“Yes, ma’am, we had seamsters to make all the clothes for everybody, and mistis had a press-room, where all the clothes was put away when they was finished.  When any body needed clothes mistis would go to the press-room an’ get ’em.

“During the war mistis had one room all fixed up to take care of sick soldiers.  They would come stragglin’ in, all sick or shot, an’ sometimes we had a room full of ’em.  Mistis had one young boy to do nothin’ but look after ’em and many’s the night I got up and helt the candle for ’em to see the way to the room.

“Oh my Gawd, I saw plenty wounded soldiers.  We was right on the road to Brightsboro, and plenty of ’em pass by.  That Confed’rate war was the terriblest, awfullest thing.

“Nobody but me knowed where mistis buried her gold money and finger rings and ear-rings and breat-pins. [TR:  breast-pins?] I helt the candle then, too.  Mistis and marster, (he was home then) an’ me went down back of the grape arbor to the garden-house.  Marster took up some planks, an’ dug a hole like a grabe and buried a big iron box with all them things in it; then he put back the planks.  Nobody ever found ’em, and after the war was over we went and got ’em.

“Yes, ma’am, everybody did they own work.  De cook cooked, and the washer, she didn’t iron no clothes.  De ironer did that.  De housemaid cleaned up, and nurse tended the chilrun.  Then they was butlers and coachmen.  Oh, they was a plenty of us to do eve’ything.

“We didn’t have a stove, just a big fire place, and big oven on both sides, and long-handle spiders.  When we was fixin’ up to go to Camp Meeting to the White Oak Camp meeting grounds, they cooked chickens and roasted pigs, and put apples in they mouth and a lot of other food—­good food too.  De food peoples eat these days, you couldn’t have got nobody to eat.  Camp Meetin’ was always in August and September.  It was a good Methodis’ meetin’, and eve’ybody got religion.  Sometimes a preacher would come to visit at the house, an’ all the slaves was called an’ he prayed for ’em.  Sometimes the young ones would laugh, an’ then marster would have ’em whipped.

“My young mistis had a sister older than her.  She married Mr. Artie Boyd, an’ they had a big weddin’ but she loved her home and her mother and father so much she wouldn’t leave home.  She just stayed on living there.  When her baby come she died, and I tell you, ma’am, her fun’al was most like a weddin’, with so many people an’ so many flowers.  All the people from the plantashun came to the house, an’ the wimmen had they babies in they arms.  One the ladies say, “How come they let all these niggers and babies come in the house?” But marster knowed all us loved mistis, and he call us in.  Marse Artie he wrote a long letter an’ all the things he got from mistis he give back to her fam’ly an’ all his own things he give to his brother, an’ then he died.  Some say his heart strings just broke ’cause mistis died, and some say he took something.