The problem of providing mattresses was a difficult one to solve.

We finally mastered this, however, by getting some cheap cloth and sewing pieces of this together as to make large bags.

These bags we filled with the pine straw--or, as it is sometimes called, pine needles--which we secured from the forests near by.

I am glad to say that the industry of mattress-making has grown steadily since then, and has been improved to such an extent that at the present time it is an important branch of the work which is taught systematically to a number of our girls, and that the mattresses that now come out of the mattress-shop at Tuskegee are about as good as those bought in the average store.

For some time after the opening of the boarding department we had no chairs in the students' bedrooms or in the dining rooms.