to put em on and wear em.

"I stayed round with marster's boys a lot, and them white boys was as
good to me as if I had been their brother. And I stayed up to the big
house lots of nights so as to be handy for runnin' for old master and
mistress. The big house was fine but the log cabin where my mammy
lived had so many cracks in it that when I would sleep down there I
could lie in bed and count the stars through the cracks. Mammy's beds
was ticks stuffed with dried grass and put on bunks built on the wall,
but they did sleep so good. I can most smell that clean dry grass now.
Mammy made her brooms from broom sage, and she cooked on a fireplace.
They used a oven and a fireplace up at the big house too. I never saw
no cookstove till I was grown.

"I members one time when I was a little shaver I et too many green
apples. And did I have the bellie ache, whoo-ee! And mammy poured cold
water over hot ashes and let it cool and made me drink it and it sure
cured me too. I members seein' her make holly bush tea, and parched
corn tea too for sickness. Nother time I had the toothache and mammy
put some axle grease in the hollow of the tooth and let it stay there.
The pain stopped and the tooth rotted out and we didn't have to pull
it.

"Whee! Did you see how that car whizzed round the corner? There warn't
no cars in my young days. They had mostly two-wheeled carts with
shafts for the horse to be hitched in, and lots of us drove oxen to
them carts. I plowed oxen many-a-day and rode em to and from the
field. Let me tell you, Missy, if you don't know nothin' bout
oxen--they surely does sull on you--you beat them and the more you
beat the more they sulls. Yes'm, they sure sulls in hot weather, but
it never gets too cold for em.

"Howdy, Parson. That sho was good preachin' Sunday. Yes suh, it was
fine.

"That's the pastor of our church, an he sho preached two good sermons
last Sunday. Sunday mornin' he preached 'Every kind of fish is caught
in a net' and that night he preached 'Marvel not you must be born
again.' But that mornin' sermon, it capped the climax. Parson sho told
em bout it. He say, 'First, they catch the crawfish, and that fish
ain't worth much; anybody that gets back from duty or one which says I
will and then won't is a crawfish Christian.' Then he say, 'The next
is a mudcat; this kind of a fish likes dark trashy places. When you
catch em you won't do it in front water; it likes back water and wants
to stay in mud