real good man, allus
good to his black folks. Missy, she was plumb angel. They lived in a old
stone house with four big rooms. It was the best house in the whole
county and lots of shade trees by it.

"We had 'bout a hundred acres in our plantation and started to the field
'fore daylight and worked long as we could see, and fed ane stock and
got to bed 'bout nine o'clock. Massa whopped a slave if he got stubborn
or lazy. He whopped one so hard that slave said he'd kill him. So Massa
done put a chain round his legs, so he jus' hardly walk, and he has to
work in the field that way. At night he put 'nother chain round his neck
and fastened it to a tree. After three weeks massa turnt him loose and
that the proudes' nigger in the world, and the hardes' workin' nigger
massa had after that.

"On Saturday night we could git a pass or have a party on our own place.
Through the week we'd fall into our quarters and them patterrollers come
walk all over us, and we'd be plumb still, but after they done gone some
niggers gits up and out.

"On Christmas Day massa make a great big eggnog and let us have all we
wants with a big dinner. He kilt a yearlin' and made plenty barbecue for
us.

"Massa was a colonel in the war and took me along to care for his hoss
and gun. Them guns, you couldn't hear nothin' for them poppin'. Us
niggers had to go all over and pick up them what got kilt. Them what was
hurt we carried back. Them what was too bad hurt we had to carry to the
burying place and the white man'd finish killin' them, so we could roll
them in the hole.

"When massa say we're free, we all 'gun to take on. We didn't have no
place to go and asked massa could we stay, but he say no. But he did let
some stay and furnished teams and something to eat and work on the
halves. I stayed and was sharecropper, and that was when slavery start,
for when we got our cop made it done take every bit of it to pay our
debts and we had nothing left to buy winter clothes or pay doctor bills.

"'Bout a year after the war I marries Nora Brady, jus' a home weddin'. I
asks her to come live with me as my wife and she 'greed and she jus'
moved her clothes to my room and we lived together a long time. One
mornin' Nora jus' died, and there warn't no chillen, so I sets out for
Texas. I done hear the railroad is buildin' in Texas and they hires lots
of niggers. I gits a hoss from massa and rolls up a few clothes and gits
my gun.

"I never got very far 'fore t