| 1902 - Cumberland, MD
RJF runs away from home and finds work as a laborer for the Wabash railroad. (WV Encyclopedia, P. 1774). He makes a life plan to someday own a townhouse on New York City's Park Avenue, an office on Fifth Avenue, to be the owner of many businesses, and to retire and return to the Blue Ridge region when he is fifty years old. (Couper, P. 2) He wrote:"I, too, experienced a brief period in my youth away from the influence of a Christian home, that fits into this story. "Craving wider and more lucrative fields of endeavor than my home surroundings afforded, I ran away from home at age fourteen. Being husky and tall for my age, I was accepted by almost everyone as being two or three years older than my actual age. I had no trouble in procuring work on a well drill at $1.50 a day. Father finally located me and informed my employer of my age and threatened the legal | punishment for employing a minor. My employer. being a Christian man, took me into a room, opened an old, well-marked, family Bible, and slowly read to me, the story of the Prodigal Son. After reading the story, the good man advised me to return to my Father's house. The advice was useless for the story had already convinced me that I should return home. (And thus the Bible influenced the actions of my life again, as it has always done). My Father, being a forgiving Christian, received me with open arms. "That short period away from the home of my youth will never be forgotten. My short sojourn in a more or less sinful world, which was new to me, made me appreciate the invaluable worth and magic influence of the a Christian home. "To me, the saddest passage in all literature is the following, found in Mathew of the New Testament:
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