On this, the eightieth anniversary of my birth, I finish a much cherished but long deferred task of preparing for publication my personal recollections of Early Days in Arkansas. Sitting in the impenetrable gloom of total blind ness, the mind's eye seems to have been strength ened by the loss of natural Vision, and the scenes and events of over half a century ago appear but as the happenings of yesterday. But few persons are now living who were here when I first came to Arkansas, sixty-two years ago. It cannot possibly be long ere the last link in the chain connecting the present with the past will have been broken, and none left to tell the tale of those ancient days.