第14章

In conversation with the chaplain of the prison I received the following anecdote, which I will relate for the benefit of my readers. It is customary in the prison, after the Sunday exercises, for such as desire to remain andhold a sort of class meeting, or, as some call it, experience meeting. In one of these, an old colored man arose, and said: "Breddren, ebber since Ize been in dis prison Ize been tryin' to git de blessin'; Ize prayed God night and day. Ize rascelled wid de Almighty 'till my hips was sore, but Ize nebber got it. Some sez its la'k ob faith. Some its la'k of strength, but I b'l'eves de reason am on 'count ob de quality ob dis hash we hab ebbery day!"Accidents are occurring almost daily. Scarcely a day passes but what some man receives injuries. Often very severe accidents happen, and occasionally those which prove fatal. Many men are killed outright. These accidents are caused by the roof of the little room in which the miner works falling in upon him, and the unexpected drop of coal. Of course there are many things that contribute to accidents, such as bad machinery, shafts, dirt rolling down, landslides, etc.

One day there was a fellow-prisoner working in the room adjoining me; he complained to the mining boss that he did not want to go into that room to work because he thought it was dangerous. The officer in charge thought differently, and told him to go in there and go to work or he 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 roomresting, 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 of the mine and assist two prisoners who were behind with their work. I obeyed. I hadn't been out of my room more than about half an hour when there occurred a land-slide in it, which filled the room entirely full of rock, slate and coal. It required several men some two weeks to remove the amount of debris that had fallen on that occasion. Had I been in there, death would have been certain at that time.

Gentle reader, let me assure you, that although some persons misunderstanding me, assert that I am without belief in anything, yet I desire to say, when reflecting upon these providential deliverances, that I believe in the Eternal Will that guides, directs, controls and protects the children of men. While many of my fellow-prisoners were maimed for life and some killed outright, I walked through that valley and shadow of death without even a hair of my head being injured. Why was this? Myanswer is the following: Over in the State of Iowa, among the verdant hills of that beautiful commonwealth, watching the shadows as they longer grow, hair whitened with the frosts of many seasons, heart as pure as an angel's, resides my dear old mother. I received a letter from her one day, and among other things was the following:

"I love you now in your hour of humiliation and disgrace as I did when you were a prattling babe upon my knee.

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