Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/80

64 elegant meals served in excellent style and order and on time.

The next thing was rooms for the boarders. Students were coming from a distance. There was no place for them at the school. Besides, Washington wanted them at the school so that he could help them learn best how to keep their rooms and live as folks ought to live. They used the cabins first for sleeping quarters, but they had almost no furniture. They made mattresses of pine needles. Their bedclothes were so scant the first winter that several were frostbitten.

Soon a good house was built, however, for all the students, and now they began to live as people ought. Among other things, Washington insisted that they use toothbrushes. He said that perhaps no one thing meant more in the real training of the negro than the proper use of this article. He went from room to room himself to see whether the students had them. "We found one room," he says, "that contained three girls who had recently arrived at the school. When I asked them if they had toothbrushes, one of the girls replied, pointing to a brush, 'Yes, sir, that is our brush. We bought it together yesterday.' It did not take them long to learn a different lesson."

In many ways, he was able to help these students learn the proper ways of living—how to sleep