-one guns for the pastor of Plymouth Church? Well, things have turned around pretty lively!’ I do not know how many people saw that spectacle; I only know that I saw it. “I was taken about the city by the editor of the Memphis _Appeal_, one of the most stirring of the Southern papers. I could not ask for a more kind reception than I received at his hands. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I arrived, and the lecture was at eight. As there was no lecture-room large enough to hold the people that wanted to gather, Agricultural Hall was taken, and 4,000 seats were put into it, and out from a gallery, looking down upon the people, I delivered my lecture, and I delivered it just as plump and as fair as I ever did anywhere else. I received just as cordial and respectful a hearing as ever I had, and I never desire to speak to a more thoughtful, cultivated, courteous, sympathetic, and respectful audience than I had in Memphis. Yet they knew who I was, and they very well knew what my sentiments had been and were.