The old negro’s quavery voice rose in the familiar song.  For a moment he sat thinking of those long-ago Sundays.  His eyes brightened again, and he went on: 

“We never done no wuk on Sundays on our plantation.  The church was ’bout nine miles from the plantation and we all walked there.  Anybody too old and feeble to walk the nine miles jus’ stayed home, kazen Marster didn’t ’low his mules used none on Sunday.  All along the way niggers from other plantations ‘ud jine us and sometimes befo’ we git to the church house they’d be forty or fifty slaves comin’ along the road in a crowd!  Preaching generally lasted twel bout three o’clock.  In summertime we had dinner on the ground at the church.  Howsomever we didn’ have no barbecue like they does now.  Everybody cooked enough on Sadday and fotched it in baskets.

“I was thirty years old when I jined the church.  Nobody ought to jine no church twels’t he is truly borned of God, and effen he is truly borned of God he gwine know it.  Effen you want a restin’ place atter you leaves this old world you ought to git ready for it now!

“When folkses on our plantation died Marster allus let many of us as wanted to go, lay offen wuk twel atter the buryin’.  Sometimes it were two or three months atter the buryin’ befo’ the funeral sermon was preached.  Right now I can’t rekelleck no song we sung at funerals cep’n ‘Hark from the tombs a doleful sound.’”

The reedy old voice carried the funeral hymn for a few minutes and then trailed off.  James was thinking back into the past again.

“Spring plowin’ and hoein’ times we wukked all day Saddays, but mos’en generally we laid off wuk at twelve o’clock Sadday.  That was dinnertime.  Sadday nights we played and danced.  Sometimes in the cabins, sometimes in the yards.  Effen we didn’ have a big stack of fat kindling wood lit up to dance by, sometimes the mens and ’omans would carry torches of kindling wood whils’t they danced and it sho’ was a sight to see!  We danced the ‘Turkey Trot’ and ‘Buzzard Lope’, and how we did love to dance the ‘Mary Jane!’ We would git in a ring and when the music started we would begin wukkin’ our footses while we sang ’You steal my true love and I steal your’n!’

“Atter supper we used to gether round and knock tin buckets and pans, we beat ’em like drums.  Some used they fingers and some used sticks for to make the drum sounds and somebody allus blowed on quills.  Quills was a row of whistles made outen reeds, or sometimes they made ’em outen bark.  Every whistle in the row was a different tone and you could play any kind of tune you wants effen you had a good row of quills.  They sho’ did sound sweet!

“’Bout the most fun we had was at corn shuckin’s whar they put the corn in long piles and called in the folkses from the plantations nigh round to shuck it.  Sometimes four or five hunnert head of niggers ’ud be shuckin’ corn at one time.  When the corn all done been shucked they’d drink the likker the marsters give ’em and then frolic and dance from sundown to sunup.  We started shuckin’ corn ’bout dinnertime and tried to finish by sundown so we could have the whole night for frolic.  Some years we ’ud go to ten or twelve corn shuckin’s in one year!