takes General Lee prisoner, and Marse Sam won't leave his
general, and he say to me, 'William, you got to go home alone.'

"I lights out a-foot to Texas and it's most a year befo' I gits home. I
travels day and night at first. I buys some things to eat but every time
I goes by a farmhouse I steals a chicken. Sometimes I sho' gits hongry.
When I git to the house, Missus Josie faints, 'cause she thunk Marse Sam
ain't with me and he mus' be dead. I tells her he's in prison and she
say she'll give me $2.00 a month to stay till he gits back. I's plumb
crazy 'bout a little gal called 'Cricket,' 'cause she so pert and full
of live, so I stays. We gits us a cabin and that's all to our weddin'.
We stays a year befo' Marse Sam comes back.

"He was the plumb awfulest sight you ever done seed! His clothes is tore
offen his body and he ain't shaved in three months and he's mos' starved
to death. Missus Josie she don't even rec'nize him and wouldn't 'low him
in till I tells her dat am Marse Sam, all right. He stays sick a whole
year.

"I thinks if them Yankees didn't 'tend to fix some way for us pore
niggers, dey oughtn't turn us a-loose. Iffen de white folks in de South
hadn't been jes' what they is, us niggers been lots worser off than we
was. In slavery time when the nigger am sick, his master pay de bills,
but when nigger sick now, that's his own lookout.

"I never done nothin' but farm and odd jobs. I been married five times,
but only my las' wife am livin' now. My four boys and two gals is all
farmin' right here in the county and they helps us out. We gits by
somehow.

420277

LOUIS CAIN, 88, was born in North Carolina, a slave of Samuel Cain.
After Louis was freed, he came to Texas, and has farmed near
Madisonville over sixty years.

"I knows I's birthed in 1849, 'cause I had a bill of sale. It say that.
My master traded me to Massa Joe Cutt for a hundred acres of land.
That's in 1861, and I 'members it well. My daddy was Sam Cain, name
after old Massa Cain, and mammy was Josie Jones, 'cause she owned by
'nother master. Mammy was birthed in North Carolina, but daddy allus say
he come from Africy. He say they didn't work hard over there, 'cause all
they et come out the jungle, and they had all the wives they wanted.
That was the 'ligion over there.

"Our quarters was made of logs, in a long shed six rooms long, like
cowsheds or chicken houses, and one door to each room. The bed was a
hole dug