r he knew the paterollers had it in for him."

He asked the writer if he had ever heard a chicken talk. He said that he
had, and described a scene at the house one day when a preacher was
there. The chickens and guineas came around the house as usual to get
their feed, but didn't get it. He "quoted" the rooster as saying; "Has
the preacher gone yet?" A guinea hen answered, "not yet--not yet".

He said that he often heard turkeys talk. They would ask each other
questions, and another fowl would answer. He once heard a mule that was
in the barn, say: "Lord! Lord! All I want is corn and fodder."

Being told by the negro who was sitting beside him, that he did not
believe animals and fowls could talk, he at once said:

"Sure--roosters and gobblers can talk, one day there was a turkey hen
and a lots of little turkeys scratching around a certain place on a
hill, the little turkeys were heard to say, 'Please mam, please mam'. An
old gobbler standing and strutting near, cried out, 'Get the hell out of
here'. The turkey hen then moved to another place to feed."

He said that he gets out in his porch early in the mornings and whistles
to the birds, and that soon a large flock of birds are all around him.
Offering to demonstrate his ability, he began to whistle in a peculiar
way. Soon thereafter, two or three English sparrows flew into the yard
from nearby trees.

"See thar! See thar!" he said, pointing to them.

"When the war was over," he continued, "we stayed on at Marster's
plantation for some time. I grew up, and was always a fellow who liked
hard work. I have railroaded, was a tree doctor, helped dig wells and
did a lot of hard work. The white people was always pleased with my work
and told me so. I went down a well once to help clean it out. It looked
like to me that well was caving in above me; so I hollered for them to
pull me out. When I got out, I told them I wasn't going down no wells
any more unless somebody threw me in."

He said that he had seen lots of wild turkeys when he was a boy. One day
when he was going to get some "bacco" for his aunt, he saw a hen and a
lot of little turkeys--

"I run after the little wild turkeys but I never kotched a one. That old
mother hen would fly from one limb in a tree to another limb in another
tree and call them. They was the runningest things I ever saw. I nearly
run myself to death but I never did get one."

Every now and them, he said, one of the men on the plantation