...'
"Well, as I was a saying, we didn't work so hard, them days. We got up
early, 'cause the fires had to be lighted to make the house warm for the
white folks, but in them days, dinner was in the middle of the day--the
quality had theirs at twelve o'clock--and they had a light supper at
five and when we was through, we was through, and free to go the
quarters and set around and smoke a pipe and rest.
"Yes'm they taught us to read and write. Sunday afternoons, my young
mistresses used to teach the pickaninnies to read the Bible. Yes'm we
was free to go to see the niggers on other plantations but we had to
have a pass an' we was checked in an' out. No'm, I ain't never seen no
slaves sold, nor none in chains, and I ain't never seen no Ku Kluxers.
"I live with the Wakefiel's till I was 'leven and then Marse Wakefiel'
give me to my young mistress when she married and went to North Carolina
to live. And 'twas in North Carolina that I seed Sherman, 'deed I did!
I seed Sherman and his sojers, gathering up all the hogs and all the
hosses, and all the cows and all the little cullud chillen. Them was
drefful days! These is drefful days, too. Old man Satan, he sure am on
earth now.
"Yes'm, I believes in ghos'ses. I ain't never seed 'em but I is feel
'em. I live once in a house where a man was killed. I lie in my bed and
they close in on me! No'm, I ain't afraid. The landlord say when I move
out, 'you is stay there longer than anybody I ever had.
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