I saw much that was primitive and much that was positively evil in the conditions in Europe, but nowhere did I find things as bad as they were described to me by persons who knew them as they were some years before. And I found almost no part of the country in which substantial progress had not been made; no place, in short, where the masses of the people were without hope. It will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons that, after I had gone to Europe for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as I was able, the worst in European life, I should have returned with a hopeful rather than a pessimistic view of what I saw. The fact is, however, that the farther I travelled in Europe, and the more I entered into the life of the people at the bottom, the more I found myself looking at things from the point of view of the people who are looking up, rather than from that of the people who are at the top looking down, and, strange as it may seem, it is still true that the world looks, on the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and more filled with God's providence, when you are at the bottom looking up than when you are at the top looking down. To the man in the tower the world below him is likely to look very small. Men look like ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. But the man in the street who is looking and striving upward is in a different situation. However poor his present plight, the thing he aims at and is striving toward stands out clear and distinct above him, inspiring him with hope and ambition in his struggle upward. For the man who is down there is always something to hope for, always something to be gained. The man who is down, looking up, may catch a glimpse now and then of heaven, but the man who is so situated that he can only look down is pretty likely to see another and quite different place. THE END [Illustration: Logo] THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Farthest Down, by Booker T. Washington and Robert E. Park