I am glad that we endured all those
discomforts and inconveniences. I am glad that our students had
to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room. I am glad
that our first boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and
damp basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient
room, I fear we would have "lost our heads" and become "stuck
up." It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation
which one has made for one's self.
When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do,
and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and
well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked
food--largely grown by the students themselves--and see tables,
neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the
tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served
exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no
complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room,
they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as
we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and
natural process of growth.
Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from
General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute,
who had had faith enough to lend us the first two hundred and
fifty dollars with which to make a payment down on the farm.
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