ink.

Father next turned his attention towards securing a home in the
pocket of the White River, which he did by buying a farm in Daviers
County on the border of Clark's Prairie and adjoining the village of
Clarksburg, which is now the city of Oden. At the time of our
removal to Clarksburg I was about nine years old. We liked our new
home. At this time Daviers County was a wilderness of brush, trees
and swamps, with plenty of wild game,--deer, coons, opossums,
squirrels, turkeys, ducks, quails, snowbirds, and of wild fruits,
grapes, plums, crab-apples and strawberries. And of fish of all
kinds, nearly.

I never was much of a Nimrod. Many times I saw deer, and once when I
had a gun upon my shoulder, but I did not take it off. Early one
morning a flock of thirty or forty wild turkeys came within a rod or
two of the kitchen window, but when we opened the door instead of
coming in, they flew away. Some days after that I heard turkeys
gobbling in the woods, and I took the gun and went where they were
and shot one dead. Happened to hit it in the head. Once I shot a
crow and killed it.

One day I shot and killed four or five squirrels. Often I trapped
quails and snow birds. The biggest fish I ever saw caught I did not
catch. Brother Henry, who was nine years older than I, caught it.
It was a cat-fish, and Henry and a boy named Billy James, who was
less than six feet tall, ran a pole through the fish's gills and
carried the fish between them suspended from the pole which was
rested upon the boys shoulders, and the fish was so long that its
tail tipped the ground as the boys walked. Now, this is the biggest
fist story I ever tell, except the Jonah story, and I believe both.

We liked Clarksburg because it was a good place for schools, Sunday
Schools and churches. I hardly remember the time when I was not in
school, Sunday School and church. I think to this day these are good
places for boys to be.

My parents were always anxious to have their children in school and
made many sacrifices to this end; as a result their five boys all
were public school teachers before they were out of their teens.

---0---

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Certificate. School. Tophet. Father's death.
Spirit Rappings.

At the age of seventeen, I sought the county school examiner that I
might procure a license to teach. I found him at his school
teaching. He had me wait until noon, then we went to the woods close
by.