STARTS ON HIS WANDERINGS.
So I packed my belongings into a pair of old saddle-bags, which was sent down the river to Mobile. I collected every cent due me in Camden and struck out across country for Kilpatrick's home in Clark county on foot. In those days it was rare to see a decent appearing white chap thus traveling. White folks looked askance and suspicious, and the darkies wondered. It was a comfort to hear a darky say to her companions: "Yander boy haint no po' white trash." She didn't know how scantily filled was my purse.
The Kilpatricks treated me like a prince, paid me liberally for services to afflicted relative, urged me to stay with them longer, and bade me Godspeed in my desperate undertaking. Resuming my tramp, it was not far to the Tombigbee, where a steamboat picked me up and in due time landed me in Mobile, where my first care was to hunt up my old saddle-bags. I forgot to pay the consignee, who perhaps thought me a rich planter's son, whose cotton crop he hoped to handle later on.