The cost of tuition, which was fifty dollars a year for
each student, we had to secure then, as now, wherever we could.
This small charge in cash gave us no capital with which to start a
boarding department. The weather during the second winter of our work
was very cold. We were not able to provide enough bed-clothes to keep
the students warm. In fact, for some time we were not able to
provide, except in a few cases, bedsteads and mattresses of any kind.
During the coldest nights I was so troubled about the discomfort of
the students that I could not sleep myself. I recall that on several
occasions I went in the middle of the night to the shanties occupied
by the young men, for the purpose of confronting them. Often I found
some of them sitting huddled around a fire, with the one blanket which
we had been able to provide wrapped around them, trying in this way to
keep warm. During the whole night some of them did not attempt to lie
down. One morning, when the night previous had been unusually cold, I
asked those of the students in the chapel who thought that they had
been frostbitten during the night to raise their hands. Three hands
went up. Notwithstanding these experiences, there was almost no
complaining on the part of the students. They knew that we were doing
the best that we could for them.
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