simply flew, and just that minute it turned dark again and I flew the other way and in about two hours daylight broke and I walked down in the yard to where a large train was made up, as they are called. I crawled into one of the big hoppers and in about ten minutes they coupled a large engine to it and I heard the engine blow two long whistles and about that time a man stuck a big pistol right in my face and told me to get out of there and to get out d―n quick. I bounced the ground in a hurry and begging and rolling on the ground playing that I had sprained my ankle. The man tried to make me walk, but I still played off cripple. He told me to sit down and he asked me what I was doing there and I simply told him the truth and he got sorry for me and told me that he would turn me loose this time, but watch out for the second time. I asked him to get me a walking cane, which he did, and I started hopping along up through the yard. Just as soon as I got out of sight I threw my cane away and sat down and took a good, long, hearty laugh and then got up and walked seven miles to the nearest railroad station, and while there I met an old soldier making his way for Stonega and when the train stopped it happened to be a water tank station, and while they were taking water my soldier partner broke the seal and it was a carload of hay for Stonega. We both jumped in and the next morning we were setting in front of the Big Red Stable at Stonega. I got me a place to board and the second day got a job in the mines trapping at 90 cents per day. Later on I got a job driving a hard-tail, or a mule, in the mines at $1.30 per day. On the 20th day of February I went home on a visit and took mother and the four boys in the lower room and poured out

on the bed $23.00, all in one-dollar bills. They were all scattered out on the bed. Everybody thought that was some sight. That much money those days and money was scarce. I told mother that it was for them all and for her to keep the boys in school and I would go back to my job and make some more.

On the seventh day of May the mine foreman put me to running an old-fashioned Jeffries motor. I worked one month on that job and went home again. It was thirty-three miles across the big Black Mountains and across the Cumberland River and then across the Pine Mountains to old Uncle Oby Fields' on the head of Big Cowan Creek, then across a small hill onto the head of Kingdom Come (the creek which John Fox, Jr., wrote his two books on), and down Kingdom Come to the mouth of it and then down the river seven miles to my mother's at the mouth of Rockhouse. That was a pretty good walk for a boy only seventeen years old.

I gave my mother on this trip $45.00 and she was awfully pleased with me and said: "Fess, we need the money bad enough, but you air gittin' 'long bad in yer education, and I can't hardly stand ter see yer do that."

"After I get the other boys where they can take care of theirselves I'll finish my education," I replied, "I am now going to jine the army."

During the Spanish-American War, February 12, 1898, I enlisted for two years or long as the war lasted. I was signed to Company L, Fourth Kentucky Volunteers, and was stationed at Lexington. After I had been signed to my company there was a big fellow come around and asked something smart,

thinking he was one of those smart fellows, and before he could think I had knocked him down with a big garbage bucket and I had him whipped before he found it out. That built my reputation during my service in Company L.

My Captain was Ben B. Golden, of Barbourville, Ky., and before time to discharge us volunteers after peace was made the Captain resigned and H. J. Cockron was signed as Captain of Company L. And when the First Sergeant, James Day, of Whitesburg, Ky., made out all the discharges for the Captain to sign the Captain came in the office at Anniston, Ala., where we were discharged, to sign the discharges and he took up with the Sergeant alphabetically and asked about each man whom he did not know personally. When he came to my name he asked the Sergeant if that was the man that laughed so much and the Sergeant told him it was, so he had me put down excellent character. Then Captain Cockron signed the discharges.

During the time we were in camp at Lexington some of the boys in my company got body lice all over them and I got scared and took my dog tent and stretched it up under some hedge trees next to the railroad track, and the first night the train went by at 11 o'clock and she whistled some awfully large yells and scared me and I jumped up in my sleep and tore my dog tent all to pieces. I thought the train was running over me. So the next day I fixed my tent up and got me some wheat straw and made me a bed and ditched the water around my tent and it sure did do some raining that spring and my bed rotted. Sleeping in so damp a place I took the fever and

was taken to a hospital. After three days I was taken out of that hospital and put in a division hospital, where I just did live. After three months in the hospital some of the boys told me if I could make my temperature register 98 degrees three times in succession I could get out, and the same fellow told me how to do. He said when the thermometer was put in my mouth and I caught the doctor looking off to draw my breath hard so as to cool the thermometer, which I did, and on the fourth day the doctor ordered the nurse to bring in my uniform and to let me set up some. So when they brought that dear old uniform it was rolled up in a dear old American flag that I had offered to sacrifice my life for. The doctors had given me up to die and had ordered the nurse to wrap my clothes up in the flag so it would be placed with me. It was over one-half of the time that I did not know anything, but when I did come to myself mother was the first I thought about. She had been notified, but on account of being so poor, no money and so many miles away from the railroad she could not come, but waited in great patience to hear from me. The first letter I received after I could tell the nurse who my mother was and her address I got a letter in return in a few days and it is still written upon my heart in large American tears like the dear old mothers are shedding for their loved ones who are in France today in those cold trenches and dugouts and mud and water up to their waists and the top of the earth covered with snow and ice nine feet thick, fighting for the freedom of America, which we are sure to win if God lets this. world stand, and I believe we will win this war during 1918.