Wow. I have never seen anything go from utopia to dystopia so quickly.

The DuBoses’ school had large, gracious bedrooms, an underground passageway, swimming pool, lake, stables, a bowling alley, laundry, tennis courts, and formal gardens. The public rooms were decorated with invaluable antiques from China. Students’ rooms had ruffled curtains and white bedspreads … which some students augmented with treasures from their homes on the mission field, such as tiger skins on the floor or African spears on the walls.

There were vespers (evening prayer services) every night, a private church service for the school on Sunday morning … The most select female students would be given the honor of hand washing Mrs. Dubose’s underwear and daunting array of girdles, as well as serving her breakfast every morning on a silver tray with a starched white linen placemat …

“We are hand-cutting diamonds,” Mrs. DuBose would explain. Relentless discipline, pressure, legalism, and social pain were evidently her tools for doing so. She would occasionally call errant students to her bedroom; the student would stand, head bowed, at the end of Mrs. DuBose’s big, white bed with its intricately carved eagle headboard. Reclining therein and attired in a pink satin bed jacket, Mrs. DuBose would review the student’s sins. The kids called these “White Eagle Sessions.” Years later, Betty would remember being so stressed during one of Mrs. DuBose’s little reviews that she peed herself.

Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, by Ellen Vaughn, pp. 33 – 35