I think you would be more surprised and delighted to make a tour of our Boys’ Hall, as I did one evening a few weeks before school closed, than to go through the Ladies’ Hall, because you might not expect so much of the young men. I must say, the absolute cleanliness, order and quiet that reigned as I went around in the time of evening study, was more than I expected.
Nearly every room had its pictures, every one its little case for books, some a window full of plants, and all the ordinary conveniences spick and span, with the beds beautifully made up. Some rooms, especially those of the apprentices, were full of ingenious little contrivances which they have made themselves, and so, of course, take double pleasure in. Their matron kept a diligent eye for something to criticise, and, sure enough, some of their books were wrong end up, and she asked the boys if they expected people to stand on their heads to read the titles.
The comfort, convenience and neatness of our plain little rooms, where the girls, and equally the boys, are required to have “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” form by painful contrast one of the special trials of our young people when they go out to cabin life in their teaching and other vacation work.
After they have learned to love the new way, it is very hard for them to have no room to themselves, no facilities for bathing, and small chance to display the good taste they have learned to use in the arrangement and care of their personal belongings.
One of our older girls, who keeps a gem of a room here, felicitates herself on having a room to herself where she boards, even though tucked up and the walls full of other people’s clothes, a saddle, and sundries.
Another of our girls passing through her first experience of “going out,” wrote a wofully homesick letter, saying there was no place to hang up or lay down anything where she was staying; that her trunk had to go under her bed, and after she had made her morning toilet she couldn’t even find room to put down her comb and brush, but had to haul out her trunk and put them back into it. We expect to hear a more cheerful song after her school fills up and she becomes busy and interested, for she is really a very energetic girl, practical and positive. We have written advising her to get her brother, who is skillful with tools and teaches near enough to visit her on Saturdays, to put up some shelves and other conveniences in her school-room, to make that as homelike as possible, have her sewing there, and gather her girls in to learn to sew, crochet, etc., if practicable.
[This brother is one of our Biblical class, and already beginning to preach. He had a tramp of a hundred miles or so after school closed, looking for work for himself and others, back from the railway in the more inaccessible regions, where the schools are not snapped up so quickly. In writing of his search, he said: “I have had what some would call a hard time, but I have enjoyed it, and I know that the Lord is with me.” Blessed assurance!]