Proclamation. Three children--John, my older brother, Amanda, my
sister, and myself--had a pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be
more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid
upon the dirt floor.

I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and
pastimes that I engaged in during my youth. Until that question
was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of
my life that was devoted to play. From the time that I can
remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied
in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more
useful man if I had had time for sports. During the period that I
spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service,
still I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards,
carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mill to
which I used to take the corn, once a week, to be ground. The
mill was about three miles from the plantation. This work I
always dreaded. The heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the
back of the horse, and the corn divided about evenly on each
side; but in some way, almost without exception, on these trips,
the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and would fall
off the horse, and often I would fall with it. As I was not
strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would have to
wait, sometimes for many hours, till a chance passer-by came
along who would help me out of my trouble. The hours while
waiting for some one were usually spent in crying. The time
consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill, and by
the time I got my corn ground and reached home it would be far
into the night. The road was a lonely one, and often led through
dense forests. I was always frightened. The woods were said to be