“Well, I reckon it’s my way o’ treatin’ ’em, much as anything. I never hev no difficulty with ’em. Hen’t licked a nigger in five year, ’cept maybe sprouting some of the young ones sometimes. Fact, my niggers never want no lookin’ arter; they jus tek ker o’ themselves. Fact, they do tek a greater interest in the crops than I do myself. There’s another thing—I ’spose ’twill surprise you—there ent one of my niggers but what can read; read good, too—better ’n I can, at any rate.”
“How did they learn?”
“Taught themselves. I b’lieve there was one on ’em that I bought, that could read, and he taught all the rest. But niggers is mighty apt at larnin’, a heap more ’n white folks is.”
I said that this was contrary to the generally received opinion.
“Well, now, let me tell you,” he continued; “I had a boy to work, when I was buildin’, and my boys jus teachin’ him night times and such, he warn’t here more’n three months, and he larned to read as well as any man I ever heerd, and I know he didn’t know his letters when he come here. It didn’t seem to me any white man could have done that; does it to you, now?”
“How old was he?”
“Warn’t more’n seventeen, I reckon.”
“How do they get books—do you get them for them?”
“Oh no; get ’em for themselves.”
“How?”