"The day that I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--December 31, 1833--my horse, with newly calked shoes, kicked the hat off my head. If he had struck two inches lower, doubtless he would have killed me instantly. Ten minutes later, while driving the same horse and another hitched to a sled with loose boards on the bottom and no box, the boards slipped forward under the pole and struck the ground. This at once threw the boards up endwise, and pitched me forward between the horses. I held on the lines; the horses, frightened, ran down the hill, dragging me under the sled behind them. The road, however, was smooth, and I escaped without injury. "In 1834, while traveling in Zion's Camp to Missouri, a rifle was discharged accidentally. The ball passed through three {10} tents with a dozen men in each, and lodged in the axletree of a wagon, without injury to anyone; it passed within a few inches of my breast. Many others escaped quite as providentially as I did. "A few months later a musket, heavily loaded with buckshot, and pointed directly at my breast, was snapped accidentally; but it missed fire, and again the Lord preserved my life. "In April, 1839, in Rochester, Ills., I was riding upon the running-gear of a wagon. I sat upon the front axletree. The bolt came out of the coupling-pole, separating the wheels, the front from the rear; and my weight upon the front bolster and tongue turned the coupling-pole over on the horses' backs, turned the stakes upside down, which shut me between the bolster and tongue, but in such a manner that my head and shoulders dragged upon the ground. The horses took fright and ran into an open prairie. They dragged me for about half a mile, and notwithstanding my awkward position I managed to guide them so as to run them into the corner of a high worm-fence, where we landed in a pile together. I was considerable bruised, but escaped without any broken bones, and after one day's rest was able to attend to my labors again.