e and a orange, and he never did come to see us
no more after that time cause we peeped. That was the last time he
ever filt our stockin'. But you knows how chaps is. We just had to
peep.

"You knows I was born and raised in Louisiana. I done told you that
many times. And I just wish you could see the vituals on old marster's
table at Christmas time. Lawdy, but his table jes groaned with good
things. Old Mistress had the cook cookin' for weeks before time it
seemed to me. There was hams and turkeys and chickens and cakes of all
kinds. They sho was plenty to eat. And they was a present for all the
niggers on the place besides the heaps of pretty things that Marster's
family got off the tree in the parlor.

"When I first began to work on the farm old master put me to cuttin'
sprouts, then when I got big enough to make a field hand, I went to
the field then. I done lots of kinds of work--worked in the field,
split rails, built fences, cleared new ground and just anything old
marster wanted me to do. I members one time I got a long old splinter
in my foot and couldn't get it out, so my mammy bound a piece of fat
meat round my foot and let it stay bout a couple days, then the
splinter come out real easy like. And I was always cutting myself too
when I was a chap. You know how careless chaps is. An soot was our
main standby for cuts. It would close the gash and heal it. And soot
and sugar is extra good to stop bleeding. Sometime, if I would be in
the field too far away from the house or anyplace where we could get
soot, we would get cobwebbs from the cotton house and different places
to stop the bleeding. One time we wasn't close to neither and one the
men scraped some felt off from a old black hat and put it on to stop
the bleedin'.

"My feets was tough. Didn't wear shoes much till I was grown. Went
barefooted. My feets was so tough I could step on stickers and not
feel em. Just to show how tough I was I used to take a blackberry limb
and take my toes and skin the briers off and it wouldn't hurt my
feets.

"Did I ever tell you bout my first pair of breeches? I was bout twelve
then and before that I went in my shirt tail. I thought I was goin' to
be so proud of my first breeches but I didn't like them. They was too
tight and didn't have no pockets. They come just below my knees and I
felt so uncomfortable-like that I tore em off me. And did I get a
lickin? I got such a lickin' that when my next ones was made I was
glad