After the dancing was over we had our presents, master giving to the
men, and mistress to the women; then the slaves would go to their
quarters and continue to dance the rest of the five or six days, and
would sometimes dance until eight o'clock Sunday morning. The cabins
were mostly made of logs, and there were large cracks in them so that a
person could see the light in them for miles in the night, and of course
the sun's rays would shine through them in the daytime, so on Sunday
morning when they were dancing and did not want to stop you would see
them filling up the cracks with old rags. The idea was that it would not
be Sunday inside if they kept the sun out, and thus they would not
desecrate the Sabbath; and these things continued until the freedom of
the slaves.

Perhaps my readers would like to know if most of the negroes were
inclined to violate the Sabbath. They were; as the masters would make
them do unnecessary work, they got into the habit of disregarding the
day as one for rest, and did many things Sunday that would not be
allowed in the North. At that time, if you should go through the South
on those large cotton and rice plantations, while you would find some
dancing on Sunday, others would be in the woods and fields hunting
rabbits and other game, and some would be killing pigs belonging to
their masters or neighbors. I remember when a small boy I went into the
woods one Sunday morning with one of my fellow negroes whose name was
Munson, but we called him Pash, and we killed one of master's pigs, hid
it under the leaves until night, then took it home and dressed it. That
was the only time I killed a pig, but I knew of thousands of cases like
this in the time of slavery. But thank God, the year of Jubilee has
come, and the negroes can return from dancing, from hunting, and from
the master's pig pens on Sundays and become observers of the Sabbath, of