"You ask that I set down a few of the recollections of my boyhood, giving the chief place to my own experiences.

I fear you will find such reminiscences dull reading for my life throughout has been a very quiet and uneventful one. Born after the strenuous pioneer days of Eastern Indiana had ended, [He was born Nov. 13. 1836 F.C.T.], I grew up in the transition period when Hoosiers were passing from the stern struggles of the early settlement days into quiet comfort and simple living out of which their descendants have come into the era of struggle for wealth and power, which struggle has made the first decade of the Twentieth century harder for Hoosiers than the first two decades of the Nineteenth century.

Richmond, Ind. was a town 20 years old when I was born, the center of the most flourishing settlement of Friends in the West. My father, Samuel Test, Jr. [really Samuel, third, F.C.T.] had a tract of 37 acres of land about two miles nearly south of the center of the town.

On this little tract of land was quite a large two story factory building, with machinery for carding wool into rolls for spinning on the first floor, and in the second story machinery for making cotton into yarn, candle wicking and batting. The woolen machinery was kept active from about the middle of April until in September, and the cotton mill was kept running the rest of the year. The machinery was turned by a 28-foot overshot wheel, supplied with water from abundant springs on the place.

Before shearing, the sheep were generally taken to some stream and washed as thoroughly as such water could cleanse them, and then after shearing the fleeces were washed in soap suds and thoroughly dried. Then the neighbors, young and old, were invited in to the wool picking. Of course they all went, because they all expected a return of service. It was always a day of feasting, and in the evening many families had the young folks to dance for an hour or two.

I have known him to go to 30 hours without sleep to accommodate such customers. On such occasions he had one or two of his boys (he had seven sons FCT) to stay in the factory at night with him to run the "picker," the first machine through which the wool passed. I counted it rare fun when I was drafted to spend the night with him.

By 8 or 9 p.m. I would have enough wool "picked" to last until 1 or 2 a.m. then I would tumble down on a big bunch of wool, a glorious bed, and sleep like a log until father would waken me to pick another lot. How sleepily I would go about for a time, but in an hour or two I was again on my bunch of wool, and no further waking until the call came for breakfast.

I have spoken of grease brought by each customer to be put on his wool. Such a medley of vessels as it was brought in! This one a gourd, another a coffee pot, a third a milk crock, then a brass kettle, a big bowl or a piece of brown paper. I can see the whole outfit yet!

My father was a weaver as well as a wool-carder, and the loom in the northeast corner of the lower floor of the factory, with the "clicketty-clack" of its shuttle, is one of my memory treasures. That loom cheated me out of many a swim, or fishing or nut-hunting trip! I have forgotten the names of all the parts to that loom, but I know when a warp for jeans was put in, I stood on one side of part of it (called the "headles," I believe) and handed each end of the thousands of that warp to my father on the other side who drew each thread through an eye in the headles by means of a hook.

I never could understand how his feet so automatically moved the treadles just when his hand jerked the shuttle through the warp. Thus with one hand on the reed that beat the wool into place, the other grasping the handle that threw the shuttle, hands and feet would move in harmony and the cloth grew apace while I looked on wonderingly.

My father got his cotton from Cincinnati. As the Richmond merchants and grocers got their goods from that city, there were teamsters who made a business of hauling loads between the two towns. They would take a load of wheat or bacon or lard to Cincinnati and bring back such things as Richmond merchants ordered.

I have been thus particular about describing the old factory for my earliest recollections are in regard to it. I can never remember when I was too young to work in the factory! I am certain I did work there before I was 4 years old!

The cotton machinery consisted of the "blower," "carding machine," "heads," "speeder," "throstle" and "reel." The blower took the cotton from the bale and tore it up till it was light as thistle down. It took so much power to run this machine that the other machines were stopped while it ran, ~d we would "blow" enough cotton to last several days at one running.

Each machine made the roll of cotton smaller and the "speeder" would wind the smaller rolls, then ready for spinning, on to large wooden spools. The spools went to the "throstle," which, with its 120 spindles, spun the yarn and wound it on spools. From these spools it was wound into skeins on the "reel." As my father sold his cotton machinery soon after I was 9 years old I never learned how to run all the machines, but was kept at the "heads," "reel," and candlewick winder.

I am clear in my recollection of the campaign songs and parades of 1840, when I was in my fourth year, but the first event of which I have a clear and perfectly definite recollection must have occurred a few months before I was 4 years old. The teacher, one John Skinner, who boarded part of the time at our house, was carrying me to school one morning, when in the back part of our orchard we passed a peach tree with one ripe and finely colored peach in the top. Mr. Skinner set me down, shook the tree until the peach fell, then broke it in halves and gave me one half. I have eaten bushels of peaches since then, but never one that tasted so good. No other peach ever grew as good as that one.

We were a hard-working family and the neighbor boys who had more time for loafing, fishing, hunting and such things used to make fun of us. But we had some leisure now and then for doing things we liked. Father would stop his factory a half day when the hickory nuts were falling, and let us all go nutting, or give us a hour or two some morning when wild pigeons were plentiful to set traps for them in the near-by woods.

When I was seven or eight years old, my father took a rifle on a debt, and later traded it for a shotgun. This latter was mostly used by my brother William, though Zaccheus would now and then take it and bring home a mess of gray squirrels. I think I went as a game carrier with William oftener than any other one, and we generally got a fair share of rabbits, quail, pigeons and squirrels, each in its season, though we then had no game laws. Wild ducks, too, fell to our shots not infrequently.

My one great pigeon hunt was in March 1860, when I was teaching school at Dunlapsville, in Union County, Ind. On Friday some of the older scholars asked me to join them the next day in netting pigeons. About one inch of snow fell during the night, and this proved to be very fortunate for us, because the space from which we swept the snow and over which we freely sprinkled shelled corn was thus made very conspicuous. Our net was about 20 feet long and 14 feet wide. We had it fastened by ropes to posts so set that we could force the cleared space and fasten it there. We could be hidden behind corn fodder stood against a rail fence, and when the feeding ground was covered with pigeons a jerk on the rope threw the net up and over the pigeons. To lure them to the spot we had two or three stool pigeons and two or three with a long light string fastened to a leg.

At the same time others would work the "stools." Of course these pigeons had been caught a day or two before in a trap. It was wonderful to see how quickly the flock would turn our way and light by hundreds on the corn-covered spot. The net rope was jerked and a struggling mass of birds was caught under it in a twinkling. Very often there were so many caught at once that the lifting of their wings would raise the net enough to let out scores of pigeons before we could get on the edges of the net to hold it down. We would then get from 26 to 150 birds at a throw. Once when an extra fine flock settled on the ground I was asked to spring the net.

For some reason it had not been set properly and only a little of one end came loose, yet three pigeons were caught in that space of less than a yard. The catch for the day was over 1,200, which were put into coops and the lot afterward sold to a huckster for $25. This was divided among the three owners of the net. Our hostess gave us a huge pigeon pot-pie for dinner that day.