e rider. In
them days I could ride the wildest horse what ever made tracks in Texas,
but I's never valued very high 'cause I had a glass eye. I don't 'member
how I done got it, but there it am. I'd make a dollar or fifty cents to
ride wild horses in slavery time and massa let me keep it. I buyed
tobacco and candy and if massa cotch me with tobacco I'd git a whippin',
but I allus slipped and bought chewin' tobacco.

"We allus had plenty to eat, sich as it was them days, and it was good,
plenty wild meat and cornbread cooked in ashes. We toasted the meat on a
open fire, and had plenty possum and rabbit and fish.

"We wore them loyal shirts open all way down the front, but I never seed
shoes till long time after freedom. In cold weather massa tanned lots of
hides and we'd make warm clothes. My weddin' clothes was a white loyal
shirt, never had no shoes, married barefooted.

"Massa Frank, he one real good white man. He was awful good to his
Negroes. Missis Sally, she a plumb angel. Their three chillen stayed
with me nearly all the time, askin' this Negro lots of questions. They
didn't have so fine a house, neither, two rooms with a big hall through
and no windows and deer skins tacked over the door to keep out rain and
cold. It was covered with boards I helped cut after I got big 'nough.

"Massa Frank had cotton and corn and everything to live on, 'bout three
hundred acres, and overseed it himself, and seven growed slaves and five
little slaves. He allus waked us real early to be in the field when
daylight come and worked us till slap dark, but let us have a hour and a
half at noon to eat and rest up. Sometimes when slaves got stubborn he'd
whip them and make good Negroes out of them, 'cause he was real good to
them.

"I seed slaves sold and auctioned off, 'cause I's put up to the highest
bidder myself. Massa traded me to William Green jus' 'fore the war, for
a hundred acres land at $1.00 a acre. He thought I'd never be much
'count, 'cause I had the glass eye, but I'm still livin' and a purty
fair Negro to my age. All the hollerin' and bawlin' took place and when
he sold me it took me most a year to git over it, but there I was,
'longin' to 'nother man.

"If we went off without a pass we allus went two at a time. We slipped
off when we got a chance to see young folks on some other place. The
patterrollers cotched me one night and, Lawd have mercy on me, they
stretches me over a log and hits thirty-nine licks with a ra