“One day when it was freezing cold, she wanted mother to stand out in the hall with Sallie and Clara and wash the glasses in boiling hot water.  She was making her do that because she thought she was uppity and she wanted to punish her.  When mother went out, she rattled the dishes ‘round in the pan and broke them.  They was all glasses.  Mis’ Candle heard them breaking and come out to see about it.  She wanted to whip mother but she was ’fraid to do it while she was alone; so she waited till her husband come home.  When he come she told him.  He said she oughtn’t to have sent them out in the cold to wash the glasses because nobody could wash dishes outside in that cold weather.

“The first morning she was at Mis’ Candle’s, they called her to eat and they didn’t have nothing but black molasses and corn bread for mother’s meal.  The other two ate it but mother didn’t.  She asked for something else.  She said she wasn’t used to eating that—­that she ate what her master and mistress ate at home.

“Mis’ Candle didn’t like that to begin with.  She told my mother that she was a smart nigger.  She told mother to do one thing and then before she could do it, she would tell her do something else.  Mother would just go on doing the first thing till she finished that, and Mis’ Candle would git mad.  But it wasn’t nobody’s fault but her own.

“She asked mother to go out and git water from the spring on a rainy day.  Mother wouldn’t go.  Finally mother got tired and went back home.  Her mistress heard what she had to tell her about the place she’d been working.  Then she said mother did right to quit.  She had worked there for three or four months.  They meant to keep her but she wouldn’t stay.  Mis’ Hickman went over and collected her money.

“When mother worked out, the people that hired her paid her owners.  Her owners furnished her everything she wanted to eat and clothes to wear, and all the money she earned went to them.

“Mis’ Candle begged Mr. Hickman to let him have mother back.  He said he’d talk to his wife and she wouldn’t mistreat her any more but mama said that she didn’t want to go back and Mrs. Hickman said, ’No, she doesn’t want to go back and I wouldn’t make her.’  And the girls said, ‘No, mama, don’t let her go back.’  And Mis’ Hickman said, ’No, she was raised with my girls and I am not going to let her go back.’

“The Hickmans had my mother ever since she was four years old.  My grandfather was allowed to go a certain distance with her when she was sold away from him.  He walked and carried her in his arms.  Mama said that when he had gone as far as they would let him go, he put her in the wagon and turned his head away.  She said she wondered why he didn’t look at her; but later she understood that he hated so bad to ’part from her and couldn’t do nothing to prevent it that he couldn’t bear to look at her.

“Since I have been grown I have worked with some people at Newport.  I stayed with them there and married there, and had all my children there.