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.”[16] In many ways, he was able to help these students learn the proper ways of living—how to sleep properly, how to care for their bodies, and how to take care of their clothes. This second year of the school was truly a strenuous one in clearing land, raising a crop, making bricks, building Porter Hall, starting a boarding department and a rooming department. Everybody had been busy doing good work, and everybody was happy. They were making a great beginning. [Illustration: CLASS IN PHYSICAL TRAINING AT TUSKEGEE ] A very important event of this year was the marriage of Washington to Fannie M. Smith. They had known each other back in Malden, and, as soon as Washington’s work was well begun, they were married. She lived only two years after her marriage, dying in 1884, and leaving a daughter, Portia M. Washington. Several years later Washington married Olivia Davidson, the teacher who had been associated with him in the school almost from the first, and who had done so much to help him in getting the school started. CHAPTER IX RAISING MONEY FOR TUSKEGEE