apidly rising waters would crowd them off the knoll,
and then they swam until exhausted and overcome by the great
distance, and turbulent waters when they would go down to rise no
more. I was the first to see the cow which swam out. Looking down
through the orchard where the waters were swimming deep, I saw the
end of her nose and the tips of her horns above the water. Slowly
she came, almost exhausted. But finally she found footing where she
could stand and then the poor creature stood and bawled and bawled
for quite a while, and then walked to her young calf which was at the
barn on the hillside.

About this time I attended my first school and my teacher was my
cousin, Arthur D. Hastings, Jr., who lived to a good old age, and
died September 15th, 1906 within a little more than a stone's cast of
where he taught. My first and only textbook at school for a year or
more was Webster's blue back Spelling book. It had both Spelling and
Reading in it. I learned all from end to end. The teacher said I
ought to have a reader, so farther bought for me, McGuffey's second
reader; as soon as I got hold of it I ran with it to the barn loft
and sat down on the hay and read all that was in it before I got up.
The next day the teacher said I ought to have a higher reader, so
father bought for me McGuffey's fourth reader, the highest that was,
and these two readers were all the readers that I ever read. Grammar
was not so easy. My text-book was Smith's. I would start at the
first of the book, and get about half through at the end of the term.
This I did for a half dozen years or more. Finally when I started to
high school I took up Clark's grammar and finished it.

But, to go back a little, father after the great flood, went down to
Texas and bought several hundred acres of land and came back and sold
his farm intending to move to Texas, but changed his mind and sold
his Texas land for a song in the shape of a beautiful colt. This
colt grew into one of the prettiest and best horses your grandfather
ever had. But remember it cost hundreds of acres of land which are
worth thousands of dollars now. It was like paying too much for your
whistle.

If we had gone to Texas, boys, I do not know what might have been but
I do know now that you are and that you have one of the best mothers
that lives. Often have I heard her pray with tears in her eyes that
you and all the boys might be saved from the use of tobacco and
strong dr