as one Hoodie Manuel died, another Manuel assumed the
title, though not always the oldest.

It was not required of a woman with a large family to do field work.
Such women had their regular tasks of spinning allotted to them,
sufficiently light to allow ample time to take care of their houses
and children. The younger women (unless delicate) left their children
in a day nursery in charge of an elderly woman who was caretaker.
Usually they preferred field work, as being more lively; but if one
disliked it, she usually soon contrived to be classed among the
spinners.

When, occasionally, I happened to go to any of the houses, often
quite unexpectedly, I can assert truthfully that I never, in a single
instance, saw dirt or squalor in one of them. The floors were clean,
the beds comfortable, with white and wonderfully clean blankets.
Everything, though very homely, with clumsy benches and tables, looked
white and thoroughly clean. I remember hearing your grandfather speak
of once going at breakfast time to a house to visit a sick child. The
man of the house was seated at a small table while his wife served
him. The table was covered with an immaculately clean homespun cloth,
and coffee, in a tin pot shining with scrubbing, either sugar or
molasses, I forget which, a dish of beautifully fried bacon and
hoe-cakes, fresh from the fire, constituted his plain but most
abundant meal.

Separation of families has ever been a favorite plea for the abolition
of slavery, and I admit that in theory it was a plausible argument;
and justice compels me to say that such instances, though rare, were
not unknown. As a rule, however, family ties were respected, and
when, through the settlement of an estate, such separations seemed
impending, they were usually prevented by some agreement between the
parties; for instance, if a negro man had married a woman belonging to
another planter, a compromise was generally effected by the purchase
of one of the parties, regardless of self-interest on the part of the
owners. Thus families were kept together without regard to any
pecuniary loss. Public sentiment was against the severing of family
ties.

Before I close this little sketch I will tell you as well as I can the
outline of plantation work.

With the beginning of a new year, the crop being all housed, the sale
corn being stored in large barns or cribs on the river banks, and the
cotton either being sold or kept for better prices, the plowi