My sister, being the children’s nurse, would take them and wash their hands and put them to bed in their luxurious bedrooms, while we little slaves would find what homes we could.  My brother and I would go to sleep on some lumber under the house, where our sister Caroline would find us and put us to bed.  She would wipe our hands and faces and make up our beds on the floor in Massa’s house, for we had lived with him ever since our own mother had run away, after being whipped by her mistress.  Later on, after the war, my mother returned and claimed us.  I never knew my father, who was a white man.

During these changing times, just after the war, I was trying to find out what the change would bring about for us, as we were under the care of our mistress, living in the great house.  I thought this:  that Henry, Caroline and myself, Louise, would have to go as others had done, and where should we go and what should we do?  But as time went on there were many changes.  Our mistress and her two daughters, Martha and Mary, had to become their own servants, and do all the work of the house, going into the kitchen, cooking and washing, and feeling very angry that all their house servants had run away to the Yankees.  The time had come when our good times were over, our many leisure hours spent among the cotton fields and woods and our half-holiday on Saturday.  These were all gone.  The boys had to leave school and take the runaway slaves’ places to finish the planting and pick the cotton.  I myself have worked in the cotton field, picking great baskets full, too heavy for me to carry.  All was over!  I now fully understood the change in our circumstances.  Little Henry and I had no more time to sit basking ourselves in the sunshine of the sunny south.  The land was empty and the servants all gone.  I can see my dainty mistress coming down the steps saying, “Rit, you and Henry will have to go and pick up some chips, for Miss Mary and myself have to prepare the breakfast.  You children will have to learn to work.  Do you understand me, Rit and Henry?” “Yes, Missus, we understand.”  And away we flew, laughing, and thinking it a great joke that we, Massa’s pets, must learn to work.

But it was a sad, sad change on the old plantation, and the beautiful, proud Sunny South, with its masters and mistresses, was bowed beneath the sin brought about by slavery.  It was a terrible blow to the owners of plantations and slaves, and their children would feel it more than they, for they had been reared to be waited upon by willing or unwilling slaves.

In this place I will insert a poem my young mistress taught us, for she was always reading poems and good stories.  But first I will record a talk I heard between my master and mistress.  They were sitting in the dining-room, and we children were standing around the table.  My mistress said, “I suppose, as Nancy has never returned, we had better keep Henry, Caroline and Louise until they are of age.”  “Yes, we will,” said Massa, Miss Mary and Miss Martha, “but it is ’man proposes and God disposes.’”