“I couldn’t tell you exactly when I was born.  Up until the surrender I couldn’t tell how old I was.  I am somewheres around eighty-two years old.  The old lady is just about the same.  We guesses it in part.  We figure it on what we heard the old folks say and things like that.  I remember plenty of things about slavery that I saw.

“I never did much when I was a boy.  The biggest thing I remember is a mule got to kicking and jumped around in a stall.  She lost her footing and fell down and broke her neck right there in the stall.  I remember her name as well as if it was yesterday.  Her name was Bird.  That was just before the war.  I know I must have been at least four years old then.  You can figure that up and see what it comes to.

“I never did any work when I was a child.  I jus went to the spring with the young Mistress and danced for them sometimes.  But they never did give me any work to do,—­like they did the others.  I lived right in the biggest house the biggest portion of my time.

“That day and time, they made compost heaps.  Mixed dirt with manure.  They hoed cotton and crops.  They didn’t know what school was.  They helped with washing and ironing.  Did every kind of work they had strength enough to do till they got big enough to go to the field.  That was what the children did.

“When they were about seven years old, to the best of my recollection they would go to the field.  Seven or eight.  They would pick up corn stalks and brush.  And from that on when they were about eight or nine, they would pick cotton.

“My mother never did have to do anything round the farm.  She lived about seventy-five miles from it, there where the master had his office.  He was a lawyer.  After I was born, she didn’t come out to see me but once a year that I recollect.  When she did come, she would bring me some candy or cakes or something like that.

“I didn’t see the soldiers during the time of the war.  But I saw plenty of them afterwards—­riding round and telling the niggers they were free.  They had some of the finest saddles I ever seed.  You could hear them creaking a block off.  No, I didn’t see them while they was fighting.  We were close enough to hear the guns crash, and we could see the light from them, but I didn’t actually see the fightin.  The Yankees come through on every plantation where they were working and entered into every house and told us we was free.  The Yankees did it.  They told you you were free as they were, that you didn’t have to stay where you was, that you didn’t have no more master, that you could go and come as you pleased.

“I got along hard after I was freed.  It is a hard matter to tell you what we could find or get.  We used to dig up dirt in the smokehouse and boil it and dry it and sift it to get the salt to season our food with.  We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens with.  Jus plenty of niggers then didn’t have anything but that to eat.