The merchants in the town would let us have what food we wanted on
credit. In fact, in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed
because people seemed to have more faith in me than I had in myself.
It was pretty hard to cook, however, with stoves, and awkward to eat
without dishes. At first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the
old-fashioned, primitive style, in pots and skillets placed over a
fire. Some of the carpenters' benches that had been used in the
construction of the building were utilized for tables. As for dishes,
there were too few to make it worth while to spend time in describing
them.
No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any
idea that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and
this was a source of great worry. Everything was so out of joint and
so inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that for the first two
weeks something was wrong at every meal. Either the meat was not done
or had been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the
tea had been forgotten.
Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door
listening to the complaints of the students. The complaints that
morning were especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole
breakfast had been a failure.
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