The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 8, August, 1887Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 8, August, 1887
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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