"We were married only three and a half years when she died. Her name was
Lillie Love Douglass before she married me. She was a perfect angel.
White folks tried to say that she was white. We had two children. Both
of them are dead. One died while giving birth to a child and the other
died at the age of thirty-three.

"I married the second time. I met my second wife the same way I met the
first. I was working on the railroad and she was traveling. I was a
coach cleaner. We lived together three years and were separated over
foolishness. She had long beautiful hair and an old friend of hers
stopped by once and said that he ought to have a lock of her hair to
braid into a watch chain. She said, 'I'll give you a lock.' I said, 'You
and your hair both belong to me; how are you going to give it away
without asking me.' She might have been joking, and I was not altogether
serious. But it went on from there in to a deep quarrel. One day, I had
been drinking heavily, and we had an argument over the matter. I don't
remember what it was all about. Anyway, she called me a liar and I
slapped her before I thought.

"For two or three weeks after that we stayed together just as though
nothing had happened, except that she never had anything more to say to
me. She would lie beside me at night but wouldn't say a word. One day I
gave her a hundred dollars to buy some supplies for the store. She was a
wonderful hat maker, and we had put up a store which she operated while
I was out on the road working. When I came back that evening, the store
was wide open and she was gone. She had slipped off and gone home from
the station across the river. I didn't find that out till the next day.
She hid during part of the night at the home of one of my friends. And
another of my friends carried her across the river and put her on the
train. I was out with a shotgun watching. I am glad I did not meet them.