“A fellow by the name of Jim Holbert was mean to his slaves as a man could be.  He would whip them night and day.  Work them till dark; then they would eat supper.  Cook their own supper.  Had nothing to cook but a little meat and bread and molasses.  Then they would go back and bale up three or four bales of cotton.  Some nights they work till twelve o’clock then get up before daylight—­’round four o’clock—­and cook their breakfast and go to work again.  That was on Jim Holbert and Lard Moore’s place.  Them was two different men and two different places—­plantations.  They whipped their slaves a good deal—­always beating down on somebody.  They made their backs sore.  Their backs would be bleeding just like they cut it with knives.  Then they would wash it down with water and salt.

“On my master’s farm, each one cooked in his own cabin.  While the hands were working, my master left one child, the largest, stay there and taken care of the little ones.

“They had bloodhounds too; they’d run you away in the woods.  Send for a man that had hounds to track you if you run away.  They’d run you and bay you, and a white man would ride up there and say, ’If you hit one of them hounds, I’ll blow your brains out.’  He’d say ‘your damn brains.’  Them hounds would worry you and bite you and have you bloody as a beef, but you dassent to hit one of them.  They would tell you to stand still and put your hands over your privates.  I don’t guess they’d have killed you but you believed they would.  They wouldn’t try to keep the hounds off of you; they would set them on you to see them bite you.  Five or six or seven hounds bitin’ you on every side and a man settin’ on a horse holding a doubled shotgun on you.

“My old miss’s sister hired slave women out to old Jim Holbert once.  One of them was in a delicate state, and they dug a hole and put her stomach down in it and whipped her till she could hardly walk.

“Holbert lived to see the niggers freed.  All of his slaves left him pretty well when freedom come.  He managed to hold on to his money.  He didn’t go to the War.  He was pretty old.  He had two sons in the War—­his wife had one in there and he had one.  One of them got wounded but he didn’t die.

“My mistress’s oldest son, Ed Sterling, got shot in the Civil War.  He got shot right in the side at Franklin, Tennessee.  It tore his whole side off—­near about killed him.  But he lived to ride paterole.  He was mean.  Catch a man in bed with his wife at night, he’d whip him and make him go home.  He was the meanest man in the world.  All the other sons were better than he was.  His name was Ed Sterling.