rs. Negroes would go off to dances and stay out all night;
it would be wuk time when they got back, and they went to the field and
tried to keep right on gwine, but the Good Lord soon cut 'em down. You
couldn't talk to folks that tried to git by with things lak that; they
warn't gwine to do no diffunt, nohow. When they ain't 'cepted at St.
Peter's gate, I'se sho they's gwine to wish they had heeded folks that
talked to 'em and tried to holp 'em.

"Weddin's? Didn't you know slaves didn't have sho'nough weddin's? If a
slave man saw a girl to his lakin' and wanted her to make a home for
him, he just axed her owner if it was all right to take her. If the
owner said 'yes' then the man and girl settled down together and behaved
theyselves. If the girl lived on one plantation and the man on another
that was luck for the girl's marster, 'cause the chillun would belong to
him.

"Right now I can't call to mind nothin' us played when I was a chap but
marble games. Us made them marbles out of clay and baked 'em in the sun.
Grown folks used to scare chillun 'bout Raw Head and Bloody Bones, but
that was mostly to make chillun git still and quiet at night. I ain't
never seed no ghost in my life, but I has heared a heap of sounds and
warn't able to find out what made them noises.

"When slaves got sick Marse Robert was good enough to 'em; he treated
'em right, and allus sont for a doctor, 'specially when chillun was
borned. Oil, turpentine, and salts was the medicines the doctors give
the most of to slaves. 'Fore they was sick enough to send for the
doctor the homefolks often give sick folks boneset and life-everlastin'
teas, and 'most evvybody wore a little sack of asafetida 'round their
necks to protect 'em from diseases.

"When freedom come I was down in the lower end of Clarke County on Marse
George Veal's plantation whar Marse Robert had done sont Miss Martha and
the chillun and part of the slaves too. My white folks was fleein' from
the Yankees. Marse Robert couldn't come 'long 'cause he had done been
wounded in battle and when they sont him home from the war he couldn't
walk. I don't know what he said to the slaves that was left thar to
'tend him, but I heared tell that he didn't tell 'em nothin' 'bout
freedom, leastwise not for sometime. Pretty soon the Yankees come
through and had the slaves come together in town whar they had a
speakin' and told them Negroes they was free, and that they didn't
belong to nobody no more. Th