gard. He was
very kind to me, very patient, and made my work as easy for me as he
possibly could. I remained with him for nearly a month, when, having
learned the business, I was taken to another part of the mines and given
a task.

"Have you ever mined any?" inquired my instructor.

"No; I never was in a coal mine before coming here."

He then gave me my first lesson in mining. I lay on my right side in
obedience to his orders, stretched out at full length. The short-handled
shovel was inverted and placed under my right shoulder. This lifted my
shoulder up from the ground a little distance and I was thus enabled
to strike with my pick. The vein of coal is about twenty-two inches in
thickness. We would mine out the dirt, or fire-clay as it was called,
from under the coal to the distance of two feet, or the length of a
pick-handle, and to the depth of some six inches. We would then set our
iron wedges in above the vein of coal, and with the sledge hammer
would drive them in until the coal would drop down. Imagine my forlorn
condition as I lay therein that small room. It was as dark down there
as night but for the feeble light given out by the mining lamp; the room
was only twenty-eight inches from the floor to the ceiling, and then
above the ceiling there were eight hundred feet of mother earth. Two
feet from the face of the coal, and just back of where I lay when
mining, was a row of props that held up the roof and kept it from
falling in upon me. The loose dirt which we picked out from under the
coal vein was shoveled back behind the props. This pile of dirt, in
mining language, is called the "gob." I began operations at once. I
worked away with all my might for an hour or more, picking out the dirt
from under the coal. Then I was tired completely out. I rolled over on
my back, and, with my face looking up to the pile of dirt, eight hundred
feet thick, that shut out from me the light of day, I rested for awhile.
I had done no physical work for ten years. I was physically soft. To
put me down in the mines and set me to digging coal was wicked. It was
murder. Down in that dark pit how I suffered! There was no escape from
it. There was the medicine. I had to take it. I do not know, but it
seems to me that when a man is sent to that prison who has not been in
the habit of performing physical labor, he should not be put to work
in the mines until he becomes accustomed to manual labor. It would seem
that it would be nothi