s, Oh Lord,
And search the ground
Of every sinful heart! (Uncle Ben stopped to think).
What 'eer of sin
In us be found
Oh, bid it all depart!'

"Reason I choose that for a favorite hymn, I was to Brookgreen doing
some work for Dr. Wardie Flagg and I had to climb as high as that live
oak tree, and I fell high as that tree! I lay there till I doze off in
sleep. And I tell you what happen to me curious. While I was sleep I
seen two milk white chickens. You know what them two white fowl do? They
gone and sit on my mother dresser right before the glass and sing that
song. Them COULD sing! And it seem like a woman open a vial and pour
something on me. My spiritual mother (in dem day every member in the
church have what they call a spiritual mother) say, 'That not natural
fowl. That sent you for a token.' Since that time I serve the choir five
or six years and no song seem strange to me since that day. God ain't ax
about you color; God ax about you heart.

"Make my living with the ister (oyster). Before time (formerly) I get
seventy five cents a bushel; now I satisfy with fifty cents. Tide going
out, I go out in a boat with the tide; tide bring me in with sometimes
ten, sometimes fifteen or twenty bushels. I make white folks a roast;
white folks come to Uncle Ben from all over the country--Florence,
Dillon, Mullins--every kind of place. Same price roast or raw, fifty
cents a bushel.

"I bout to quit up with sell. All the lawyer. Turn all my papers over to
Mr. Burris. I got too much of paper in that Con-o-way. Court House. Got
more paper in there than the house worth! Have to step to Con-o-way all
the time. Struggle and starve myself out for these fifteen acres. Thirty
miles to Con-o-way. Thirty miles back by the course I travels. All them
tricky mens try to go and get old Ben's land sign to 'em. That's the
mainest thing take me to Con-o-way every week. They all talk so sugar
mouth till my name down; then when my name write is another thing. When
I in too much trouble, I just has to step up to Con-o-way and see Mr.
Burris. He's a good man.

"They try to mix old Ben up in this whiskey business. It look too
brutish to me.

"Missis, I want to tell you all I kin but the old man punish with this
bone felom (felon). Worse'n I ever been punish in all my eighty five
year. Crab bite 'em and ister (oyster) cut 'em (hand). Woman die and
bury Sunday have hand just like this. If you say so, I'll go to doctor.
Don't want n