per fans operated by a pulley.
Naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned upon the
subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good deal of it. I
remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and some
lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard. At that time those cakes
seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things
that I had ever seen; and I then and there resolved that, if I ever got
free, the height of my ambition would be reached if I could get to the
point where I could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way that I saw
those ladies doing.

Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many cases,
often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I think the
slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites, because the usual diet
for slaves was corn bread and pork, and these could be raised on the
plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar, and other articles which the whites
had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the plantation, and
the conditions brought about by the war frequently made it impossible
to secure these things. The whites were often in great straits. Parched
corn was used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses was used instead
of sugar. Many times nothing was used to sweeten the so-called tea and
coffee.

The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They
had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an
inch thick, were of wood. When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
to the natural pressure of the foot. In wearing them one presented and
exceedingly awkward appearance. The most trying ordeal that I was forced
to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax shirt. In
the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use flax as part
of the clothing for the slaves. That part of the flax from which our
clothing was made was largely the refuse, which of course was the
cheapest and roughest part. I can scarcely imagine any torture, except,
perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused by putting
on a new flax shirt for the first time. It is almost equal to the
feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut
burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his flesh. Even
to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when
putting on on