the time. Seems like they
fit every time they git a chance. Old Man Denman's boy gits kilt and two
my sisters he property and they don't know what to do, 'cause they has
to be somebody's property and they ain't no one to 'heritance 'em. They
has to go to the auction but Old Man Denman say not to fret. At the
auction the man say, 'Goin' high, goin' low, goin' mighty slow, a little
while to go. Bid 'em in, bid 'em in. The sun am high, the sun am hot, us
got to git home tonight.' An old friend of Old Man Denman's hollers out
he buys for William Blackstone. Us all come home and my sisters too and
Old Man Denman laugh big and say, 'My name allus been William Blackstone
Denman.'

"I's a woman growed when the war was to a end. I had my first baby when
I's fourteen. One day my sister call me and say, 'They's fit out, and
they's been surrenderin' and ain't gwine fight no more.' That dusk Old
Man Denman call all us niggers together and stand on he steps and make
he speech, 'Mens and womans, you is free as I am. You is free to go
where you wants but I is beggin' yous to stay by me till us git the
crops laid by.' Then he say, 'Study it over 'fore you gives me you
answer. I is always try as my duty to be fair to you.'

"The mens talks it over a-twixt theyselves and includes to stay. They
says us might as well stay there as go somewhere else, and us got no
money and no place to go.

"Then Miss Lizzie marries with Mr. Joe McMahon and I goes with her to he
house near by and he say he larn me to plow. Miss Lizzie say, 'Now,
Julia, you knows how to plow and don't make no fool of yourself and act
like you ain't never seed no plow afore.' Us make a corn crop and goes
on 'bout same as afore.

"I gits married that very year and has a little fixin' for the weddin',
bakes some cakes and I have a dress with buttons and a preacher marries
me. I ain't used to wearin' nothin' but loring (a simple one piece
garment made from sacking). Unnerwear? I ain't never wore no unnerwear
then.

"My husband rents a little piece of land and us raise a corn crop and
that's the way us do. Us raises our own victuals. I has 17 chillen
through the year and they done scatter to the four winds. Some of them
is dead. I ain't what I used to be for workin'. I jus' set 'round. I
done plenty work in my primer days.

420015

[Illustration: Katie Darling]

KATIE DARLING, about 88, was born a slave on the plantation of
William McCarty, on the E