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