trough was made out of a fine large yellow poplar, eight feet long, and hauled out of the mountains with a yoke of steers. The log was hewed square on one side with a sixteen-inch broadax, then eight inches left at each end and the remainder was hulled out to a big trough, then two holes were bored in the bottom of each end of the trough and four wooden legs, made by hand, were driven into the trough and set up. In the inside of the trough at one end at the bottom was a hole bored and a pin made to fit so that it could let the water out. The water was "hit" and put in the tub and when the "wimen" began to wash they would have what was known as battling sticks and they would apply the water and soap on the clothes and lay them on the eight-inch end of the trough and begin to battle. The old troughs have about all played out of fashion, as the galvanized tubs were brought in and have taken the day; still there is many a one used up to the present day. The soap they used those days was the best of soap. The men folks would cut and haul in out of the mountains so many white oak and hickory trees. They would cut and saw them up and pile them up in a big pile and burn them to get the ashes. After the ashes were cooled off they took them and poured them into a gum called those days that was sitting on some boards that the gum was made to lean on. After staying nine days, on the old moon, water was poured in the gum on the ashes and the red lye began to drop and run out of the bottom into another trough, made like the washin' trough but smaller. After the lye leaked out good and got all the strength out of the ashes, the lye was put in an old country fashion pot and the hogs' guts that had been washed and dried and strung on a pole in the corner of the old

chimney was taken down and put in the pot with the lye. The lye was so strong it soon ate up the hogs' guts and boiled to a jelly-like substance and taken off and put in old big round gourd raised on the farm. The gum that held the ashes was a hollow tree cut down and burnt out inside and sawed into about fourfoot lengths for gums.

The second school that I went to was taught by little Sammie Banks, of Big Cowen. Sammie boarded with my mother, and after the five months' term of school was out Preacher Jim Caudill made up a subscription school at the mouth of Rockhouse at $1.00 each and mother signed for five, and she had no money, but had a good nerve. The first week I went mother took me up in her lap and tried me in arithmetic where the teacher had me, and I knew nothing about it.. The teacher was pushing me too fast. Mother told me that she would try me one more week and if I could not do anything in the arithmetic by the next Friday that she would give me a good whipping. So the next Friday came and I had not learned anything, so I played off sick about 11 o'clock that morning at school and went out of the schoolhouse and began to play off crazy, and my sister Julia, now Mrs. J. D. Stamper, of Big Springs, Tex., ran after mother. There being no medical doctor within forty miles, they brought a charm doctor, Andy C

who rubbed me and charged mother five dollars for it and claimed I had been poisoned very bad, so by Monday I was ready for school. And mother told me what would happen Friday if I could not do anything with my arithmetic. So I tried, and Friday evening mother tried me and I was in long division, but I could not do anything. She got me up in her lap and tried her

best to show me, but all in vain. So she put me down and laid the book upon the table and took me by the hand and led me to a large cedar tree and broke her a good switch and began whipping me. She whipped me until she gave out, and sat down on a large rockpile to rest and stood me up and talked to me while

she was resting. After she got through resting she raised and gave me the same dose again; then she took me back in the house and got me up in her lap and began to show me about my lesson, and it jumped in my head like a falling star, and from that time until the present date I challenge the State of Kentucky in the arithmetic. That was my second miracle.

The third school I went to was taught by Eddie Brown, on Burton Hill, in a new log house, with no

chimney and no floor in the house and a big fire in the middle of the house. I always had the rest of the children beat by this time. I was twelve years old and past and had begun to get to be a pretty mean boy on account of so many people picking at me. Eddie Brown, the teacher, told us children if we were not good children that the "Old Bugger Man" would come and get us. So the "Bugger Man" sure did come the next school. I was thirteen years old then, and Wesley Banks had been employed to teach the school, and by this time the school had the name of having the meanest lot of boys in it of any other school in Letcher County. I was called the leader. There were four of us called bad-Mason Whitaker, Ben McIntar, Print Ison and myself. Mr. Banks took charge of the school on July 5, and all the children's parents came in to see the new teacher. So the teacher got up to talk and open his school. He was a very homely mountain man, and the first thing he said was: "This school has an awfully bad name and I understand that Mr. Eddie Brown teached this school last year and told you all that the "Bugger Man" would come if you were not good school children. Now, I am the ‘Bugger Man.'"

When he said that every child threw its eyes on him. "Next one I call their name please come around to where I now stand," said the teacher.

The first name called was Fess, then Print, Mase and Ben. So we all went around to where the teacher was and he said: "Boys, I have bin told that you four boys have bin very bad boys in school, so I am going to turn a new leaf."

My heart was in my neck, for I knew that Mr. Banks had already brought in twelve long green oak switches before opening school.

"Fess," said he, "it's reported to me that you are the meanest," and he took me by the hand and sure did like to beat me to death, and when he got through

with me he told me to take my seat. Then he took Print next and gave him the same, then Mase, and while he was whipping Mase a large splinter flew off the switch and across a twenty-foot house and stuck in under the shoulder blade of the back of Less, a brother of Fess. Then he had to take a pair of old home-made tooth pullers that had been made in a