“Mr. Tabb was a pretty good man.  He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even.  But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothin’ to do but teach the rest of us—­we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—­how to read and write and figger.  Mr. Tabb liked us to know how to figger.  But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time comin’, he would ask us where we had been.  If we told him we had been learnin’ to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—­after gettin’ somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoilin’ his slaves.”

“He was funny about us marryin’, too.  He would let us go a-courtin’ on the other plantations near anytime we liked, if we were good, and if we found somebody we wanted to marry, and she was on a plantation that b’longed to one of his kin folks or a friend, he would swap a slave so that the husband and wife could be together.  Sometimes, when he couldn’t do this, he would let a slave work all day on his plantation, and live with his wife at night on her plantation.  Some of the other owners was always talking about his spoilin’ us.”

“He wasn’t a Dimmacrat like the rest of ’em in the county; he belonged to the ‘know-nothin’ party’ and he was a real leader in it.  He used to always be makin’ speeches, and sometimes his best friends wouldn’t be speaking to him for days at a time.”

“Mr. Tabb was always specially good to me.  He used to let me go all about—­I guess he had to; couldn’t get too much work out of me even when he kept me right under his eyes.  I learned fast, too, and I think he kinda liked that.  He used to call Sandy Davis, the slave who taught me, ‘the smartest Nigger in Kentucky.’

“It was ’cause he used to let me go around in the day and night so much that I came to be the one who carried the runnin’ away slaves over the river.  It was funny the way I started it too.”

“I didn’t have no idea of ever gettin’ mixed up in any sort of business like that until one special night.  I hadn’t even thought of rowing across the river myself.”

“But one night I had gone on another plantation ‘courtin,’ and the old woman whose house I went to told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river and would I take her?  I was scared and backed out in a hurry.  But then I saw the girl, and she was such a pretty little thing, brown-skinned and kinda rosy, and looking as scared as I was feelin’, so it wasn’t long before I was listenin’ to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side.”

“I didn’t have nerve enough to do it that night, though, and I told them to wait for me until tomorrow night.  All the next day I kept seeing Mister Tabb laying a rawhide across my back, or shootin’ me, and kept seeing that scared little brown girl back at the house, looking at me with her big eyes and asking me if I wouldn’t just row her across to Ripley.  Me and Mr. Tabb lost, and soon as dust settled that night, I was at the old lady’s house.”