in a wagon and I rode until we went into camp at sundown. The next day we were turned over to the Fifth Virginia Federal Cavalry, grim old veterans with hearts like women (God bless them) who treated us royally. I rode one of their horses and we chatted pleasantly over army experiences and sampled together some army "poteen," with which they seemed to be liberally supplied. We struck the railroad at Parkersburg, went from there to Wheeling and thence to our destination at Camp Chase from which I was liberated a month later on parole by the martyr President, the gentle, kindly Lincoln, and rejoined my mother and sisters, whom I had not seen for four years, in Philadelphia, Pa.

There was no exchange of prisoners after December, '64, and when our flag was furled forever at Appomattox, I took the oath of allegiance to the United States government. Forty-seven years have since passed, but the memory of that drum-head court-martial is, and will be to my dying day a vivid and frightful memory. I will do the witnesses the justice of saying I believe they were honest, and that it was a case of mistaken identity. I have never since met any of the actors in that drama. Should this meet their eyes, they will doubtless recall. the October day in '64 when they came so near convicting and shooting an innocent prisoner, as a deserter.

THOMAS H. NEILSON, Co. D, 62nd Va. Regt., C. S. Army.

How I Got My Parole

It may not be uniniteresting to your readers, although not germain to my narrative, to learn how I got my parole, as paroles were rarely granted. My mother, through the kindly offices of Gen. Frank Blair, secured an interview with Mr. Lincoln and pleaded for the release of her only son. Mr Lincoln promised to give the matter considera

tion and when she called the next day he informed her he had ordered my discharge upon taking the oath of allegiance. My mother told him that she knew I would not take the oath, to save her, nor my life, and that his kind order was therefore valueless and requested my release on parole. The President said that gave a new phase to the matter. She replied she knew it did, but that she would answer with her life for my keeping honorably any promise I might make, and so the parole was granted. She had sent me a new suit of clothes, some toilet articles, a box of cigars, etc., but had never hinted in her letters that she was making an effort for my release, knowing I would veto it. There were a number of prisoners in Camp Chase, dubbed by us "razor backs," who had been vainly seeking release for months by offering to take the oath and who had on more than one occasion, informed the prison authorities and frustrated the attempts of our boys to escape, by tunneling under the enclosure. So you may imagine my surprise one morning, early in December when a Yankee sergeant came into our barracks and called loudly my name, company and regiment. I came forward and announced myself as the soldier wanted. Whereupon Mr. Yank asked, "Johnny, what would you give to get out of here?" "What do you mean," said I, "foot-loose and in Dixie? I would give a good deal for that." Yank replied, "No, by taking the oath.” I said "Nary oath." After some parley,

I told him that I could not understand the matter, that I had made no application for the oath, and would not take it, but that I would go with him and see the commander, and try to solve the mystery. He took me to the command. ing officer, who informed me that he had an order from the War Department to release me upon taking the oath. I answered I had volunteered at the beginning of the war and had followed and carried the "Southern Cross" through

too many hard fought battles to desert it, at this late day, and that I could not. conscientiously take the oath. So after So after thanking him for his kindness in letting me have the clothing, etc., sent me, I returned to prison. A half hour later in comes the same sergeant and asked me how I would like to get out on parole. I pondered a few minutes, being wholly ignorant of what it meant. I wondered if I was again to be courtmartialed or transferred to some other prison. I knew I could hardly get into a worse one, for we were having "hard lines" and scant rations at Camp Chase, where rats were esteemed luxuries and commanded fifty cents apiece, but the prospect of a few days freedom with plenty to eat, was so alluring that I announced that I would go out "on parole." I washed up, put on my new suit, giving my old one to one of my comrades, and went with the sergeant. At headquarters I was given the money and box of cigars which had been sent me, and shown two orders from the War Department, and saw at a glance that the dates had been changed, the parole being made the earlier and the oath the later order, so after failure to get me to take the oath, they had to release me on parole. After treating the Yanks to cigars, and thanking them, I took the coach to Columbus, four miles distant, where I got the first "square meal" I had eaten in months, at

How long have I loved thee?

Go ask of the sea

How long have his billows

Foamed over the lea.

the old Eagle hotel. the old Eagle hotel. I paid fifty cents for my dinner, beforehand. Had I settled later, I think the proprietor would have charged me five dollars, as being half starved, I ate ten men's share and in consequence nearly died with colic. that night. This was my first expereince of Northern freedom and customs. The head waiter was a "big buck negro" as black as coal, the waiter girls being white. He stood at one end of the dining room yelling, "Mary," "Sal," "Fanny," to the white girls and pointing to the various guests needing attention. It was difficult for me to maintain silence and refrain from violence, but deeming this a phase of Northern civilization I thought it not best to attempt its reformation. After dinner I took the first train from Columbus to Pittsburg, thence to Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., where by the terms of my parole I reported to General Samuel M. Bowman (commandinng that department) who ordered me to rejoin my family in Philadelphia, to pay no visits, to receive no callers, to go to no places of public amusement and to report to him daily by letter. A month later he ordered me to report weekly. This continued up to the time of Lee's surrender, when I took the oath, thereby becoming a full-fledged American citizen and ending my career as a Johnny Reb. THOMAS H. NEILSON, Co. D, 62nd Va. Regt., C. S. Army.

How deep have I loved thee?

Oh, as deep as the blue

Of the heavens above me,

So deep and so true.

E

VERY day I am asked by people who do not seem to know: "What is this Boy Scout movement? Is it to prepare our boys for war, does it stand for militarism, etc? Is it to teach our boys how to use fire arms so that they can get out into the woods and kill game and birds just for the sport of it?" Now, all these questions and many others can be answered by visiting any meeting of any camp of "Boy Scouts" in America or in England.

When the Boy Scouts were first organized by General Baden Powell, although for more than thirty years I have preached the "Boy Scout" doctrine all over the United States, Canada, and especially commented upon my work on these lines at the Savage club in England in the year of the World's Fair in Chicago, I believe I am capable of and competent to tell what this movement represents; but first let me. illustrate what first suggested the idea to me.

At the age of eight, I was left with an uncle by my Christian mother when she sailed from the north of Ireland to join my father in America, he having preceeded her five years earlier. At nine I was hired out to a farmer; at ten I was sent to school and was flogged by an old Irish schoolmaster for four days in succession, after which I ran away, fearing that the old master might kill me before I could master the alphabet. At fourteen, I sailed with my brothers and sisters, five of us, in charge, of my cousin, Davy Wallace. I landed on a sailer, the "Zered," Capt. McConagle, at Philadelphia, twenty-one days from Londonderry, the record for a sailing ship up till 1861. Twice I was flogged on board ship for climbing the main-mast and once I reached almost

to the spindle on top. My father was gone with the Ringolds of Minersville, Pa., in the first three months' service, having enlisted about the time we sailed. Two weeks after landing I was picking slate at Pott's Colliery on Wolf Creek, at $1.75 a week, to help mother keep the pot boiling while daddy was fighting for his beloved adopted country and Old Glory. In less than three years I was fighting alongside of my father. Was wounded on May 12, 1864, at Spottsylvania and taken to the Saterlee Hospital, West Philadelphia, where a black-robed angel of mercy not only saved my life but soon taught me to read and write, for when I enlisted I had to make my cross; and before I was fit, I ran away from the hospital and was reported as a deserter, but when I joined my regiment in front of Petersburgh at Fort Hell within a week, my colonel, the gallant Harry Plesents, the hero of the Petersburg Mine, wrote to Dr. I. I. Hayes, the Arctic explorer in charge of the hospital. that I had deserted to the front, and was then doing duty as a sharpshooter.

On April 2nd I was again wounded in the assault on Fort Mahone within twenty feet of where my Colonel was killed, and although I was offered my discharge on my fractured hip wound before I ran away from the hospital. I refused it and it was because I feared that they would discharge me that I ran away and joined my regiment and my fighting Scotch-Irish daddy. He was twice wounded, at Antietem and Cold Harbor, and soon after the war, died from the effects of the wound in his head. Soon after the war, like many other soldier boys, I became disgusted with the mines; after working as a mule driver, fireman, load

er and miner's helper, I started West: became a prospector, miner and special correspondent for the Omaha Bee from the Black Hills; was made Chief of Scouts for the Black Hills Rangers in 1875 and later appointed Chief of Scouts by General Wesley Merritt in the Sitting Bull campaign of 1876 and after acting as courier and correspondent for the New York Herald at the close of the campaign I joined the man known as "Buffalo Bill" and played the leading part in one of those nightmare, blood and thunder monstrosities that has caused so many wild, reckless, impulsive boys to run away from good homes to become fit subjects for the penitentiary or reformatory.

Five months of this was enough for me, especially when I realized that I was not only ruining boys but obtaining money under false pretense.

Then came mother's death. I saw my sweet, Christian, tired mother dying a martyr's death after a long, hard struggle for her children. This was the first great sorrow that came to me.

Before she died she asked me to make her a promise, and I said I would; she said: "Then promise me that as long as you live you will never taste intoxicants and then it won't be so hard to leave this world and to leave these two little sisters in your keeping." And then and there, I promised God and mother, and when ordered as a boy tenderfoot to drink, I have looked into the muzzle of a gun and in the face of a "bad man," and said: "You can shoot, and you can kill me, but you can't make me break a promise I gave to my dying mother."

The intemperance of my father had deprived all my brothers, sisters and myself of an education, and had caused my mother's heart to break, and here. you have my principal and special reason for trying to reach the boys for over thirty years and more, especially the unfortunate behind prison bars and in our reformatories all over this great

land of ours. How well I have succeeded singly and alone, few know, for outside of my old friend and companion of the Black Hills, Thomas F. Walsh, who fought Indians with me in 1875 and 1876, and who, unfortunately for the boys, died about a year ago, leaving over sixty millions, no man has put up a dollar towards my expenses even in reaching the boys, and Tom Walsh gave me one thousand dollars, every dollar of which went into prisons and reformatories, and because he especially charged me not to mention it, I have never until now.

The best boys on earth are in jail, and in the reformatories, and nine-tenths of them are suffering for other people's sins; cuffed, kicked, abused and misunderstood, led astray by environment and hardened criminals, many bighearted boys are ruined unknown to themselves until they are caught and detained.

Listen to this from a genius in the Charlestown, Mass., prison, after listening to the story I've just written. This appeared in the Prison "Mentor" for January, 1911.

TO "JACK CRAWFORD."

By Petronius.

Jack Crawford, you did put it right;
"We played the coward's part";
When we were called upon to fight
We showed a craven heart.
We might have won a ribbon white,
A medal on our breast,
If we had fought a manly fight
And done our very best.
If we had kept the promise made
To mother, and cared not
What "others did" or "others said"-
If we had stood and fought.
Ours could have been perennial youth,
At three-score four, like yours,
If we had fought sides with the truth
And followed not sin's lures.
But here's to you, Jack Crawford, man,
Scout, poet, lecturer-

Your sharp reproof was dearer than
The praise of flatterer;

We know a MAN, when we see one,

And would shake hands with you, Who, 'gainst all odds, fought bravely on, And to YOURSELF were true!

And this extract from a three page write-up of my talk in the same paper: "Comes 'Jack,' however Capt. Jack, if you please, (and if you don't, he doesn't care a continental)-comes 'Jack,' I say, and makes the red corpuscles tingle and riot in our anatomy! Capt. Jack is one of 'them fellows that puts ye on yer mettle,' and he hits (and hit US) straight from the shoulder, and yet, and yet instead of closing our eyes a la Jeffries, he opens 'em!

"Did you catch it?' Verbatim it sounded like this: 'You've played the coward's part, boys!' And Capt. Jack's voice wasn't purring and 'soft-like' when he said it, was it? In fact, there was a quality of quasi-harshness in that big, broad voice of his, otherwise so warm, that ran up and down your spine and tickled the marrow in your bones in a peculiar way-even today we would feel it. And who of us would hesitate to choose those clean, clear, open, frank and heart vowels of his, rather than lisping, soothing liquids?

"Notice his eyes-the fire in them, not the smouldering fire of a half extinct volcano, but the leaping flames of the eyes of a prophet of old, as he bellows forth his accusation! And each burning word accentuated, as it were, and driven home, with broad hammer strokes, gestures of hands and arms, and that leonine mane of his nodding approval the whole suggesting Jupiter flinging thunder and lightning from Olympian heights: 'You've played the coward's part!'-but say, where was the sting? or hurt feelings?

"Behold, the gentlemanly looking bunch of outlaws' didn't gasp for breath nor mercy, nor get 'huffed,' nor fidgety; nor cuss, nor swear, at the boldness of Capt. Jack. Not a bit of it! But the 'gentlemanly looking bunch of outlaws' understood and took those words as gospel truth; took them at their full meaning and purport, fully convinced, beyond the faintest doubt or attempt at cavail, that 'Jack' was right;

and besides being right, he had the right of saying what he did say in that way, inasmuch as he, of all men, never played the coward's part. So his words went home, and Capt. Jack commanded the absolute clearsightedness of every soul here; the psychological moment. when our hearts were receptive to the without hurt, without sting." unvarnished truth, without wincing,

And now to get back to the boys in the Reformatory and to fully illustrate what I mean and what I am trying to following from "The News, Hamilton. do in my poor humble way. Read the O.," where I talked to the "Boy Scouts” last April:

At the Rahway, N. J., State Reformatory five hundred boys fifteen to twenty-five years of age, after listening to him the second time, did what never was done on earth before. "Boys," said Superintendent Frank Moore, as Capt. Jack concluded, "while you are wiping the tears from your eyes I want to see how many real heroes there are among you. Liquor has put most of you here, and I want every Boy Hero before me to raise his hand with me and swear, 'God helping me,' never to touch intoxicants from this day on forever:" and practically five hundred hands went up. Capt. Jack jumped to his feet and said; "Boys, I want every mother's son of you who held up your hands, to write me a letter or even a postal card. Tell me you mean it, and will keep your pledges, and to every boy who writes, I will send my picture, an original poem and my autograph. And to the boy writing the best letetr, a copy of my New Book and Poems with an original poem."

And in one week there came over four hundred letters. Capt. Jack read a few and had to stop, so overcome was he with the heartfult and soulful recitals of these unfortunate but big-hearted boys.

Then starting South to fill his chau