Charles Harvey Hatfield - Autobiography

                                           C.H.Hatfield and  first wife, Martha Gennette Burge,

In this little book which I have written is a brief sketch of my life. I make no claim of being a writer. I never tried to write very much about anything and as a Methodist preacher I have never written as many as a half dozen sermons in full. I have written a number of brief outlines of sermons. I have had a good memory and have depended on my memory. I have more than one thousand books in my library that I have had these many years and I have been a great reader of many books on different subjects. I have memorized much Scripture and many of the things I have read in other books beside the Bible. Many things that I have written in this book I do not know just where I got them. I have made them my own thoughts because I have studied them so long and so much of my life until it seems that they are mine. But I will say there is very little originality about me. I owe much to my reading books and literature and to other leaders. I am not or have not written this book for the public or for profit but I have written it at the request of the family and friends. I hope some good may come from this little book. Who ever reads this book and gets some good out of it give God the praise. May the blessings of Almighty God be on all of my children and friends who read the pages of this book. Amen.

REV. C. H. HATFIELD.

My father's name was Andrew Hatfield, born in Illinois near Rushville and Beards Town. Born January 22, 1839. My mother's name was Sarah Margaret Chapman. Born in Indiana, March 13, 1849. My father was in the Civil War, in Company A and the Fourteenth Illinois Infantry.; He was a cooper by trade.

Father and mother were married on the following date: Andrew Hatfield and Sarah Margaret Chapman were married July 14, 1867, in the bride's home in Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois, by James B. Dodds, J. P.

The following pages are a brief history of my life.

My father came from Illinois to Columbus, Kansas and from there to Silo am Springs, Arkansas. He leased, cleared and farmed the land where Siloam Springs now stands.

In the year of 1875 there was a drought and the drought and the chinch bugs destroyed the crops and my father left and went to a little place called Spadra Bluff. He got a job boarding twenty Irishmen who were building a railroad with picks and wheel barrows. He made arrangements with a man to move us children and mother two months after he left.

Some things I remember while we lived at Siloam Springs.

One day my father took me with him through the clearing, it was a strip of land between a quarter and a half mile in length and about two hundred yards wide. I remember so well the stumps because they were cut so close to the ground and were so thick. There was a rail pen at the end of the clearing about ten feet square and I started to go in there and my father said, "don't go in there." I said why? He said, "because there are Grey Backs in that pen." I said what are Grey Backs, and he said, "they are bugs that bite little boys like you." That was in the winter of '75 and I would be three years old in the month of May.

 The rail pen was a place where a man slept who was helping to clear the ground and there were some old quilts and bedding in the rail pen. This was a case of child's curiosity and a desire to know.

One evening when we were going home from the clearing which was only a short distance, my father kept telling me to walk faster and I was too little to walk very fast. He stepped behind a large stump and when I looked up my father had disappeared and it scared me. He jumped out from behind the stump and I was all right again.

Another time my father had Negro Buford helping him saw up some logs with a cross cut saw. My father was setting the saw teeth and Negro Buford looked at me with the whites of his eyes showing and said, "Give me that boy." I stepped up close to my father and said "no." Father and Negro both laughed.

We moved from Siloam Springs to Spadra Bluff between Ozark and Clarksville in the month of September 1875. The man my father had hired to move mother and us children got impatient and kept urging my mother to get ready to go. My mother said we owe a few bills here and we cannot go until these bills are paid. She was paying the bills as fast as my father could earn the money and send it to her. The man said, "Let the bills and debts go to hell," mother said we payout debts and we will not go until all bills are paid in full." The bills were all paid and some time in the month of September we moved to Spadra Bluff.

I don't remember very much about the move,' but I do remember tb1! day we arrived. My mother pointed to the long building and said yonder is the place where we will see your father again. I can see till this day, in my mind, the steps that led inside the boarding house. And I can see my father there with his white apron on getting the meals ready for those twenty big Irishmen. How they did eat.

One of the men took pneumonia and died and my father waited on him through that spell of pneumonia until he died. The men made up money among themselves to bury the man and there was some left after all expenses were paid and they took it and all got on a big drunk.

As I remember, father finished his contract late in the spring of 1876 and we moved from there to Ozark. He got a job from a man at Ozark named Raulston, who had a dry gods store in Ozark and he also had a farm joining the town. My father worked part time on the farm and part time in the store.

We lived at the edge of Ozark in a hued-log house with a room on the side for a kitchen. There were a lot of big logs across the pathway leading to town. The trees had been cut down and the tops used for firewood and the body of the trees left to step over or go around. I have learned later in life there are many things lying across our path- way, but we can use them for stepping stones.

All adults have come through the period we call childhood, the first eleven years but it is so strange that we know so little about the winding way we have trod. When we go back and try to trace our footsteps we can find only a few of them and they are so far apart that we lose track.

Childhood is a hidden way, a mysterious way. The many things that happened when we were in that period but only a few of the facts are re- corded. It seems like the recorder was stingy. The facts that are recorded we wonder why they were; and so many other things of so great importance are left out. The facts that our memory recorded are so far apart that we do not have an adequate understanding of them.

One day a neighbor came to our house and they had a big black dog with a white ring around his neck. He was a real large dog. We went out in the yard to catch a chicken and of course we had to run it down and around the house. All of us were running and the big dog ran by me and put his front feet on my sister's left shoulder and bit her and it was a bad bite. The owner said the dog didn't understand. That is the way we are about the period of childhood, we just don't understand.

My father came home from work one evening and mother and some of the children were ill and a big Irishman asked my father if he could stay all night with us and get his supper and breakfast and my father said, "My wife is sick and we cannot keep you." The man said, "I will stay anyhow." Father picked up a chair and said, "you get out of this house or I will break this chair over your head."The man walked out muttering and stepping over the big logs. I thought as I watched him as he left so quickly, -"poor fellow." My father was a peaceable man but he would not be run out of his own home.

There was a slaughter pen near our house and one day I went down there and watched them kill a cow. This was the year of 1877 and I was five years old.

Most all the men at the slaughter house were Negroes. They had a narrow chute running from the lot where they had the cattle, into the place where they were killed.

The killer stood up in a loft like place with a big hammer and when the cow stuck her head out she met that big hammer between the eyes and a big strong Negro man had hold of the hammer and the animal dropped so quickly and then another big Negro was down where the animal fell and he had a big butcher knife and stuck it in the blood vein and the blood gushed out and the Negro man fell down and put his mouth over the blood stream and drank no less than a pint of that animal's life blood. I was shocked, for that was the first thing I had ever seen die.

That pen was a nasty place and I was very much impressed with what I saw that day. I have great sympathy for every living thing that suffers and it seems to me that my sympathy dates from that picture of that animal dying.

I learned later in life that all living things are now or will be on the altar. We are living in a world today where thousands and millions of animals are being slaughtered in order to maintain human life. We gather the idea of these things in childhood days and at that time we do not under- stand that sacrifice is a universal and a fundamental principal upon which all the life of the world is maintained.

Children see many ugly things in their world and they cannot avoid seeing them but they will have to wait until later to understand why such things are here.

We lived so close to this pen that at other times I watched the Negroes eat their dinner as it was brought to them. The eats were spread out on a table and they would gather around the table and they had what they called sweet bread, it was a kind of sweet cake. Then they had what they called blood pudding and how they would smack their mouths and brag on the sweet bread and blood pudding. It was a sight to me to watch them eat. I stood off a short distance and these things were interesting to me at that age, five years old.

Just a little east of our house there was a draw and at the head of the, draw there was a spring. A rock projected out eight or ten feet and it was in the shape of a half circle and about the center of the half circle the spring came 'out.

Mother went down there to do her washing. So one wash' day mother was there by the spring doing her washing. We had a neighbor by the same name as ours, Hatfield, and they had two boys larger and older than my brother and I. Their names were Boud and Bleve. My brother and I had a little spotted dog named Fido and we thought Fido was one of us. The half circle rock was about four feet high and lots of room under the rock. Fido treed something under the rock and he was barking loud and fast. Boud and Bleve knew what was under that rock but my brother and I did not. Boud and Bleve said to my brother, "take this pole and push it back under the rock where Fido is barking and it will come out and we will have some fun. My brother took the pole and did as he was told and out came the things and they were many. The things were "bumblebees." My brother and Fido got the worst of it because they were closer than I was. When I saw what was going on up there by the rock I ran away but some of the bees followed me and I got several' stings. Boud and Bleve were standing at a safe distance laughing. Mother quit her washing and took us to the house and doctored our stings for they were many. Father and mother were very much peeved at Boud and Bleve.

We had been playing together and we were about to claim kin with these Hatfield boys but after the battle with the bumblebees we were no kin to Boud and Bleve nor their parents. As I remember we did not play together any more.

We learned that under that rock was the home of the bumblebees and we were the trespassers. We also learned that we could not trust some people, also that we must forgive people when they do us wrong. The battle with the bumblebees happened eighty 'one years ago but I remember it as though it happened a few days ago. There is some- thing immortal about the things that happen in our lives, but are not subject to death, they live forever.

We lived only a short distance from the Arkansas River when we lived in Ozark. The Arkansas heads near Pitkins in the mountains in Colorado about one hundred and fifty miles from Pueblo, and empties its water into the father of waters near Rosedale. The Arkansas River is two thousand and one hundred miles in length.

One Saturday afternoon father took us across the river in a little boat called a skiff, a boat for rowing. The river was about one half mile wide where we crossed in the skiff. Father was fond of papaws, a banana shaped fruit, when ripe they were delicious. There on the opposite side of the river from where we lived, a thicket or grove of papaws. Father paid seventy-five cents for the use of the skiff to take brother and me across the river to get some papaws. When we landed on the other side just a few steps and we were in the papaw thicket. The ground was covered with ripe papaws. .We could not put our foot down without putting it on a papaw. The papaw tree is a very small tree about two or three inches in diameter and about ten feet in height. But they are thick, only two or three feet apart. Papaws were free for everyone that wanted them. In a papaw thicket is the place to catch the American Opossum, for they love the papaws.

Now this was a wonderful Saturday evening, the river was deep but its waters were calm and still. This was a real thrill; the little skiff did run so smooth. The skiff had oars, one on each side, one for each hand, we called them paddles. I was very much afraid of the deep waters but I had the utmost confidence in father because I knew he could swim like a fish. I knew if anything happened to the little skiff that he would save brother and me. I don't think I ever in my life on any Saturday afternoon had a greater thrill than on that Saturday afternoon.

Crossing a river like the Arkansas is indeed a great experience for five and seven year old boys. I have crossed the Arkansas several times since on a steamship, on the train and other ways but none gave the thrill that this one did.

We will one day cross the river of death into the land of everlasting life, we hope.

One day in the month of July in the year of 1877, mother and we children Hattie, James, Charles, and Effie were in Ozark. I think we had been to the circus. Mother had bought James and I a ten cent straw hat. We heard the coarse whistle of the steamboat and we went down to the landing place of the steamboat to see it land.

We were all sitting close to the water's edge and there were some loose rocks under my mother's feet. While we were gazing at the boat, there came a little puff of wind and blew my brother's hat into the great river about three feet from the edge of the water and mother reached out her hand to get the ten cent straw hat. She reached so far I thought she was going head first into the deep water but she got the brim of the hat between two of her fingers and brought it to the bank. It scared me so bad that it made a lasting impression on my mind.

I think the things that scare us make the most lasting impression on us. That day stands out as one of the things that happened in my childhood days. Later in life I have learned many lessons about water. The Bible calls it the water of life. I have learned that in some cases it is the water of death. If we drink it into our stomach it is the water of life but if it gets into our lungs or blood it is the water of death.

I once would have drowned but a strong man reached out his long arm and saved me from the water of death.

Mother, two sisters, brother and father have crossed the river of death and have landed in that land of everlasting life. This life indeed is a school and there is an important lesson in everything we see, hear, or do. I think that God's loving hand kept mother from falling into the river.

We all do some foolish things as mother did that day when she risked her life for a ten cent straw hat. Mother was an intelligent person and loved her children. I am a strong believer in the kind providence of a good God. We all came up the river bank and went home safe.

The steamboat plowing through the deep water was a great sight. There were three steamboats each day but I have forgotten the names of them.

Now we come into the year of 1878. My sister, Jessie, was born February 25, 1878. And there now were seven in the family. Father, mother, and five of us children, Hattie, James, Charles, Effie and Jessie.

Father was having a hard time to feed and clothe all of us when he received only seventy-five cents per day as wages. He worked every day but could not make ends meet. Father was a cooper by trade. He made a neat barrel that had a ready sale at one dollar and twenty-five cents for a wooden-hooped barrel and one dollar and a half for the ones that had iron hoops on it.

There were a lot of white oaks and bur oak up in Newton County. So we began to get ready to move from Ozark to Jasper, the county seat of Newton County, Arkansas. A lot of things happened in Ozark before we moved in September.

One day my brother James was playing with some boys in Ozark and he fell out of a peach tree and broke his right arm. He was a little over seven years old. He went to the doctor and had it set and splinted and came home before any of the family knew anything about it. We were all surprised when we saw him coming home with his arm all splinted up. But it soon got well and the doctor bill was small but it had to be paid for by wages at seventy five cents per day.

Father was a hard working man and he paid his bills regardless of hard times or low wages.

Ozark was not a healthy place to live at this time and we needed to get to a more healthy place and where father could make two dollars a day in- stead of seventy five cents. I compare the times then with the times now, think of a man getting seventy five cents a day with seven in the family and now a man gets as high as twenty dollars a day and not many families have as many as seven in the family. But with all the hard times and low wages we did not starve and all the children lived to be grown men and women and 'were healthy.

We would soon be leaving Ozark and the great Arkansas River that I loved so much. And we would not hear the coarse whistle of the mighty steamboat for many years. That was eighty years ago and what a change in all of our country in that length of time. It would take a large book to tell it all.

So father and James left in the month of August for Jasper. But before they left Ozark father made arrangements with a Mr. Smith to move mother and we children in September or as soon as he could get a house for us to live in when we arrived. It was not more than one month after father and brother left that mother and we children started. But this was a long and anxious wait for when. The family was separated and we were not happy.

So the day arrived when Mr. Smith came to our house in Ozark with his little pony team and old wagon to move us to Jasper which was about sixty miles by road. And the road was bad all the way. We were to go almost the full length of the Boston Mountain which was one of the mountains in the Ozark range of mountains which lay between the Arkansas and Missouri rivers and even reached down into northeast Oklahoma. We loaded Mr. Smith's wagon with our household goods which I suppose in weight would have been about eight hundred pounds. Then mother and Jessie, the baby, then, Hattie, Charles, and Effie had to have a place to ride.

Now the wagon was rolling and it was ten or fifteen miles to the foot of the Boston Mountain. The way the roads were that was a big day's drive. I do not remember what day of the week it was when we started. The second day we pulled up on the top of the Boston Mountain. The ponies had a real hard pull up that steep and rocky mountain.  

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Our daily schedule was as follows: We arose each morning at daylight and Mr. Smith would feed his horses first. Mother and we children always stayed at a house on account of Jessie, who was only about seven months old at this time. There was a house every two or three miles and they were little log houses which were very common. But some of the finest, clever and most hospitable people in the world lived in them.

I was a little over six years old but I will never forget the fine hospitality we met in every home where we stayed on that trip across the mountains. Their little houses were one room log cabins with a clapboard roof, a clapboard door and a puncheon floor. They cooked on the fireplace in a dutch oven. The table was in one corner of the house and the beds in the other corners. A few chairs with hickory bark bottoms that were an easy and restful seat. The folks were real glad to let us stay all night. Not one home on that trip turned us down but were glad to take us in without charge. Poor people they were but good people. They had corn dodger bread and bacon and black coffee to eat. Father and mother both came from Illinois and they had not been used to that kind of bread and they called it dog bread and I had heard father and mother call it by that name and when we went to the table in this little cabin the first night they passed the bread to me and I said I didn't want that old dog bread. Mother was very much embarrassed for she knew that they had taught it to me. The dodger bread was without salt or seasoning of any kind. They sifted the corn meal in a wooden bread tray and then poured cold water on the meal and stirred it with their hands, took it up in their hands and patted it from one hand to the other and laved it in the oven and left the print of their fingers. on the pone as it was called and two pones filled the dutch oven. They put the lid on the skillet and put live coals of fire on the lid and soon the pones were ready to eat. Afterwards I learned to like the corn pones and with sweet milk and fresh churned butter. Nothing any better.

After breakfast and the horses were fed and hitched to the little wagon we were ready for another day's journey and on we went. There were lots of steep hills to go up and down. Some times Mr. Smith had to lock the hind wheel with a large chain, because the brake would not hold the wagon and it would run away with the horses. We crossed little brooks and creeks and up one hill and down another. Trees were on both sides of the road, it was timber all the way; more oaks than any other kind of trees.

About ten or twelve miles over the rough roads and the sun hid itself over the western horizon and the little horses were real tired and hungry so we stopped. Another little log cabin close to the road where some kind and hospitable people lived and was glad to keep mother and we children overnight.

Mr. Smith always found feed for his horses and he slept in the wagon. The wagon was covered with bows and sheet and sometimes it would rain a long time.

Lots of gentle rains in the Ozark Mountains;  lots of birds of different kinds,  lots of gray squirrels in the black oak trees jumping from limb to limb and barking and having a regular jubilee, a squirrel jubilee. The gray squirrels on the Boston Mountain could put on a greater and more interesting show than our modern theaters can now.

I don't remember just how many days we were going from Ozark to Jasper, but I think it was five. We averaged ten or twelve miles a day. Our daily schedule was to rise about daylight and be able to start in an hour or more and stop where there was water for us to drink and for" the ponies. - We fed the ponies and had our dinner and traveled until the sun was down. .

Along the streams where the grass was yet green, for we had no frost up to this time, the cattle and sheep would be grazing. There "was one cow in the herd and one sheep in the flock that had bells on, this was an interesting sight and sound to me. I can in my imagination see those cattle and sheep grazing along that peaceful clear stream of mountain water. At the end of the fourth day we arrived at the top of the mountain where we had to drop off and down several hundred feet and follow the little Buffalo River to Jasper. Here on top of the mountain we stayed over the night.

Next morning as I remember was Sunday and mother said "we are going to see pa and Jim today if nothing happens." We stayed in a cabin as usual and Mr. Smith slept in the wagon; so the morning came and as soon as we had our breakfast and-the horses had been fed we bid the folks in the cabin goodbye. We rolled down that steep and "Tocky" mountain. Mr. Smith had to lock the hind wheels with a chain. We got down the mountain and there was the little Buffalo River.

The stream that I became so well acquainted with and crossed so many times in years after on horseback. We had to cross the Buffalo River many times before we could get to Jasper. The river was down and quiet, no danger. The bottom of the river where we crossed was covered with large round creek rocks. And how the wagon would bounce around on the hard stones. All the fords were rock bottom and the banks on the other side where we went out were steep and the horses had to pull hard to get us up the bank.

The Sabbath was an anxious and glad day for we made it across the rocky fords of the little Buffalo and up the steep banks. Finally we climbed the last bank and behold there was Jasper. Just a short distance to where father and brother were. Father had a house for us to live in. He was standing in the front yard .Looking at us. Mother and we children could hardly wait for the wagon to stop so we could meet father and brother. I looked around to see my brother and did not see him and I said where is Jim? And they pointed to a rail fence and said "there he is" and I looked and he was looking down under his cap laughing. Now we were happy. We thought we had come over a long road and it was only sixty miles. Compare this to the distance we travel nowadays. This was indeed a tiresome trip on mother.

Jasper was and is a beautiful little village. The beautiful hills around it and the Buffalo River running on the west side of it. The house we lived in was close to the river. Just back of the back yard was the high bluff and the river running up against the bluff. We could look down and see the bottom of the river standing on the bluff. We could see the fish swimming because the water was so clear.

Many things happened of great interest while we lived in Jasper. There were many things that nature presented to us that were like everlasting beauty. What a great spot this was that it took Almighty power and wisdom to create a spot like this on earth. The river and the hills are so beautiful that they are attractive to the human eye. Running water is suggestive of many things. We had changed the Arkansas for the Buffalo River though the Buffalo is much smaller than the Arkansas. But the Buffalo outmatches .the Arkansas when it comes to beauty. Clear running water and schools of fish swimming are a very great attraction to a six year old boy. We did not have to buy our recreation; nature furnished it without money or price. When the sun comes up over the hills of a morning how beautiful is Jas- per and the river and the bold sparkling water of the springs that come rushing out of the steep banks of the Buffalo. And the rains are so gentle. Our new home was a wonderful place. God made it for us.

One day my father took brother and I just a little above Jasper to a deep hole of water where there was a bluff on the other side of the river from us. He took me on his back and swam all around next to the bluff where the water was deep. I never had such a thrill in all my life. It was a greater thrill than when father took us across the river in a skiff. Father could swim like a fish. Riding on his back through deep water filled me with joy because it was so easy and smooth. This made me love daddy because I thought he was a real pal. This was the last day or nearly the last day in September.

Childhood meets with ugly things as well as beautiful things.

One day I was standing in front of the drug- store in Jasper and before me there lay a man on the floor of the platform in front of the drugstore and his head was bleeding and they said some man hit him on the head during a fight and I thought he was dying. Another man was carrying cold water from the spring that ran out of the bank of the river and was pouring it on the man's head that was bleeding so fast. At this sight I was filled with wonder and amazement. I did not know the man that was hurt; neither did I know the man that hit him over the head. I do not remember whether the man died or not as I was too small to be informed about the details of such a case. I am only thinking of the things that a child sees and hears in growing up to manhood or womanhood. The man lying there with his head bleeding is as plain on my mind as if I had seen it yesterday. The ugly pictures stay in a child's mind as do the beautiful ones. The effect of these things in our life depends on how well we understand them in later life. My conception of this picture was that it was a terrible thing. It was a lesson of warning to me and it taught me that we must avoid any and everything that is calculated to cause trouble. It put a deep and lasting fear in my heart that no doubt has helped to keep me out of trouble in many things.

The play life of childhood days are indeed very important. In childhood we are getting sensations and concepts that will contribute to our success in life or to the downfall in life. It is natural for children to play and to play with other children. We are a part of all we see and hear as we go through life. While we lived in Jasper we played with many other children. And I don't think that any child is naturally bad but they do some bad things or we think they are bad. I remember one boy that we played with often. He came to our house and we played in the back yard near the edge of the high bluff by the river. This boy's idea of fun was to catch every cat he could get hold of and tie a string around its neck with a rock at the other end and then throw the poor cat into the deep water of the river. One day he caught a large cat and tied a string around its neck with a rock at the end and threw it off the high bluff into the deep water of the river and we could see the poor cat as the rock pulled it down to the bottom. By the time it reached bottom its life was gone. What a boy?

But I was informed in later years that boy grew to manhood and became a Christian and was a fine man and good citizen.

I have thought that was the best way to eliminate cats when they are over populated. We have been told that a cat has nine lives and anyone who ever tried to kill a cat was made almost to believe it does' have seven lives. I myself have tried to kill several cats and I always dreaded it for it took the cat so long to die. But the cats the boy threw in the river died the quickest I have ever seen a cat die.

Life is a great mystery because it is filled with so many things that we do not understand. Child- hood is exposed to the good things and also to the bad and ugly things as well. Child psychology is as deep and wide as the great ocean. Who thoroughly understands childhood? The psychology of children and of the human mind is the biggest mystery in this world. There are deep things in our own life and we know not their depth. No one can give a definition of life that will satisfy anyone.

Little Buffalo River had big deep holes of water and then it had shallow places in it where you could wade and play in it. Then there were places we called shoals where it was very shallow where there were thousands of little rocks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. The water was only about ankle deep but it run fast and swift over the shoals when the river was low. In the shoals is where the little tiny fish live and children like to play in the shoals of the river and catch the little fish that live there. Then the thousands of little rocks of all sizes, shapes, and colors is an interesting thing for children.

Then on the outside of the running water there was a little eddy where we could find the lobsters or crawfish as we called them. Here in the shoals of the river was a place that nature furnished for recreation that was free to us children and brother James and other boys of our age used it very much. The weather was warm and we could wade in the water and play in it all day. We also learned to swim in the river very early in life because we could wade in the shallow places and keep going out into deeper places until we learned to swim. The deep holes and the deep water was the place for boat riding. I had a great time when we lived in Jasper, it was days of fun. We waded the river, we played in its shoals and we went over the deep places in the little boat or canoe as we called it. But those days are gone and the ones we played with have crossed over into another land but we remember them until this day and some good day we hope to see them again.

Now there was a Methodist Church and a Methodist Sunday School in Jasper when we lived there and Hattie and James who were older than I was attended the Sunday School. When Christmas season came they attended the Christmas program. It was held upstairs in the old court house. The building was old and the room was full of people and the building began to show signs of collapse and the people were scared and excited. Some of the people showed signs that they were going to jump out at the windows. The sheriff put someone at each window and at the door and filed them down the stairs that were on the out- side of the building. They all got out safe and sound, no one hurt and the building did not collapse. But they said if the people had stayed in it would have fallen down. I was not at the Christmas program but I know there were a lot of scared people and a lot of excitement about it all over Jasper.

We lived in Jasper only a short time but while we were there it was the happy play ground for brother and me. It is a bright spot in the memory of my childhood days. I lived a long time in Newton County but not long in Jasper. We got acquainted with a lot of children and people while there and I remember their names to this day. I have been away from Newton County for more than sixty years.

Now this is the year of 1878 but 1879 will soon be here and we are going to move out to father's claim where he is going to work at his trade. We will move some time in January. We moved from Siloam Springs to Spadra Bluff and from Spadra Bluff to Ozark, and from Ozark to Jasper and soon we will move to our new home which was about half way between Jasper and Big Buffalo on to what mother calls the Dogwood flat because there are hundreds of dogwood trees there. We hated to leave Jasper because it was a delightful place to live. I wonder where the children are that we played with? I saw many of them after- wards but many I have never seen since. We do not only move away from places that we love but we also move away from people we love and out from and away from childhood into manhood and womanhood. Change is taking place all the time in the experiences of life. We are not allowed to stay on this earth very long.

In the month of January, 1879, we moved to an old log house in Mr. Pleas Goodall's cornfield near a spring. We moved to this old house so father would be closer to his work. He was building us a new house on the claim that he was taking up.

This old house was populated with field mice, wood rats and bed bugs. And when we built a fire in the big fire place and warmed things up these creatures began to show up and we soon found out we were not alone.

The first day we lived in this old den it snowed but was not very cold. The snow came down in large flakes and we had no wood, only sticks and brush. My mother kept saying Pa and Jim will be here soon with a load of wood but it was late in the evening when they arrived with a sled load of wood. We lived in this old house only a short time until our new house was ready for us.

Father cut and hued the logs and dragged them to the place where they were to be made into the house. Then we had what we called a house raising, all the neighbors came and lifted the logs and made the walls. We had dinner on the ground that day. House raising was a great day. Everyone helped free of charge. The neighbor women helped mother with the dinner.

Father made the boards for the roof, in fact, he made everything that went into the building out of timber that grew in the woods. This was a small house and we lived in it until father could build us a bigger and better one. So when the bigger house was finished we moved into it and father used the first house for his shop.

He set out an orchard between the shop and the new house. It was a beautiful place out in the wild woods. There were a lot of fine big white oak trees, the kind of timber he made his barrels of. The woods were full of wild hogs, wild cats, wild turkey, raccoon and opossums and squirrels. There were no bears nor panthers at this time, although there had been lots of them. There were lots of wild honey bees in the hollow trees and some of them were very rich with honey. Lots of wild flowers of many kinds. The dogwoods were many and they made the woods shine when they put out their large white blossoms.

We had a lot of different kind of trees around our place. There were white oak, black oak, post oak, hickory trees and the wild cherry trees. We also had sugar maple which we tapped in the early spring when the sap was up, by chopping a place in the side of the tree and boring a hole and putting a hollow elder in the hole and hanging a bucket on the elder and in a few hours it would be full. Then we would bring them to the house and mother would put the maple juice in a kettle and boil it down into a syrup and more boiling would make it into maple sugar. Maple syrup and pancakes and home churned butter for breakfast. But as much as we had I never did get enough of it.

We had blackberries in the woods by the acre and we could gather just as many as we wanted. Mother made blackberry cobblers and father was really fond of them but he was not by himself, he had some children and a boy that could out match any other member of the family at the table.

We also had a lot of chinquepin trees close to our house and they would bear every year in abundance. They had a large burr full of stickers that grew on the outside of the nut and in the fall when they got ripe the large burr would burst wide open and the nut would fallout and then we could pick them up. But the woods were full of wild hogs and if they got there first they would get all of them. Sometimes we would have a little wind in the night and the chinques would almost cover the ground as the wind would shatter them out of those large burrs. Mother would wake us and say, "get up and go pick the chinequepins before the hogs get them." We would climb out of bed and make for the trees to beat the hogs. Life is like running a race and then it was a race with the wild hogs.

One Sunday morning we were out picking up chinequepins near what we called the big road. A lot of our roads were just paths and we called the wagon road the big road, and while we were near there a man came along and saw us picking up chinequepins. He rode out to where we were and got down off his horse and took some papers out of his pocket and gave each of us one. They were Sunday School papers and the one he gave to me had a picture of Jesus on it where He was stilling the storm on the lake of Galilee and it made a deep and lasting impression on me. Next day mother was sitting in a chair and I went to her with my paper in hand and said, "Mother does Jesus make the wind blow?" and she said,. "Yes.' Mother was not a Christian at the time. The man who gave me the paper was a Sunday School man from Jasper and I never did know his name. But the Lord sent that man to me and that was the beginning of my religious experiences on which I will have more to say later.

We had to carry our drinking water about a half mile up a steep rocky hill. There was what we called a wet weather spring close to the house but only in wet weather did it have any water in it. It was dry so much of the time and father told me to take a bag of table salt and put in it and the water would come back. One evening I did this and next morning I went down to the spring and it was running over with water. I thought I wouldn't have to carry water so far any more. But the secret of it was it had rained all night and in a few days the spring was dry again. I tried the salt again but it didn't work. Father was sincere but sometimes he liked to joke and he said, "I thought you would know that a little bag of salt would not work a miracle in time of a drought."

Father made barrels and he used wooden hoops on some and iron hoops on others. The wooden hoops were made of hickory saplings and in hot weather he couldn't make more than he could use in one day. About a quarter of a mile from our house there was a creek with a lot of hickory saplings growing. He would go down, cut and split them into the right size and put them in bundles and lay them in the creek so they would not dry out. Then next morning when it was day- light we would go down and get a bundle and carry them to my father's shop. Just what he would use that day.

There were lots of bamboo briars on the way to the creek and how I hated to get out of bed and go through them. My brother was not as lazy as I was. He would start off laughing and I would start off crying. Going down to the creek after the bundles of hoops was no great task, but father wanted to teach us to work. I think teaching us to work was the greatest thing mother and father did .for us. Work is a fundamental principle of success. in life. We lived on the dogwood flat in the years of 1879-'80-'81. We went to school at Cherry Grove down on Big Buffalo about three miles from our home. That was the first school I attended. It was in an old log house that had been a dwelling. It had no door shutters, no floor, windows, loft or ceiling. The cracks between the logs were large enough to throw a -cat through~

My teacher was a man named Hering. I would go to sleep during school and one day he said if I did not stay awake he would get some leatherwood bark, tie it around my thumbs and tie me up to the joists overhead. My oldest sister was sitting by me so he didnt 'scare me and'-I went -back to sleep. He told me afterward that he didn't know what he was going to do with me:

We walked three miles to school but didn't go with any regularity. The school terms were only three months a year and we went only a few days in each term. It was a poor school but the best the country cold afford at the time. On school days we had to go to the creek and get a load of hoops and then carry water from the spring about a half mile away. Our book at the school was the old Blue Back Spelling Book.

Houston's cotton gin was on Big Buffalo, two miles from our house and in the fall we worked there. It was run by ox and horse power. Four yoke of oxen, when we used oxen and four teams of horses, when we used horses. They worked to a big lever that turned a wooden cog wheel that ran all the machinery of the cotton gin. Our wages were twenty-five cents a day.

There, was a cotton farm near the gin and our sisters went with us and picked cotton. On days the gin didn't run, brother and- I picked cotton with our sisters. We got fifty cents per hundred pounds for cotton picking. All four of us didnt" average making a dollar a day.

There was an old man down on the creek by the name: of Cale Hickman, that had been through two wars. He raised a little patch of cotton and some days I would go and pick cotton with Uncle Cale Hickman and eat dinner with him. Aunt Nancy, his wife, would have com dodgers, fried bacon and grease and coffee. Some times dried fruit for dessert.

We lived in a cyclone path in the dogwood flat. Out in the woods we could see the path the cyclone had come years before. The large trees were decayed and the saplings were growing up in the place of the parent trees the cyclone had blown down. One evening just at dusk a cyclone came. It passed between father's shop and the house, the main part of it missed the house. Father was standing out in the yard just far enough that it picked him up and threw him out in the field. There were sink holes allover the woods about four to six feet deep and about ten to fifteen feet in diameter. The cyclone dropped father in one of these. The storm lasted only a few minutes, and mother and brother went to hunt for father. Just a few yards from the house they found him. A sprained ankle was his only injury. Forever after he was afraid of cyclones. We had to carry water so far and the cyclones were so bad father was dissatisfied. He rented a farm down on Big Buffalo from a man named Houston. It "was a good farm and the land was rich. This was the year President Garfield was shot, 1881; we could not get possession of the house on the farm so father rented an old one-room house from Mr. Cale Hickman and we moved into it until the first of the year. While we were in this little house my youngest sister, Mary, was born November 10, 1881. The first of the year of 1882 we moved to Bill Houston's place about a mile across the river from Houston's gin.

Big Buffalo River was larger than Little Buffalo and its bottoms were wider and the farms larger.

The land was sandy and loamy and easily cultivated. But in the growing season it rained so often the crab grass and other foulness grew fast. Brother and I were large enough to do a little work on the farm. We planted com but the molds were so bad we had to replant and this we did with a hoe. We put seed com in our pockets and where a hill of com had been taken up we would dig a little hole and drop in three grains of corn and cover it with the hoe. We helped father in many ways. We followed the plow with hoes and cut weeds the plow didn't get. Then we hoed cotton. But when father was not with us we spent a lot of time playing in the sand bars along the river. We farmed this place only a year but it was a great year in my life. We laid our crop by in July and then father worked in the shop until gathering time. Between the time we laid our crop by and the time we began gathering, we played in the river.

A mile or so down the river was a place called Brownville where they had church and Sunday school in an old double log house. The boys my size came to Sunday School in their shirts only, but they reached almost to their knees. I wore pants. They wore homemade wool shirts that their mothers had carded, spun and wove the cloth. These boys had leatherwood bark for belts. I went to Sunday School and church every Sunday and they used the old blue back spelling book for it was the only literature they had. The mothers with their homemade wool dresses were our teachers. Then after Sunday School they had preaching and two or three preachers would preach for a very long time and .I would listen to all of them. I would get very hungry but I never was disgusted at the preaching. They would cry and walk the floor and preach loud. I wondered what it was all about. They perhaps would not be called very good preachers now days but they were good sincere men and did the best they knew how. I was now nine years old, past what they call later childhood.

These cornfield preachers as they were called made a lasting impression on me. God was working in their life and blessing their .labors.

My first religious impression was when the man from Jasper came along where I was picking up chinquepins and gave me the Sunday School paper with the picture of Jesus on it stilling the storm on Lake Galilee.

God works in many and mysterious ways to bring us to a knowledge of His purpose and will.

Many things happened in the one year that we lived on Big Buffalo on the Houston farm. My sister Effie who was younger than myself had great times playing up and down the river. We would go along close to the edge of the high bluffs and look way down to the river when its waters were low and some times its waters were very high. We crossed the river in a canoe where the water was deep. We would go across the river to get watermelons. A farmer had a large field of cotton just across the river from our spring and we would go over there and get a lot of fine melons which were in the cotton field. That was the way they raised watermelons in those days. They planted in the cotton patch and there were thousands of them and there was no market for them. Sister and I had lots of fun crossing the river in that boat to get the watermelons. Some times the boat would leak and I would have to dip the water out to keep it from sinking: Lot of the times I had to work real fast to keep the boat from going down to the bottom. Sometimes we had it overloaded with watermelons and it would scare my sister. It was a wonder that both of us did not drown.

Happy days of childhood when we were free from the cares of this life and also free from the fear of danger and death. Day after day we played along the Big Buffalo together. We had to work but there were many days that we did not work and then we put in the time playing. Nature afforded us so many interesting things that we were just filled with joy and gladness. We learned that God made the river, the bluffs, the flowers, the beautiful hills around us. The picture of the river and bluffs and the hills are with me to stay and it thrills me when I think of those happy days. God bless the rivers and the hills, for He made them.

We picked our cotton and gathered our corn crop, father sold his barrels at Bear creek where there was a still and where they made whisky.

I had a good case of the chills because I had played in the river so much my mother said. My father and mother decided to send me to Bear Creek Springs to school and see if it would not cure me of the Third day chills. The kind they said were hardest to cure. So in the winter of 1883 they sent me to Bear Creek to stay with a man by the name of Wroten. He lived just across the road from the little school house where I went to school. My teacher's name was Miss Kitty Williams. I went to school there and chilled every third day.

A very cold spring ran out of the side of the mountain just a few steps from where I stayed and lots of people hauled water from that spring on a sled drawn by two horses. One day a school mate of mine came by with his horses and sled to get two barrels of water. As he passed he said, "get on the sled and go with me," so I stepped on the sled and he drove into the water which was about eighteen inches deep and as he turned his horses he upset the sled and we both fell in the water which was very cold. Besides it all it was my chill day and the time of the day that I chilled. I ran to the house which was only a few steps and Mrs. Wroten put me to bed after taking my wet clothes off and started giving me pepper tea. Soon I got up a big sweat and behold I missed my chill. I stood at the head of my class with my marks and got the prize at the end of school.

This was a rough place, there was a still and some tough people but I did not go about the still only once or twice while I was there. This was a very small school and a small number of boys and girls who attended. But it made a great contribution to my whole life. We are indeed a part of every thing we see, hear and do. This short term school did me a lot of good but it did not cure me of the chills. Mr. and Mrs. Wroten treated me very nice and my teacher was so good to me that I almost worshipped her. While I stayed there I learned to love people. That was the longest time I was ever away from home up to that time. I will never forget that little school.

While I was in school at Bear Creek Springs my father and mother moved from Big Buffalo River in Newton County to Mr. John Moore's place which was in Boone County, near Walnut Grove School on Crooked Creek. Before school was out my brother James came after me on a Saturday. The next morning was Sunday and we walked home to the new house, I remember it was about four miles and we got home about dinner time. I was glad to see my family. -"

I still had a bad case of the Third day chills and 1 was not well any 'of the time. I had no energy and I was cross and mad a lot of the time. My mother tried every 'remedy that she knew. She gave me button willow tea and it was so bitter that I dreaded to see that spoon full of stuff coming to my mouth. My mother believed in it but I didn't. Once someone told my mother to put egg shells in the ovcn and parch the)1:I until they could be ground into a fine powder;, Then give me a table spoon full of that stuff every morning before breakfast and it would sure cure the Third Day Chills, that it never failed. Of all the things that ever went down my throat was the nasty egg shells. The willow tea nor the egg shells did me any good. I told my mother about falling in the Bear Creek Spring and Mrs. Wroten putting me to bed and giving me pepper tea and I missed my chill. My mother tried that many times. We lived just a few feet from a large branch that had holes of water in it. Mother had me just before chill time, go down to the hole of water and swim around until I got good and wet. Then she would meet me at the bank with some quilts, wrap me up good, put me in bed and give me a lot of pepper tea. I contended with my mother that it was the pepper tea that put me to sweating and it was not going in the creek. But this remedy failed as all the others. What was I to do? What was my mother to do about the Third Day Chills? We had tried every sane and every foolish remedy and no cure had been accomplished. I was as yellow as a cornfield pumpkin.

My father was a great hand to move, nothing pleased him any more than to see the household goods in the wagon and ready to move.

We lived near the Walnut Grove school one year and went to Sunday School and church there regular. All the churches worshiped in the same building. The Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterians all preached there and they had a union Sunday School. The public school had three month terms of school each year and I went there a short time. It was a fine community to live in. The people were a very high class of people.

Father and mother were both converted and joined the Methodist church while we lived there. My religious impressions were deepened. I went to the altar a number of times for prayer. I loved to go to the altar and listen to the prayers.

Father worked at his trade making barrels in the summer after the crop was laid by. But there was no white oak timber there. We were only six miles from Harrison, the county seat of Boone County, and it was good farming country. We made a crop of corn, oats and sugar cane.

We started moving first from Siloam Springs, and from there to Spadra Bluff and from Spadra

Bluff to Ozark and from Ozark to Jasper and from Jasper to the dogwood flat and from the dogwood flat to Cale Hickman's place near Big Buffalo and from there to John Moore's place in Boone County near Walnut Grove School. Because there was no white oaks here suitable for barrels my father decided to move back to Newton County where there were plenty of very fine white oaks. That was only about ten miles from Walnut Grove.

When we had gathered our corn crop and made our cane into sorghum molasses, we moved back to Newton County to a place called the Gaither Cove. It was in the bend of the Gaither Mountain, a small neighborhood. Here my father bought a claim and gave seventy-five dollars for it. The land was rough and rocky but very productive for corn and other grain. It was a fine place for fruit, berries and garden stuff.

Father and I moved first ahead of the rest of the family. We batched and father worked in the timber. The rest of the family moved just before Christmas. I was now eleven years old past, and going out of childhood.

The eleven years of my life that is called child- hood had been happy years. I learned a lot about this world. I saw many things that I will remember always. Somewhere I read "Blessed is childhood for it is the symbol of all love and light and laughter. But we were made to grow in body, mind and spirit. This begins with childhood and grows into young manhood and young womanhood. When life is complete it is made up of all we have seen and thought and read. I am starting into young manhood and I have a good father and mother and brother and sisters to live with.

In Gaither Cove we worked in the timber in the winter. We made rails and built fences and cleared new land and put it into corn and oats. We raised some cotton, and wheat to make our own biscuits, pies and pancakes. We helped father get out barrel timber. I have seen many a big white oak tree, four and five feet in diameter fall after it had been chopped and sawed down. We used a cross cut saw that was seven feet in length and wide enough to run throuh a five foot log.

In the spring we worked in the field plowiI1g and planting our crop. When it was planted we had to cultivate it. The weeds, grass and sprouts kept us busy until about the first of July. We laid our crops by and then went to school for a few days before we had to cut our wheat and oats.

We harvested our wheat and oats with the old fashioned cradle and bound them into bundles by hand. I have used the cradle and followed it after my brother and bound the wheat into bundles as fast as he could cut it. as we used to say I could keep up with the cradle.

We raised almost everything we ate. We had a big variety of fruits and garden vegetables. But it took lots of hard work to grow things because it rained often and the soil was strong. We had apples, peaches, plums, pears, cherries and all kinds of berries. Our work was about the same each year. In the winter we worked in the timber and in the spring on crops and in the summer we worked in the harvest field.

Father raised both sweet and Irish potatoes. When they were ready to dig, as we called it, he put a thick layer of wheat straw on the ground, they put the Irish potatoes on the straw, then another layer of wheat straw on the potatoes and last we would put about six inches of dirt. That would keep them until we used them all. By the time we had used all of them a new crop would be ready. The sweet potatoes we put in the cellar under the floor in dry dirt that had no moisture in it and they would keep until spring. We had a cellar for the apples and had them the year around. The apples in the cellar would keep until the early harvest apples were ripe in the orchard.

Father had four acres in the apple orchard besides peaches and other kinds of fruit. It was the finest apple orchard I have seen anywhere. In it were a big variety of fine apples.

Our yard had a railing fence around it and on the inside was a row of fine cherry trees and they were full of cherries every year. Mother also had a very fine garden every year. She raised a variety of vegetables. Cabbage, beans, English peas, onions that were sweet, pie plant. strawberries and raspberries. Mother took care of the garden because we children had to work in the field most of the time, and father worked in his shop when we lived here more than at other places because he had plenty. of timber to make all the barrels that he had a market for. Mother had the table covered with good things to eat and we were all growing into manhood and womanhood.

What wonderful days these were. But we cannot go back and live them allover again. Only once do we pass through childhood and through the days of youth and then to old age or senescence as they call it. This is the way that the good Lord made it to be and we cannot change it and besides l we do not want to change it because we know that  His way is the best. In those days we were all well and at home together and were happy. We did not trouble ourselves in those days with what the future might bring. Home sweet home was all we thought about and mother and father and we children.

Brother and I made lots of rail. We would go out in the woods where the black oak trees were thick and cut and split rails all day. We could cut and split one hundred and fifty rails in one day. The black oak were tall trees and some of them would make six or seven rail cuts, eight feet in length. We delighted to see the tall trees fall and we had some dogs and when the tree would fall the dogs would bark and make a lot of to do over the tree falling down. When a tree fell it would make quite a noise you could hear all over the woods. There was a lot of joy that went along with the hard work in rail making. Mother would have us a fine dinner every day. We both liked fried pies and she would have them every day for dinner. We kept our rail fences around the field in good shape.

We lived in an open range country where everyone turned their stock out to the free range and we had to have good fences. Our fences were ten rails high and had plenty of worm so they, would not fall down.

The woods was covered deep with the crop of leaves every year and we had to rake a path all around our field every year and then fire against the fires in the woods. When there were backfires all over the country it was a beautiful sight to behold. I have gone out at night and stand and look at the long strings of fire. The fire would be even and straight for more than a mile and how it would light up the whole woods.

In the spring we would plow up our rocky field and get ready to plant our crop. The old corn stalks had to be cut down with a hoe and then picked up by hand and put in piles and burned. I have cut and piled and burned stalks many a day. Compare this way of farming then to the way now and see the wide difference. We made our living the hard way and the lightest work we had then was going to mill, horse back.

Brother and I took it turn about going to mill on Saturday evening. We put one bushel of corn in a sack across the saddle and went over the mountains four miles to the grist mill. Some times it was late at night before we could get our grinding. Our family was large and we had to go to mill every week.

We sowed our wheat in among the com stalks and plowed it in with double shovel and in the spring we had to cut the corn stalks down with a hoe. Then we had to cut the sprouts two or three times before the wheat was ready to harvest. There were lots of hickory stumps and walnut stumps and many other kinds of stumps. They would keep sprouting for several years after the ground had been put into cultivation. We cut the wheat with a cradle and bound it into bundles by hand and then put it in shocks. We hauled the shocks in a wagon and stacked the wheat. Then it was thrashed with what they called the old ground hog thrasher. In thrashing the wheat it took about all the able bodied men in the community to run that old ground hog machine and all the women to do the cooking. Most all of the neighborhood was employed during the thrashing season. What a jubilee this was to the whole neighborhood. We swapped work and our thrashing did not cost us very much in real cash.

We had lots of wild honey to spread on our biscuits. Everywhere the dining table reached across the kitchen and as many as thirty could get around that table and it was piled full of a great variety of food and none of the food went to waste. Thrashing wheat was hard work but there was a lot of fun attached to it and it had a social value. It created a better feeling among' neighbors. But some times we had a dog fight that caused hard feelings. Dog fights caused hard feeling more at log rollings than at thrashing time. We earned our bread in the hardest way but the bread was sweet after we earned it in this way. Now this way went on year after year. Our work varied some but it was about the same every year. From twelve to fifteen years in my life it was about the same each year.

In the spring of the year when my father's apple orchard was in bloom and the peach trees all covered with blossoms it was a beautiful sight to behold. My mother had the yard and lot full of chickens and geese. The bells on the cow and horses were ringing and everywhere the birds were singing. We were all at home father and mother and children were all happy. This was real life, home life. But these days did come to an end and other days have come.

Besides the work in the field and in the woods we had our chores around the house: and each member of the family had their task or work to do. My job was to get the firewood and wood to cook with. Brother's job was to take care of the horses and hogs and see that they had plenty, of water and food. My mother milked the cows, she would not let any of us milk. I generally helped her with the calves. We let the cows out in: the day and the calves out at night. Besides my job of getting wood I had to get the horses and calves up every morning. But this was only through the spring and summer. I had a little yoke of calves and a wagon that I made by sawing the wheels off of a black gum tree and then boring' a hole in the center of the round wheel and making the axles that fit into the wheels, I made standards and I could haul a lot of wood this way, besides' the fun there was in working the calves to a wagon that I had made myself. Black gum wheels and axles and tongue and standards made of oak. Later I hauled wood with a team of horses. I learned to chop wood with an ax and I got to be quite an axman by cutting rail timber and fire- wood. My father worked at his trade most of the time while we lived in Gaither Cove. We burned lots of firewood and lots of cookstove wood. We carried our water from the spring which was just a short distance under the hill from the house but the hill was steep. My mother carried all the milk and butter to the spring house in the summer time. I have seen my mother carry two or three gallon jars of milk on her hip up that steep hill many times. We thought not4ing about it at that time. But my mother lived to be ninety- two years of age.

We had heavy rains some times in the night and my mother would get up and go see about the little chickens. The water would be allover the yard and a chicken doesn't have any sense about a rainstorm. They would get under the drip of the house and stick their heads up in the stream of water and drown. But mother always saved most of the chickens in a storm. A big yellow legged frying chicken then was worth only ten cents on the market and ,eggs sold for five cents per dozen. Most of the frying sized chickens were put on the dining table. Because all the family loved fried chicken fried in good old hog lard. Those days were not days of fasting but days of feasting.

My recreational life consisted of swimming, hunting and fishing. And I did a lot of all three of them. I have stayed all night on the banks of Vilines Creek where it joins Big Buffalo lots of nights. . Also I have fished lots of nights on the banks of Big Buffalo. We had lots of rainy days and it was to wet to work in the field and we would dig up a can full of big red worms and grub worms and go fishing. This was lots of fun. We were as much interested in the fun with other boys as we were in the fishing. There were lots of big fish in Big Buffalo but they were hard to catch with a hook. Plenty of mud cats and also blue catfish. Sunperch were in great schools. We boys, my brother and neighbors have stayed on the banks of the river when it would rain all night long. The rain was warm and wet clothes did not bother us. Most of the time we came home wet as could be and no fish for breakfast. Some times it would rain for one whole week and keep us out of the field, we would have a long protracted fishing spell. I use to like to go fishing as well as any- body ever did. We usually went fishing when the river was up and it was an inspiration to see the waters, rolling waves rise up in the middle of the river and then slosh out to the banks and we would have to get a little farther out. Sometimes the river would get out of its banks and out in the fields and wash away the crops. But when the river was out of its banks was not a good time to fish. We would go squirrel hunting if it was too wet to work in the field. There were lots and lots of fox and grey squirrels. Just go out among the big oak trees and we could kill all we wanted if we knew how to shoot an old cap and ball rifle. Squirrels were next to fried chicken on the dining table. And it was not against the law to kill as many as you wanted. They would destroy our com around the field for several rows. We would hunt squirrels to save our corn from being destroyed by them. Squirrels could play and bark as they jumped from limb to limb in the black oaks trees and they could put on a very interesting show. We hunted for coons and opossums and quails. Quails were there in great I numbers. We made traps and caught quails and rabbits and snow birds. We hunted bee trees and some were rich with honey of the best kind.

It was great joy to me when we used to go swimming in the creeks. Cove creek was just about one-half mile from our house and it was our bath tub but a more delightful place than any bath tub that I was ever in. We were taught that it was wrong to go swimming on Sunday. We would go to Sunday School and church and then us boys would as soon as the church services were over, head for the swimming hole. It was a deep hole of water" with a low bluff on one side and a big flat rock about as long as the hole of water and was wide. It was an ideal place to undress and dress without getting our clothes dirty or our feet when we came out of the water. Many times we went there to swim and to have all the fun we wanted. It was far enough from the road to not be seen. I had all confidence in my father and mother. I never doubted their sincerity. But they never did make me believe that it was wrong to go swimming on Sunday. I believed that God made that hole of water for us to swim in. It was deep and clear and clean and pure water.

We would go there after working in the harvest field and take a bath in that cool water and sleep better at night. When we worked at the thrashing after supper and after dark we would go there and take a swim and wash our bodies off. Mother liked to keep her beds clean and nice and we wanted to help her in that way. Very early in the spring we would go swimming when the water was still cold but it never did hurt us that I knew of: I learned early in life to swim but I never was a good swimmer.

I was swimming across the creek and there was a bluff on the other side and a little oak sapling growing in the cleft of the rocks. When I reached the bluff I reached for the sapling and my feet slipped from under me and I got strangled and I was sinking. I would have drowned but a man who had long arms reached out and I took hold of his hand and he lifted me out of the deep water. After that I was always afraid of deep water but I was more careful about swimming than before. I was not very well acquainted with him but I have always remembered that man. I don't think I ever did see the man after that day. I was full of water when I got out of the creek.

At the little school house just one-half mile away from the hill was the place where we went to Sunday School and church each Sunday. We seldom missed a Sunday; My father was superintendent of the Sunday School and my mother was teacher of a class of boys. My father helped to build the little school house, it was built of logs. They hued the logs and then drug .them up with the wagon. One end of the log was chained under the front axle tree of-the wagon and the other end of the log dragging on the ground. When they got all the logs to the place the men came in and they had a big day raising the logs into a house. They made the benches out of splitting logs and made boards to cover it with and boards to gable the ends-. That was where "I got some of the most impressive religious truth which have been a great stay in my life.

I attended church regularly and also the mid-week prayer service. I loved to go to church and Sunday School. In those days we had our church services in the morning at eleven a.m. (and our Sunday School at three p.m. We always had more people attend the church services than we did at the Sunday School. The folk did not have to be urged to come to the church services, they came without any invitation. The folk would ask people to come to Sunday School but a lot of the time they would not be there. Now it is the other way. Here I learned to conduct the prayer services in mid- week which was poorly attended. They would have what they called the big meeting, a revival, some called it. The people would go up to the altar and then they would shout all over the camp ground. They would talk more about religion than any- thing else. They would talk about the preachers text and the sermon he preached from the text. They would talk it all day after the services. And during these services the people were devoted to the services altogether. Most everything else was laid aside until the revival services were over with and some times a long time after. But some soon forgot it and had to be renewed the next year. Lots of backsliders in those days but lots of faithful Christians also. This little log house done a lot for me in the way of religion. I have no doubt it did a lot for many others who lived there at that time. Many who have gone to their reward.

We lived in a timbered country where there were lots of different kinds of trees. There was different kinds of oak trees, the white oak, black oak, post oak, the water oak, the spotted oak, the pin oak. We had the black hickory, the shell bark hickory. We had lots of sweetgum trees and they were very large. The black gum trees were large and I never did know what the black gum tree was in value. We never did use it for anything only to' cut it down and get it out of the way. We could hardly burn a black gum at all, neither could we split one, for the grain was so crooked. Then we had the ash tree, lots of them and they used the ash timber to make ox yokes. We had the maple sugar trees but there were not so many of them. We had lots of Sasafrass trees and on poor soil the Sasafrass sprouts were numerous. Along the rivers we had the beech trees. We had a lot of lin trees, they grew tall, a long straight body, and some grew to more than one hundred feet in height. The dog- wood trees were by the thousand. We had the red cedar that grew in the deep rough places we called the follows. Tall cedars of almost all sizes and straight. We used them 'for rafters on houses and barns. Some places they made them into rails and built fences with them. We could split them with a chopping ax eight or ten feet long. We did not have any pine trees near our place. Around the benches of the mountains the burr oak were very large some of them were six feet in diameter. My father used them to make the heads for his barrels. We made ax handles and malls from black hickory. We made gluts or wedges from the dogwood. In making rails we used the ax and the cross cut saw to cut the timber in the right length, which was eight feet. Then we split the timber with an iron wedge and the dogwood glut or wedge and we drove the wedges into the wood with a large mall made out of black hickory.

We had lots of wild fruit in the woods, such as summer grapes, they were large and sweet, good to eat something like our concord grapes. Then we had the little winter grapes that grew along the streams in abundance, they made good jelly. We had lots of black berries and raspberries and straw berries that grew wild. They were delicious to eat or to make pies of them.

We used the white oak boards and staves for barrels. The white oak along the river was good basket timber. Lots of large walnut trees three feet in diameter.

John Marvin Hatfield, the youngest member in my father's family, was born May 13, 1886. I was thirteen years old when he was born. In the fall of 1887 after I was fourteen years old in May, I took a notion I would go down on the Arkansas River near Clarksville and pick cotton and make some money. So one Sunday morning I started with another boy on foot. We went to Jasper and then up the Little Buffalo River and on to the Boston Mountain. The mountain that I crossed with my mother when I was just six years old. Just as we left Buffalo River we stopped to get dinner at a house along the road side. The lady of the house went out and got some fresh corn and cooked it for us. It took some time for her to get it ready but we were tired and we waited patiently for our dinner. We ate hearty for we were hungry. We were three days getting to Clarksville, we walked every step of the way. In a day or so after we were there I got a job picking cotton and the cotton was very fine. It was hot and I was afraid I was going to get sick with the chills as I was addicted to the chills. A man told me that I had come down there a little too soon, that I should have waited till the weather got a little cooler. So after I had picked cotton about two weeks I decided I would start home. I went out of the river bottom into the up land and I met up with a man that wanted to hire me to pull fodder for him. I knew how to pull fodder for I had lots of experience in pulling fodder at home. He seemed like a very nice man, I went home with him and he asked me a lot of questions about my home and then offered me fifty cents per day to pull fodder for him. His wife seemed to be very kind and they had two small children and a nice home everything was neat and tidy. So I went to work for him. The corn was good and there were no weeds, he had cultivated the ground good. I worked for him several days and the first day and every day and the last day that I had dinner with them, they had apple dumplings for dinner that were the best apple dumplings that I ever did put down my throat. Never before or since have I tasted such good dumplings. He paid me and I started home but I hated to leave that place because they treated me so kind.

The man wanted me to stay with him. He liked my work but I was real home sick. Home sick ness is the sickest sick that anyone ever did experience. I cried my eyes out. I could not think of any thing but my good old mother and father and baby brother and my older brother and all my sisters. On the way from Clarksville to the Boston Mountain I stopped at a house and the man wanted me to .work for him, I stopped with him a few days and worked for him and also another man that lived near, but every day I got sicker and sicker. I had something wrong with my kidneys and it was really bad but I did not say anything about it to anyone. So I decided this time I was going home because I did not like the place where I was staying. I started home alone and I never thought of being afraid one time. I was part of three days getting home. But when I got within about thirty miles of home I was walking fast and it was noon or dinner time and I noticed a man camped by the side of the road. He was eating his dinner. He was close to his wagon and horses. He called to me and said "Hello there" and I did not pay any attention until he called two or three times, I turned to see and it was one of my neighbors. He had been down to Clarksville moving some one down there. So I went out to him and he said, "don’t you want to ride with me I am on my way home," I said yes. He did not have any load and he had a good pony team and so I got in with him because he wanted me for company and I wanted to ride. That afternoon we drove down the Boston Mountain near the head of Little Buffalo River. We struck camp and we did not have any drinking water and was also short of food. We parched some corn in a skillet he had. We were so hungry that we ate a lot of that parched corn and then we thought we would die with thirst. There was a large cave near us and we burned nearly all the matches we had searching for water in that cave but found none. He put me on one of his horses and sent me down the road hunting water. It was dark as pitch but I soon came to a house and I rode up to the gate and said hello. The man came out and I told him my trouble and he brought out a bucket of water and poured it into the bucket I had and I went back to the camp. We quenched our thirst and then we went to the bed the man had ready.

The cave we went in searching for water by the light of matches was a noted cave because an outlaw had taken refuge in this cave just a few years back and the county officials wondered how they were to get that man out of the cave. The sheriff a man by the name of John Lee, settled the question for all time by going in there alone and arrested the bad man, brought him out and put him in the county jail. Now our motive that prompted us to go in the cave was first to find water to drink and second we wanted it to be said that we was in the cave where the Sheriff went alone and arrested the man and brought him out. But there was no bad man in there when we went in the cave. It was not an easy thing to ride a horse bare back in pitch dark and hold a bucket of water out with one hand to keep from spilling it all out before I got to the camp but I arrived at the camp with the bucket of water, the man took it and we drank it and quenched our thirst. Now it was about twenty miles home and so we ate some more parched com and fed the horses and hitched them up to the wagon and started for home. The man went within about three miles of my home and I got out of the wagon and walked three miles home. They were not looking for me that day. In fact they did not know what day I would be home but mother and father both knew that I would be home soon and so I was there. I was indeed glad to see all the family.

Now I was fourteen years old past. I was convinced that home was the greatest place on the earth. To eat at mother's table and sleep on the bed that mother made could not be beat any where. The October peaches were not all gone when I got back home and the winter apples were beginning to taste very good. It was good to hear again my father driving the hoops down on his barrel and to hear the sound of the cooper's adzs. So we finished picking the scrap cotton and got up a lot of fire wood and went through the winter as usual.

This is the year of 1887 and next year in May I will be fifteen years old. We worked in the timber till time to plant our crop and then we went in to the crop again. The spring rains and the summer rains always come and we could depend on the seasons being good every year. It always was an inspiration to me to see things grow and that everything always grew up toward heaven to the God who created all things.

We made our crop and gathered it as usual and then went into the timber and worked till crop time again and this is the year that I am sixteen years old. We finished cultivating our crop and late in the fall I got a job carrying the mail, horse- back from Jasper the county seat of Newton County to Harrison the county seat of Boone county. I stayed at Marble City which was just half way between the two extremes. I left Marble City each morning and went to Harrison and back to Marble City by noon. Eat dinner and changed horses and went to Jasper and back to Marble City that evening. This made a distance of forty miles which I made every day, twenty miles for each horse but forty miles for me. Mr. Dick Stegall was the contractor and I was hired at the sum of eight dollars per month. I had to get up before daylight each morning and be on my way to Harrison and I would be: about three miles on my way when the day arrived. This was the way every morning except one morning the alarm clock did not go off and that morning I was late but I was not to blame for the folk where I stayed was supposed to to get up and feed my horse and saddle him for me and have my breakfast for me. All I was expected to do was to get up and eat my breakfast when called and get on the horse and go by the postoffice and get the mail bag and be on my way to Harrison rain or shine, cold or hot. The horse that I rode to Harrison was a little pony and how he could trot and pace. The horse I rode to Jasper in the afternoon was a larger horse and he could fox trot. Some times he would get sick and I did not know what to do but I always got in with the mail bags. I was not allowed to carry anything but little things that had no weight. This was under Glover Cleveland administration. Times were indeed hard times. One dollar went a long way. We could buy a very good suit of clothes for five dollars and what they called congress men's shoes for one dollar and a half. Where I stayed was four miles from my father's home and it would be late when I got back with the mail Saturday night, but I would walk home and stay home Sunday all day and late in the evening I would walk the four miles and be ready next morning when the cook announced breakfast, and be ready to climb on the little pony and be going on my way to Harrison. The folk did not feed me as good as mother did and I loved to go home on week end.

I carried the mail in the fall of 1889 and until March of 1890 and a man that had sold out his farm and was going to central Texas. He had two wagons and teams and he wanted some one to go with him and drive one team, they asked my father and mother if they would let me go and of course I was anxious for the trip. My father consented for me to go. The man was to pay all my expenses on the way. The distance they said was six hundred miles and that was a long ways from home and to drive a wagon and team. So the time arrived when I was to leave home. It was Sunday at 10 o'clock in the morning ",hen I was to go to where the man lived, where we were to start and I dreaded to see the hour come to bid them all good bye. It did arrive and my valise was packed and my mother was in the yard just outside the front door, I had my valise in my hand and mother's eyes were filled with tears, she told me good bye she said, "Charlie I want you to be a good boy" and she had in her hand a Bible, she handed it to me and said, "you take this book with you and read it and remember mother. I took the Bible in my hand and turned to go after I had bid all the folks good bye. I went to where the man lived that I was to go to Texas with, it was about eight miles and we were to start next morning. When morning came the mule that the man had, got out and was gone. After looking for the mule we were told that the mule was in my father's lot. The mule strayed off and came to my father's, and he let him go in the lot but he did not know who the mule belonged to. When we got the information that the mule was in my father's lot, I was the one that must go after the mule and I dreaded to go and have to tell them all good bye again. I did go and as it happened none of the folks were in the house but my father and he helped me get the bridle on the mule. We were both full of tears and I went leading the mule. I was on another horse. How and why that crazy mule when he got out that night went to my father's lot I have never been able to reason it out. The mule was never there before. He traveled in an opposite direction from which he was supposed to go. We got started but we had several delays, before we got out of our country. I never did get over telling my folk good bye.

I will relate a lot of things about my trip to Texas in the next pages.

We started on our long trip of six hundred miles and we got down as far as Marble City and another man was with us. He owed a store bill and they came and attached his wagon and team. We waited two days for him and it turned real cold for it was the last days of February. The two days we waited was by the road side by a-big log heap that was on fire and we stood close to that fire. But the law was against the man and he could not go to Texas with us. The third morning we rolled out and crossed the Big Buffalo River and then we went up the Little Buffalo beyond Jasper, or above Jasper and stayed all night with a man by the name of White, an old neighbor of former days. Next morning we pulled out and drove that day to the top of the Boston Mountain and camped and it rained on us that day. We traveled the next day and didn't get off the Boston Mountain. We camped two nights on the Boston Mountains. After we had camped the second night, the next day we got to Clarksville. We drove down to the Arkansas River to a landing place. We drove on to the steam boat and crossed the river. I never got out of the wagon, I stayed in the spring seat and we were just a few minutes crossing the river. We drove off the ship up the steep bank and went into Sebastian County, Arkansas. We went through Charleston and Greenwood and just a short distance from Greenwood, Mr. Lee the man I was going with had a cousin there. We stayed with him two or three days. As we passed through the country around Charleston and Greenwood we came on to the prairie. I had lived in heavy timbered country and I did not know what a prairie looked like. When we stopped for dinner that day I remarked that there was a lot of old fields throwed out of cultivation. Mr. Lee said: "That's prairies." "OK," I said, "is that prairies?' The dinner was spread out on the ground and the sun was shining bright and warm. This was a thrill to me that I had seen a prairie country. We stayed with Mr. Lee's cousin two or three days as I remember and they treated us very kind and then we pulled down as I remember a Southwest course into the Indian Territory.

We camped our first night in the Indian Territory by a big log heap fire. As Mrs. Lee was getting breakfast the next morning she said to me, "And your father was a yankee," I said yes and she said, "he was in the Union Army and helped to free the Negroes," I said, "yes." "Well," she said, "I don't wish any body any harm but I wish your daddy had to kiss a Negro every morning before breakfast." She believed in slavery. When I was home again I told my father what Mrs. Lee said and he laughed.

The same morning after breakfast we drove by a little log cabin and a big Indian man was sitting in the door of his cabin with a gun in his hand and he had long black or dark hair and that was my first time to see an Indian. I thought all the Indians were .bad Indians but before we got through the Indian Territory I come to know that was not so. We had some trouble getting feed for our teams. Only now and then could we find corn or hay to buy and when we did find it we bought all we had room for in our wagons. We found one Indian who had plenty of corn and hay to sell and he said, "The Indians were lazy and would not work." And we thought he was about right. We went through McAlister and we crossed the Muddy Boggy at Atoka, we crossed the Clear Boggy on a flat boat and it was up, running swift that day. We went through Durant and on to Red River and we crossed Red River at Colbert's Ferry. We drove up the Red River bank into the great state of Texas. We went through Denison, Texas. And between Denison and Pottsboro, Mr. Lee had a cousin by the name of Tom Barbee. We stopped there about one week and it rained almost every day and the roads were a muddy sight in that black land.

The team I drove was one black horse and the other one was a dark brown and his name was Bill and the black horse's name was Rex and they were a good team. Bill was a young horse and he wasn't used to the barb wire fences and he run into the wire and was unable to wear a collar for a long time. Mr. Lee swapped Bill to his cousin for a larger and older horse. He was a Claybank horse and was a fine looking horse. The roads were so muddy that Mr. Lee went down to Pottsburo and shipped everything we had but just enough stuff to camp with. And after we had been delayed about one week, we rolled out for Moody, Texas, two hundred miles away and muddy all the way. It was hard to find a place dry enough to camp.

Mr. Lee was getting anxious as it was time to begin to get ready to plant. He was a farmer and had a place rented down west of Moody, Texas. It was late in March and we could not hurry the horses for they did sweat and foam each day with almost empty wagons. My team Rex and Claybank were as true as horses could be and Mr. Lee's one was a mule. Both teams were good. We were about twelve or fifteen days making the two hundred miles from Pottsboro to Moody, Texas. We went through Fort Worth and left Dallas to our left and crossed the Brazos River above Waco. From Waco it was only about forty miles to where we were going but it was still raining and every where it was muddy. Most of the forty miles were to be through country roads and it was slow going. We had a hard time getting there.

Late one evening as it was getting dark we drove up to Enoch Waltrip's house who was an uncle to my present wife, brother to my wife's father and was my oId neighbor in Arkansas. We were a dirty disgusted hungry outfit. All around the house and every where we went it was old black mud. It would stick to our shoes like sweet gum wax in Arkansas. But we had a fine time that night for we had royal treatment. We had a fine supper and breakfast. Enoch's children were, Roxie and Virgie, the girls and Charley and Willie. I played with them and had gone to school with them back in Arkansas. We had had a long trip, we had been on the road fifty days and the most of the fifty days we were pulling through mud and across muddy streams and rough roads. But neither wagon ever stuck neither did we ever double team to get through any place. I thought I was a good teamster and I think Mr. Lee thought I was or he never would have employed me to go with him. In those days a man's team was everything. A team in that day was to us what our cars and trucks are to us today. Our teams were in very good shape after they had pulled the wagons over six hundred miles of muddy and rough roads and were able to be hitched to the sulky plows on the farm. I was seventeen years old and I thought I had seen about everything there was to see. A boy of my age that had hardly been out of sight of home it was indeed a very great experience to travel over six hundred miles in a wagon.

The house that Mr. Lee had rented for us was a weatherboarded house with two very large rooms and a larger side room for a kitchen and a very large hallway between the two rooms, then a front porch, the full length of the two rooms and the porch was wide. The house was like the state of Texas lots of room. There was a lot of big oak trees perhaps one hundred years old or more. A cistern was at one corner of the porch and the house was so large and the roof so large that when it rained it filled the cistern and we never did have to haul water. The land that went with the house was one mile away on the prairie and the land he rented was like the house, it was big.

The land was the old black land but it was very productive. Mr. Lee put me to plowing with a sulky riding plow and this was another new thing to me. I could sit in the seat and flat break two and three acres a day. Back in Arkansas with a single plow, what we called a bull tongue plow, I could break quarter of an acre. We had to have a steel paddle to clean the plow with. Almost at every corner of the land we had to get off of the plow and clean that sticky stuff off the plow. In Arkansas where I lived we had to have the single plow sharp so it would go down into the rocks and some times we had a big rock between the handles of the single stock to hold it down in the rocks. So I broke up the field and then planted it in cotton and corn. Then we fought the gnats, the hurrah grass and the cockle burs. The cotton and corn grew so fast that it was a great inspiration to see it. This was a great change in my life from the single plow to a riding plow, and from the bed of flint rocks to the smooth prairie where there were no rocks, not even one to throw at the black birds. I was getting a lot of joy and fun of farming even if the black stuff did stick to my plow and my shoes. A pair of shoes would not last very long down in Arkansas plowing in the flint rocks neither will they last very long plowing in the black land in Texas. The man we rented ground from worked two yoke of oxen to a sulky plow and the oxens were obedient. He had a long whip that would reach the oxens in front. He could layoff a row as straight as a line with those oxen. The land was level and beautiful as a garden.

The cotton and corn grew and in the fall the cotton began to open. I had worked for Mr. Lee all summer for fifteen dollars per month. Now I was to get fifty cents for every hundred pounds of cotton I picked. I could .pick an average of two hundred pounds a day. That was one dollar a day, that was making money fast. We picked the cotton and pitched another crop and cultivated it and I helped pick part of the cotton.

I decided to ramble around a little as I am now eighteen years old. I went over to Moody and bought me a ticket to Hillsboro for I heard that there was lots of cotton to pick at (me dollar per hundred pounds. I was to change cars at Waco and I got on the other train as I was instructed to do but it was the wrong train and I got off just across the Brazos River on the eastside of Waco. I tried to get. a job there working in the cross timber getting out railroad ties but the boss man told me I was not big enough to do that kind of work. I did not like that for I thought I was as big as anyone. I came back to the station called Harrison, hunting for a job and a drunk man was there so drunk that he could not stand alone. He raised his head up and said to me, "I can tell you where you can get a job." I said where? and he said "a man fourteen miles out in the country by the name of Wallace." I had two grips and they were heavy and he told me how to get there, I followed his instructions and found the man and got "the job and he was a good man to work for. But I had a hard time getting to his place for it had rained and the roads were muddy and I had to go through pastures where there was a lot of long horned cattle. I was getting tired and it was getting late and I began to hunt for a place to stay all night and they turned me down. I began to think I was going to have to sleep with the long horned cattle without any supper. But as it was getting dark I walked up to the yard gate where some body lived and I said hello, two women stood in the door and I said I want to stay all night. The younger woman said, "My husband is out at the barn," the other woman said, "Ah let him stay." They both said, "Come in it will be okay." So I went in and when the man came in I told him where 1 was going and what for and he said, "Well he wants to hire some one and you will get the job."

Mr. Wallace put me to plowing with four horses working abreast. So I rode that sulky plow every day it was fit to plow and worked in the timber getting out wood when I could not plow. Cold days he put me to digging mesquite trees and that was a tough job but I was not afraid of hard work. I worked for him till February for fourteen dollars per month. And then I decided to go home. So he paid me and took me part of the way to the station and bid me good bye, but insisted that I come back and work for him after I had been home awhile. I bought my ticket at Harrison on the east side of Waco to Vanburen, Arkansas. When I got there I decided to look around awhile.

One day I fell in with a Hardshell Baptist preacher and went home with him and he got me a job for a few days and then he wanted me to work for him. I helped the first man that I worked for to make a crop and gather it and then I went to work for the Baptist preacher. I did not intend to work very long for I wanted to go home. But the Baptist preacher was such a good man to work for and the work was driving a team of mules hauling wood. He wanted me to stay and I just kept staying until my oldest brother came down to Vanburen and I went home with him. Now I have had a wild goose chase. So we walked through the mountains about one hundred miles from Vanburen to my oldest sister who had married since I had left home. We stopped and stayed with her a few days as she lived right on the way home. The last day before we got home it snowed and we had walked forty miles that day, I gave out about six miles before we got home and I stopped and stayed all night with a man by the name of Plumlee. I don't think I was ever as tired in all my life. He lived in a little log cabin only one room. A fire place and they had two beds. The woman got supper and it consisted of dodger cornbread, fried home cured pork and black coffee. They were very friendly and treated me so nice and the woman fixed my bed. It was a big feather bed, when I got in it the feathers came up on each side of me. I pulled the home-made woolen blankets over me that was the last of everything of that day. The morning arrived and I was a new boy. I ate breakfast with them and started on my way home.

I walked the six miles and was at home before noon. I was so glad to see all my folks again. They were glad to see me for they thought I was dead. They did not get my letters when I was at Vanburen and they wrote me and. some way or some how the postmaster failed to give me my mail. My brother called down to Vanburen and found the letters in the office there that he had written me.

He inquired about me and found out nothing. At the same time three boys had left Vanburen going over the mountains to our country and one of the boys suited my description in every way and my brother traced them all the way and when they got to the Boone County line the boy they thought was me was missing. They traced the other two boys but could not find any trace of the third one who they thought was me. They searched the whole country for the boy that was missing and found no trace of him at all. In the mean time they got no word from me. I did not know anything about them being troubled about me. They hunted for me until they decided; that I was murdered for a little money that I had. The conclusion was that the other two boys killed me for the money and threw me off of a high bluff that was near the place where they lost track of the third boy. The truth was when they found out about that third boy they thought was me. Boone County where the third boy lived had a bill against the boy and when the three boys came to the county line this third boy dropped out of company of the three because he was afraid of the officers that were looking for him. He slipped in home and hid himself so the officers could not find him. They were sure that I was killed and they gave me up for dead. I was all the time at Vanburen wondering why I could not hear from my folk. So one day I went to Vanburen and I thought I would have my picture taken and send it to my mother and write her a long letter and I did. She got the letter and here came a long letter to' me telling me all about the big hunt and scare over me being murdered. Mother said "I would not have believed the letter you wrote me if you had not sent your picture." The picture assured them that I was alive in spite of all they had heard. And they found out about the third boy why he was missing at the Boone county line. After I was home a man showed me where they threw me off the bluff. A lie is bad when we believe it.

Now I am home again and it is so good to be at home for there is no place as good as home. I loved Texas but I loved home the best. The work in Texas was easier than here but it was not home. So now I am back at my oId job working in the timber. I bought a pony and gave sixty dollars for her and paid for her in making rails and putting them on the fence for one dollar per hundred. It took six thousand rails to pay for that pony. I worked a part of two winters making the rails. It was one mile from home. I would get up before day light and my mother would get breakfast for me and then fix my dinner in a bucket and she would put in a large piece of wood home cured ham and sauerkraut that she had put t1p and a lot of other good eats. I would walk to the grove of black oaks where I was making the rails and work there until sundown and then go home and mother had a fine supper of good old corn bread and sweet milk and butter and sorghum and I was fully prepared to take on a square meal.

I worked in the timber making rails in the winter and then in the spring I rented a place' from a neighbor and he had a big span of mules and he furnished me with the mules. I did the work and he gave me half of the crop of corn. I worked at home some of the time. I did a lot of hard work and I was stout and young and able to work. But I did not go to dances and committee meetings and conferences and be up till midnight every night but I went home after a days work and ate my supper and went to bed and slept all night and woke up next morning fresh, ready for another day's work. I liked to work, it was a pleasure to me to work in the timber and chop the big trees down and make them up into rails. I don't know how many rail Abraham Lincoln made but I know I made a lot of rails. I traded my pony and I got a dun colored pony that everybody wanted. One day I sold it to a man for a note on another man. The man that I had his note for, forty-five dollars, loaded up his wagon and pulled out to Texas and never said a word to me about going. When I heard it I got an attachment for his team. When we overtook him he was very mad at me but I got my money after riding all night with the officer. I got my money and the man went on to Texas.

All these years I was deeply concerned about religion. The impression I got from the man that came to where I was with my brother and sisters picking up chinquepins one Sunday morning when we lived on the dogwood flat and gave me a Sunday School paper with the picture on it of Jesus stilling the storm on the Lake of Galilee was still with me as it was when he gave it to me. Then I had gone to the old Brownville school house to Sunday School\and church when we lived on Big Buffalo River impressed me more and everywhere I lived I could not get rid of this impression that I got out of that little, picture of Jesus stilling the storm on the Lake of Galilee. I attended church the most of the time while I was in Texas and now I attended Sunday School and church at our Gaither Cove school house every Sunday. They had a revival going on at what we called the Basin school house two miles from where we lived and one night I went to the altar and I was converted and was very happy. It was an experience in my life that can never be erased. That night was the brightest night that I had ever experienced in my life. They called it getting religion and I was sure that was right. All the time the thought of being a Methodist preacher was in my mind and I could not get rid of it. And why I could not get away from it I did not know. All my thoughts and dreams was to be a preacher. But I could not believe that I ever could preach. So I went on working in the same way and I prayed every day in secret. I had a place by a big white oak tree where I went to pray. But all the time I knew so little about religion that I did not know how to be religious or how to preach. I knew how to make rails and to plow and fish and hunt. But all the time I knew how little and weak and ignorant I was. I read the Bible and I loved to read the Bible but under- stood very little about what I read. But I kept reading the Bible and my interest increased. The more I read the more I wanted to read. I was convinced that the greatest thing anyone could be was to be a real Christian and this I desired above all other things. I loved to hear preaching. I could sit and listen to a preacher for hours and not get tired. Our preachers in those days preached very loud and I thought the louder they preached the more power of God came down on them. I wanted the power but did not know how to get it.

I was converted in my nineteenth year and I joined the Methodist church and was baptized in the same year. I worked in the timber in the winter and farmed in the spring and summer.

One time my folk were all in the bed sick and I was the only one