stalks and brush. And from that on when they were about eight or nine,
they would pick cotton.

"My mother never did have to do anything round the farm. She lived about
seventy-five miles from it, there where the master had his office. He
was a lawyer. After I was born, she didn't come out to see me but once a
year that I recollect. When she did come, she would bring me some candy
or cakes or something like that.

"I didn't see the soldiers during the time of the war. But I saw plenty
of them afterwards--riding round and telling the niggers they were free.
They had some of the finest saddles I ever seed. You could hear them
creaking a block off. No, I didn't see them while they was fighting. We
were close enough to hear the guns crash, and we could see the light
from them, but I didn't actually see the fightin. The Yankees come
through on every plantation where they were working and entered into
every house and told us we was free. The Yankees did it. They told you
you were free as they were, that you didn't have to stay where you was,
that you didn't have no more master, that you could go and come as you
pleased.

"I got along _hard_ after I was freed. It is a hard matter to tell
you what we could find or get. We used to dig up dirt in the smokehouse
and boil it and dry it and sift it to get the salt to season our food
with. We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and
crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens
with. Jus plenty of niggers then didn't have anything but that to eat.

"Even in slavery times, there was plenty of niggers out of them three
hundred slaves who had to break up old lard gourds and use them for