Mr. E. C. Berry, owner and proprietor of a $60,000 hotel at Athens, Ohio, is a man that I feel the world ought to know. He was born at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1855; his education was received at Albany, a hamlet in Athens county. When fifteen years of age he went to Athens and was employed as a hodcarrier on the Hospital for the Insane, then in course of building. Mr. Berry was married in 1875, and for a time he boarded his wife at his own people's home. His first business venture was a lunch counter, which he started without any means, and was already $40.00 in debt. After he had got fairly started his wife joined him, and in 1878 they opened a restaurant in a small building on the site of the present hotel, and Mr. Berry's peculiar talent for serving palatable viands made him the popular caterer of the town. His restaurant was often patronized by traveling men who would arrive too late to get a meal at the hotel, and because of the most excellent meals served at his restaurant those men would ask, Why do you not open a hotel? and at the same time would say, If you will, you can count on my being one of your patrons. So many of those who took meals at his restaurant said about the same thing to him that he felt encouraged to make the effort. In 1892 Mr. Berry purchased the adjoining building and commenced the erection of a twenty-room hotel. From the very first the business paid; the house was new, neat and clean, and always full of people, so much so that Mr. Berry soon found that his house was inadequate for the business. In 1894 he built two large sample rooms, over which he arranged four more sleeping rooms. But one year later was--because of the increase in his trade--forced to again enlarge his house. Up to that time he had spent very near five thousand dollars in improvements. In 1899 Mr. Berry enlarged his house to its present capacity, which is forty-six sleeping rooms, a dining room with a seating capacity of seventy-five, a light, well-ventilated room used exclusively for writing 20 by 40 feet, one reading room 15 by 30 feet, four good, light sample rooms on ground floor, and the whole house is heated with three large hot-water heaters, with public bath-rooms on each floor, and several rooms with bath. The success that has come to Mr. Berry in the hotel business is due wholly to the fact that he is a natural-born caterer and a splendid manager. I have traveled for years in this and other countries, and I am free to say that the "Hotel Berry" is one of the best furnished houses I ever saw. Mr. Berry gives his personal attention to every detail that will make those who are guests in his house comfortable. His trade comes only from the best people on the road. He employs two clerks, one white and one colored. Colored people who are refined and represent the same class of whites who stop there are never turned away. I was pleased to hear him say that much of his success was due to the constant oversight