lifting hay-ladened pitchforks in
the fields and in the swing of the sledge in his father's blacksmith's
shop. The military training coordinated these muscles and he moved among
the men a commanding figure, whose quiet reserve power seemed never
fully called into action by the arduous duties of the soldier.

The strength of his mind, the brain force he possessed were yet to be
recognized and tested. And even to-day, with all the experiences he has
had and the advancement he has made, that force is not yet measured. It
is in the years of the future that the real mission of Sergeant York
will be told.

He came out of the mountains of Tennessee with an education equal to
that of a child of eight or nine years of age, with no experience in the
world beyond the primitive, wholesome life of his mountain community,
with but little knowledge of the lives and customs, the ambitions and
struggles of men who lived over the summit of the Blue Ridge and beyond
the foot-hills of the Cumberlands.

But he was wise enough to know there were many things he did not know.
He was brave enough to frankly admit them. When placed in a situation
that was new to him, he would try quietly to think his way out of it;
and through inheritance and training he thought calmly. He had the
mental power to stand at ease under any condition and await sufficient
developments to justify him to speak or act. Even German bullets could
not hurry nor disconcert him.

He was keenly observant of all that went on around him in the
training-camp. Few sounds or motions escaped him, though it was in a
seemingly stoic mien that he contemplated the things that were new to
him. In the presence of those whose knowledge or training he recognized
as superior to his own he calmly waited for them to act, and so accurate
were his observations that the officers of his regiment looked upon him
as one by nature a soldier, and they said of him that he "always seemed
instinctively to know the right thing to do."

Placed at his first banquet board--the guest of honor--with a row of
silver by his plate so different from the table service in his humble
home, he did not misuse a piece from among them or select one in error.
But throughout the courses he was not the first to pick up a needed
piece.

His ability to think clearly and quickly, under conditions that tried
both heart and brain, was shown in the fight in the Argonne. With eight
men, not twenty yards away, charging him