trouble to my father, whose every moment was spent at his work. Daring to do anything, I frequently met with serious accidents; I was so filled with innate "cussedness" that when started to school I was quite ab apt to go fishing. There was one duty father always found time to perform; thrash me for going fishing; and it seemed to my then unpracticed eye that when I got a good string of fish he selected a smaller sprout to dust my clothes with.

In the fall of 1865, we left Marion, to live on a farm, I was sent to school a mile and a half away. The school-house was an old lag affair, which had been used as a residence for years; there were the regulation wide fire-place, stick-and-dirt chimney, and, as some expressed it, 'a rail fence to sit on.' The entire family was so afflicted with ague during that winter that father sold, and bought another farm twenty miles a way, and we soon had a framed house to live in; but the school-house was a log one, not unlike the first. My mother sickened during "house-cleaning" there, and died 8th of Aug. following, leaving five children -- four boys and a girl.

During the next year my father married again, which union brought together eight boys and two girls; the eldest about eighteen the youngest less than a year old. In a short time I was reckoned to contain more meanness than the other seven boys. Perhaps I did. I was a willful sort of a boy, and now know I had a wrong conception of the proper training of a boy.

Farm work was not my forte, evidently, for though I always "hoed my row," it was a harder task for me than for one who was stouter built, and I resolved early in the battle to do something else when I grew older. Jan. 1871, I packed my clothes in a calico pillowcase, and, taking $3.60 (all my father had), left home to learn what the world had in store for me. I walked to Marion (twelve miles), stopped with an aunt that night, and, as it was raining the next morning, waited until noon for it to cease. It didn't. I walked out to the railroad track, and, the center being too muddy, was obliged to step ties. Nine miles is no great distance, but when you walk that distance with a cold rain beating in your face, it seems to be. About 6:30 I arrived at Carterville; though it was not late, the darkness was intense, and I stepped through a trestle. While trying to extricate myself, I saw two miners, with lamps alight, coming; I hailed them and they led me safely through. Naturally I said to them I was hunting work. They wanted a boy to "riddle coal" -- at that time

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