orked for them until he was a growed up man, also 'til they
give him his free papers and 'lowed him to leave the plantation and come
up here to the North."

"How did we live on the plantation? Well--you see it was like this we
lived in a log cabin with the ground for floors and the beds were built
against the walls jus' like bunks. I 'member that the slaves had a hard
time getting food, most times they got just what was left over or
whatever the slaveholder wanted to give them so at night they would slip
outa their cabins on to the plantation and kill a pig, a sheep or some
cattle which they would butcher in the woods and cut up. The wimmin
folks would carry the pieces back to the cabins in their aprons while
the men would stay behind and bury the head, skin and feet."

"Whenever they killed a pig they would have to skin it, because they
didn't dare to build a fire. The women folk after getting home would put
the meat in special dug trenches and the men would come erlong and cover
it up."

"The slave holders in the port of the country I came from was men and it
was quite offen that slaves were tied to a whipping stake and whipped
with a blacksnake until the blood ran down their bodies."

"I remembers quite clearly one scene that happened jus' afore I left
that there part of the country. At the slaveholders home on the
plantation I was at it was customary for the white folks to go to church
on Sunday morning and to leave the cook in charge. This cook had a habit
of making cookies and handing them out to the slaves before the folks
returned. Now it happened that on one Sunday for some reason or tother
the white folks returned before the regular time and the poor cook did
not have time to get the cookies to the slaves so she just hid then in a
drawer that was in a sewing chair."

"The white folks had a parrot that always sat on top of a door in this
room and when the mistress came in the room the mean old bird hollered
out at the top of his voice, 'Its in the rocker. It's in the rocker'.
Well the Missus found the cookies and told her husband where upon the
husband called his man that done the whipping and they tied the poor
cook to the stake and whipped her till she fainted. Next morning the
parrot was found dead and a slave was accused because he liked the woman
that had been whipped the day before. They whipped him than until the
blood ran down his legs."

"Spirits? Yessir I believe in them, but we warnt bothered s