Certainly an atmosphere like this meant a tropic development for the imagination of a delicate child.  All the games and daily talk concerned fanciful semi-African conditions and strange primal possibilities.  The children of that day believed in spells and charms and bad-luck signs, all learned of their negro guardians.

But if the negroes were the chief companions and protectors of the children, they were likewise one of their discomforts.  The greatest real dread children knew was the fear of meeting runaway slaves.  A runaway slave was regarded as worse than a wild beast, and treated worse when caught.  Once the children saw one brought into Florida by six men who took him to an empty cabin, where they threw him on the floor and bound him with ropes.  His groans were loud and frequent.  Such things made an impression that would last a lifetime.

Slave punishment, too, was not unknown, even in the household.  Jennie especially was often saucy and obstreperous.  Jane Clemens, with more strength of character than of body, once undertook to punish her for insolence, whereupon Jennie snatched the whip from her hand.  John Clemens was sent for in haste.  He came at once, tied Jennie’s wrists together with a bridle rein, and administered chastisement across the shoulders with a cowhide.  These were things all calculated to impress a sensitive child.

In pleasant weather the children roamed over the country, hunting berries and nuts, drinking sugar-water, tying knots in love-vine, picking the petals from daisies to the formula “Love me-love me not,” always accompanied by one or more, sometimes by half a dozen, of their small darky followers.  Shoes were taken off the first of April.  For a time a pair of old woolen stockings were worn, but these soon disappeared, leaving the feet bare for the summer.  One of their dreads was the possibility of sticking a rusty nail into the foot, as this was liable to cause lockjaw, a malady regarded with awe and terror.  They knew what lockjaw was—­Uncle John Quarles’s black man, Dan, was subject to it.  Sometimes when he opened his mouth to its utmost capacity he felt the joints slip and was compelled to put down the cornbread, or jole and greens, or the piece of ’possum he was eating, while his mouth remained a fixed abyss until the doctor came and restored it to a natural position by an exertion of muscular power that would have well-nigh lifted an ox.

Uncle John Quarles, his home, his farm, his slaves, all were sources of never-ending delight.  Perhaps the farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm and the slaves just average negroes, but to those children these things were never apparent.  There was a halo about anything that belonged to Uncle John Quarles, and that halo was the jovial, hilarious kindness of that gentle-hearted, humane man.  To visit at his house was for a child to be in a heaven of mirth and pranks continually.  When the children came for eggs he would say: