would report him. The prisoner hadn't been in the place more than a half
hour before the roof fell and buried him. It took some little time to
get him out. When the dirt was removed, to all appearances he was dead.
He was carried to the hospital on a stretcher, and the prison physician,
Doctor Neeally, examined him, and found that both arms were broken in
two places, his legs both broken, and his ribs crushed. The doctor,
who is a very eminent and successful surgeon, resuscitated him, set his
broken bones, and in a few weeks what was thought to be a dead man, was
able to move about the prison enclosure, although one of his limbs was
shorter than the other, and he was rendered a cripple for life.

On another occasion a convict was standing at the base of the shaft. The
plumb-bob, a piece of lead about the size of a goose egg, accidentally
fell from the top of the shaft, a distance of eight hundred feet,
and, striking this colored man on the head, it mashed his skull, and
bespattered the walls with his brains.

I had three narrow escapes from death. One day I lay in my little room
resting, and after spending some time stretched out upon the ground,
I started off to another part of my room to go to work, when all of a
sudden the roof fell in, and dropped down just where I had been lying.
Had I remained a minute longer in that place, I would have been killed.
As it happened, the falling debris just struck my shoe as I was crawling
out from the place where the material fell.

At another time I had my room mined out and was preparing to take down
the coal. I set my wedges in a certain place above the vein of coal and
began to strike with my sledge hammer, when I received a presentiment
to remove my wedges from that place to another. Now I would not have
the reader believe that I was in any manner superstitious, but I was so
influenced by that presentiment that I withdrew my wedges and set them
in another place; then I proceeded to strike them a second time with the
sledge hammer, when, unexpectedly, the vein broke and the coal fell
just opposite to where my head was resting, and came within an inch of
striking it. Had I remained in the place where I first set my wedges,
the coal would have fallen upon me; it had been held in its place by a
piece of sulphur, and when it broke, it came down without giving me any
warning.

On still another occasion, my mining boss came to my room and directed
me to go around to another part