There were two other things Washington wanted for his school. One was a place for his students to board, and the other, a place for them to room. Washington said that he had nothing but the students and their appetites to begin a boarding department with. However, they got busy, dug a large amount of earth from beneath Porter Hall, and opened this basement up for a dining room. They had no dishes, no knives and forks to speak of, at first; they had poor arrangements of every kind. And they had bad luck. Something went wrong almost every day at first. They would spill the soup, burn the meat, or leave the salt out of the bread. Meals were served with no sort of regularity.
Washington says that one morning he was at the dining room when everything went wrong. The breakfast was a failure. One of the girls who failed to get any breakfast went to the well to get a drink of water, and found the well rope broken. Washington heard her say: "You can't even get water to drink at this school."[1] He says that remark came nearer discouraging him than anything that ever happened to him.
He may have been discouraged, but he kept on, and in a little while things were coming out all right. And to-day, one of the greatest sights at Tuskegee is the great dining hall with its white tablecloths, napkins, and vases of flowers, with
- ↑ "Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington, p. 161.
