ight, it is a sign of good luck.

If you cut a child's finger nails before it is a year old, it will steal
when it grows up.

If you put your hand on the head of a dead man, you will never worry
about him; he will never haunt you, and you will never fear death.

If the pictures are not turned toward the wall after a death, some other
member of the family will die.

If you see a dead man in the mirror, you will be unlucky the rest of
your life.

Name of Interviewer: Velma Sample
Subject: Slavery Days

THE ATTACK THE YANKEES MADE ON JOHNNIE REAVES PLACE GIVEN BY AUNT ELCIE
BROWN

Aunt Elcie Brown (a negro girl age nine years old) was living in the
clay hills of Arkansas close to Centerville, and Clinton in Amid County
on Johnnie Reeves Place. Johnnie Reeves was old and had a son named
Henry L. Reeves who was married. Young Reeves got the news that they
were to be attacked by the Yankees at a certain time and he took his
family and all the best stock such as horses, cattle, and sheep to a
cave in a bluff which was hid from the spy-glasses of the Yankees, by
woods all around it. Johnnie Reeves was left to be attacked by the
soldiers. He was blind and almost paralyzed. He had to eat dried beef
shaved real fine and the negro children fed him. They ate as much of it
as he did. Aunt Elcie and her brother fed him most of the time. They
would get on each side of him and lead him for a walk most every day.
The natives thought they would bluff the soldiers and cut the bridge
into and thought that the soldiers would be unable to cross Beavers
Creek, but the Yankees was prepared. They had made a long bridge for the
soldiers to come marching right over. This bridge was just a mile from
Reeves farm. Then the soldiers came they were so many that they could
not all come up the big road but part of them came over the hill by the
sheeps spring and through the pasture.

All the negroes came out of their shacks and watched them march toward
their houses. Elcie and her brother got scared and ran in the house,
crawled in bed and thought they were hid, as they had scrutched down in
the middle of the bed with the door locked. But the soldiers bursted in
and moved the bed from the corner. One stood over the bed and laughed,
then asked the other man to look, then threw the covers off of them. He
first took her brother by one arm and one leg and stood him on his feet,
patted his head and told him not to be afraid, that they would