e basement. This they did, and in a few weeks
we had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and
uncomfortable. Any one seeing the place now would never believe that it
was once used for a dining room.

The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department
started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of
furniture, and with no money with which to buy anything. The merchants
in the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit. In fact, in
those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed
to have more faith in me than I had in myself. It was pretty hard to
cook, however, without stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes. At
first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive
style, in pots and skillets placed over a fire. Some of the carpenters'
benches that had been used in the construction of the building were
utilized for tables. As for dishes, there were too few to make it worth
while to spend time in describing them.

No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea
that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this
was a source of great worry. Everything was so out of joint and so
inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks
something was wrong at every meal. Either the meat was not done or had
been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had
been forgotten.

Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening
to the complaints of the students. The complaints that morning were
especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been
a failure. One of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came out
and went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place of
the breakfast which she had not been able to get. When she reached
the well, she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no
water. She turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone,
not knowing that I was where I could hear her, "We can't even get
water to drink at this school." I think no one remark ever came so near
discouraging me as that one.

At another time, when Mr. Bedford--whom I have already spoken of as one
of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution--was visiting
the school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining room.
Early in the morning he was awakened by a rathe