ird,
It was your sweet song I heard.
What was it I heard you say?
Give me crumbs to eat today?
Here are crumbs I brought for you.
Eat your dinner, eat away,
Come and see us every day."

After this Mis' Mary kept on with my studies, and taught me to write.
As I grew older, she taught me to cook and how to do housework. During
this time Mis' Mary had given my mother one dollar a month in return
for my services; now as I grew up to young womanhood, I thought I
would like a little money of my own. Accordingly, Mis' Mary began to
pay me four dollars a month, besides giving me my board and clothes.
For two summers she "let me out" while she was away, and I got five
dollars a month.

While I was with Mis' Mary, I had my first sweetheart, one of the
young fellows who attended Sunday school with me. Mis' Mary, however,
objected to the young man's coming to the house to call, because she
did not think I was old enough to have a sweetheart.

I owe a great deal to Mis' Mary for her good training of me, in
honesty, uprightness and truthfulness. She told me that when I went
out into the world all white folks would not treat me as she had, but
that I must not feel bad about it, but just do what I was employed to
do, and if I wasn't satisfied, to go elsewhere; but always to carry an
honest name.

One Sunday when my sweetheart walked to the gate with me, Mis' Mary
met him and told him she thought I was too young for him, and that she
was sending me to Sunday school to learn, not to catch a beau. It was
a long while before he could see me again,--not until later in the
season, in watermelon time, when Mis' Mary and my mother gave me
permission to go to a watermelon party one Sunday afternoon. Mis' Mary
did not know, however, that my sweetheart had planned to escort me. We
met around the corner of the house, and after the party he left me at
the same place. After that I saw him occasionally at barbecues and
parties. I was permitted to go with him some evenings to church, but
my mother always walked ahead or behind me and the young man.

We went together for four years. During that time, although I still
called Mis' Mary's my home, I had been out to service in one or two
families.

Finally, my mother and Mis' Mary consented to our marriage, and the
wedding day was to be in May. The winter before that May, I went to
service in the family of Dr. Drury in Eufaula. Just a week before I
left Clayton I dreamed