“Ah didn’t git to handle money when I wuz young.  Ah worked frum sunup to sundown.  We never had overseers lak some of the slaves.  We wuz give so much work to do in a day and if the white folks went off on a vacation they would give us so much work to do while they wuz gone and we better have all of that done too when they’d come home.  Some of the white folks wuz very kind to their slaves.  Some did not believe in slavery and some freed them befo’ the war and even give ’em land and homes.  Some would give the niggers meal, lard and lak that.  They made me hoe when Ah wuz a chile and Ah’d keep rat up with the others, ’cause they’d tell me that if Ah got behind a run-a-way nigger would git me and split open my head and git the milk out’n it.  Of course Ah didn’t know then that wuzn’t true—­Ah believed everything they tole me and that made me work the harder.

“There wuz a white man, Mister Jim, that wuz very mean to the slaves.  He’d go ’round and beat ’em.  He’d even go to the little homes, tear down the chimneys and do all sorts of cruel things.  The chimneys wuz made of mud ’n straw ’n sticks; they wuz powerful strong too.  Mister Jim wuz jest a mean man, and when he died we all said God got tired of Mister Jim being so mean and kilt him.  When they laid him out on the coolin’ board, everybody wuz settin’ ‘round, moanin’ over his death, and all of a sudden Mister Jim rolled off’n the coolin’ board, and sich a runnin’ and gittin’ out’n that room you never saw.  We said Mister Jim wuz tryin’ to run the niggers and we wuz ’fraid to go about at night.  Ah believed it then; now that they’s ‘mbalmin’ Ah know that must have been gas and he wuz purgin’, fur they didn’t know nothin’ ’bout ‘mbalmin’ then.  They didn’t keep dead folks out’n the ground long in them days.

“Doctors wuzn’t so plentiful then.  They’d go ’round in buggies and on hosses.  Them that rode on a hoss had saddle pockets jest filled with little bottles and lots of them.  He’d try one medicine and if it didn’t do not [TR:  no?] good he’d try another until it did do good and when the doctor went to see a sick pusson he’d stay rat there until he wuz better.  He didn’t jest come in and write a ’scription fur somebody to take to a drug store.  We used herbs a lots in them days.  When a body had dropsy we’d set him in a tepid bath made of mullein leaves.  There wuz a jimson weed we’d use fur rheumatism, and fur asthma we’d use tea made of chestnut leaves.  We’d git the chestnut leaves, dry them in the sun jest lak tea leaves, and we wouldn’t let them leaves git wet fur nothin’ in the world while they wuz dryin’.  We’d take poke salad roots, boil them and then take sugar and make a syrup.  This wuz the best thing fur asthma.  It was known to cure it too.  Fur colds and sich we used ho’hound; made candy out’n it with brown sugar.  We used a lots of rock candy and whiskey fur colds too.  They had a remedy that they used fur consumption—­take dry cow manure, make a tea of this and flavor it with mint