“Oh, Li’l’ Hannibal, run ‘round to the store and buy a bag of flour.”
“Oh, Li’l’ Hannibal, fetch your basket and pick a li’l’ cotton off the edge of the field.”
So they kept poor little Hannibal toting ‘most all day long, and he had only four or five hours to play.
Well, one morning when Li’l’ Hannibal woke up, he made up his mind to something. Before they could ask him to light the kitchen fire, or fill the teakettle, or mix the hoecake, or dust the hearth, or feed the turkeys, or chop any wood, or go to the store, or pick any cotton, he had made up his mind that he was not going to tote for his gran’mammy and his gran’daddy any longer. He was going to run away!
So Li’l’ Hannibal got out of bed very quietly. He put on his li’l’ trousers, and his li’l’ shirt, and his li’l’ suspenders, and his li’l’ shoes—he never wore stockings. He pulled his li’l’ straw hat down tight over his ears, and then Li’l’ Hannibal ran away!
He went down the road past all the cabins. He went under the fence and across the cotton fields. He went through the pine grove past the schoolhouse, stooping down low—so the schoolmistress couldn’t see him—and then he went ‘way, ‘way off into the country.
When he was a long way from town, Li’l’ Hannibal met a possum loping along by the edge of the road, and the possum stopped and looked at Li’l’ Hannibal.
“How do? Where you goin’, Li’l’ Hannibal?” asked the possum.
Li’l’ Hannibal sat down by the side of the road and took off his straw hat to fan himself, for he felt quite warm, and he said,
“I done run away, Br’er Possum, my gran’mammy and my gran’daddy kept me totin’, totin’ for them all the time. I don’t like to work, Br’er Possum.”