verted when they's 'bout twelve or
fifteen year old. Then on Sunday afternoon, Marse Bob larned us to read
and write. He told us we oughta git all the learnin' we could.

"Once a week the slaves could have any night they want for a dance or
frolic. Mance McQueen was a slave 'longing on the Dewberry place, what
could play a fiddle, and his master give him a pass to come play for us.
Marse Bob give us chickens or kilt a fresh beef or let us make 'lasses
candy. We could choose any night, 'cept in the fall of the year. Then we
worked awful hard and didn't have the time. We had a gin run by
horsepower and after sundown, when we left the fields, we used to gin a
bale of cotton every night. Marse allus give us from Christmas Eve
through New Year's Day off, to make up for the hard work in the fall.

"Christmas time everybody got a present and Marse Bob give a big hawg to
every four families. We had money to buy whiskey with. In spare time
we'd make cornshuck horse collars and all kinds of baskets, and Marse
bought them off us. What he couldn't use, he sold for us. We'd take post
oak and split it thin with drawin' knives and let it git tough in the
sun, and then weave it into cotton baskets and fish baskets and little
fancy baskets. The men spent they money on whiskey, 'cause everything
else was furnished. We raised our own tobacco and hung it in the barn to
season, and a'body could go git it when they wanted it.

"We allus got Saturday afternoons off to fish and hunt. We used to have
fish fries and plenty game in them days.

"Course, we used to hear 'bout other places where they had nigger
drivers and beat the slaves. But I never did see or hear tell of one of
master's slaves gittin' a beatin'. We had a overseer, but didn't know
what a nigger driver was. Marse Bob had some nigger dogs like other
places, and used to train them for fun. He'd git some the boys to run
for a hour or so and then put the dogs on the trail. He'd say, 'If you
hear them gittin' near, take to a tree.' But Marse Bob never had no
niggers to run off.

"Old man Briscoll, who had a place next to ours, was vicious cruel. He
was mean to his own blood, beatin' his chillen. His slaves was afeared
all the time and hated him. Old Charlie, a good, old man who 'longed to
him, run away and stayed six months in the woods 'fore Briscoll cotched
him. The niggers used to help feed him, but one day a nigger 'trayed
him, and Briscoe put the dogs on him and cotched him. H