“My pa was Moster Jim’s ox driver.  He drove five or six yokes at a time.  He walk long side of em, wagons loaded up.  He toted a long cowhide whoop.  He toted it over his shoulder.  When he’d crack it you could hear his whoop half a mile.  Knowed he was comin’ on up to the house.  Them oxen would step long, peartin up when he crack his whoop over em.  He’d be haulin’ logs, wood, cotton, corn, taters, sorghum cane and stuff.  He nearly always walked long side of em; sometimes he’d crawl upon the front wagon an’ ride a piece.

“He was a very good moster I recken far as I knows.  They go up there, get sompin’ to eat.  He give em a midlin’ meat.  He give us clothes.  Folks wore heep of clothes then.  They got whoopin’s if they not do lack they tole em to do—­plenty whoopin’s!  He kept ten dogs, they call bear dogs.  They hunt fox, wolves, deer, bear, birds.  Them dogs died wid black tongue.  Every one of em died.

“We et at home mostly.  We was lounced wid the rations but had a big plenty.  We got the rations every Saturday mornin’.  One fellow cut and weighed out the meat, sacked out the meal in pans what they take to git it in.  Sometimes we et up at the house.  Mama bring a big bucket milk and set it down, give us a tin cup.  We eat it up lack pigs lappin’ up slop.  Mama cooked for old mistress.  She bring us ’nough cooked up grub to last us two or three days at er time.  Papa could cook when he be round the house too.  I recollect all four my grandmas and grandpas.  They come from Georgia.  Moster Jim muster bought them too but I don’t know if he got em all at the same time down at Galveston, Texas.

“Moster Jim show did drink liquor—­whiskey.  I recken he would.  When he got drunk old missus have him on the bed an’ she set by him till he sober up.  Miss Karoline good as ever drawed a breath to colored and white.

“My grandma, mother’s ma, was a light sorter woman.  The balance of my kin was pure nigger.

“I kin for a fact recollect a right smart about the war.  Papa went off to war wid Jack Hoskins.  He was goin’ to be his waitin’ man.  He stayed a good while fore he got home.  Jack Hoskins got kilt fore he et breakfast one mornin’.  That all I heard him say.  I recken he helped bury him but I never heard em say.

“The plainest thing I recollect was a big drove of the Yankee soldiers—­some ridin’, some walkin’—­come up to the moster’s house.  He was sorter old man.  He was settin’ in the gallery.  He lived in a big log house.  He was readin’ the paper.  He throwed back his head and was dead.  Jes’ scared to death.  They said that was what the matter.  In spite of that they come down there and ordered us up to the house.  All the niggers scared to death not to go.  There lay old Moster Jim stretched dead in his chair.  They was backed up to the smoke house door and the horses makin’ splinters of the door.  It was three planks thick, crossed one another and bradded together wid iron nails.  They