and personally superintended its construction.

LATER IMPROVEMENTS

During 1911 and 1912 while some were putting the finishing touches on
Elliott Hall, the last being the insertion of the fixtures in the two
bath rooms and the construction of a closed room in the cellar for
canned fruit and vegetables, the other boys removed the old oak stumps
from the north field, drained a slough covering four acres of land,
cleaned twenty acres of land for cultivation and built 160 rods of good
fence around it. They also built a pretty and very convenient
semi-monitor hen house, with open front and two out-yards.

PULLING STUMPS

During the month of March, when the ground was moist and favorable, a
squad of the larger boys would sometimes be equipped and employed in
pulling stumps. This was a new employment for all of them, but they soon
learned to make a cheering success of it.

The working outfit consisted of two levers, a very large and a smaller
one, a log chain, sixty feet of inch rope, and for each of the workmen a
shovel and an axe. The method of procedure was to assign them in teams
of two each, to remove the earth from around a lot of stumps to the
width and depth of about eighteen inches. The larger lever, having the
middle fold of rope attached to its smaller end, was placed in a
vertical position at the lower side of the stump and firmly fastened to
its crown with a log chain, the latter passing over its top from the
opposite side. The small lever was placed in position at the side
opposite the larger one, for the use of the foreman. When all the boys,
in two lines facing each other, had hold of the ends of the rope and the
signal was given, "Ready for a pull," something was sure to happen;
usually the uprooting of the stump, but sometimes the breaking of the
log chain, which was sure to result in making a good natured pile of the
boys. The team did the pulling the first half day, but the boys did it
afterwards, because they were more available and enjoyed it.

WALL OF ELLIOTT HALL

The concrete wall under Elliott Hall, built by the superintendent and
student boys in the spring of 1910, was the first work of that kind in
this section of the country. The sand was found and obtained without
cost along a stream in the neighboring timber. The filler consisted of
rock and broken brick from the chimneys of the three buildings that
had been previously consumed by fire, and they were incorporated in the
wall by hand