an 'em out real good, fill with bread and pot-licker or bread and
milk, and feed the nigger chillun."

_Jack_: "You say our nephew wants to come out and bring a bunch of young
folks and wants me to take them 'possum hunting some moonlight night?
Sho, sho, I'll go."

_Talitha_: "I don't know how he'd go lessen we totes him. Why, he got the
rheumatism so bad he can't hardly git 'round in the daytime much less at
night. Why, the other day he was out in the field follerin' the boy that
was plowin' up the potatoes and we was goin' on pickin' them up. First
thing I know I hear somethin' behind me go 'plop' and I looked roun and
there lay Jack jes stretched out. Fell down over his own feet. So what
would he do out nights? And you sees that knot on his ankle. Hit was
broke when he was a boy an' hit still gives him trouble when his
rheumatism starts up."

_Jack_: "You say how did I do it? I was jumpin'. A bunch of us boys was
jumpin' 'cross a ditch jes to see how far we could jump. I was a young
chap 'bout seventeen or eighteen then. I was doin' purty well with my
jumpin' when I made a misjump an' jumped crooked and hit my ankle on a
big old iron rock. My but hit hurt bad. I didn' do no more jumpin' that
day. The next day I was down in the woods getting a load of lider. Had
put on a few pieces on the wagon when I started to turn aroun and down I
went. I jes lay there and hollered till someone come an' got me. That
was in the winter just before Christmas and I didn't get out no more
till in the spring. The woods looked right purty to me when I got out.
The leaves was great big. And that ain't all, I ain't jumped no more
since. 'Sides that I ain't never been sick to 'mount to anything. Had
the whooping cough at the same time that Joe and Tom Snyder had hit.
Still got my natchel teeth, lost four up here and got one that bothers
me some, 'sides that I have 'em all. Yas suh, that the schoolhouse
'cross the road there. We has preachin' there sometimes too. Does Ab
preach there? He, he, he! sometime he do. Did I ever tell you 'bout the
time Ab was preaching out here at ____ and got to stampin' roun wid
that peg-leg of his'n an' hit went through the rotten floor and we had
to pull him out? He, he, he!"

_Talitha_: "Now, Jack Island, you knows that is jes 'nother one uv yo
tales. I is been to hear Ab preach lots of times and he does storm roun
mighty bad and I ain't got no faith in his religion tall but I warn't
there when he fell th