you would not wonder that there is nothing but a wreck left of me. I
married a plantation blacksmith when a young girl of fifteen, and left
my people in Indiana, as my husband was hired by a rich slave-holder,
Mr. Samuel Lay, who lived on Red River. We lived on his plantation
many years, though he used to do a great deal in ironing negroes for
neighboring planters."

I told her of the slave-irons I had found on a deserted plantation, to
take to my Michigan home.

"Don't let the people here know it," she said, "or they will take them
from you and drop them in the river; for they bury them, or throw them
in the river or creek, to put them out of sight of Yankees. When the
city was taken they sent painters all over the city, with brushes and
paint-buckets, to paint over all advertising signs of slaves for
sale, and hid all slave-irons they could lay hands on."

I told her that was done in Natchez, when that city was taken.

"And that is just what they did," she went on, "in Vicksburg. Among
the slave-irons you found, were there any of those new-fashioned
gags?"

I told her that there were not.

"You ought to get some of them. If I were at home I could get you two
or three kinds; but you ought to see the new gags anyhow. They are
made with barbs, as they make on fish-hooks, and they pierce the
tongue if they attempt to speak or make a noise. They can't live many
hours with one of them in their mouths, for the tongue swells up so.