“I used to do ’bout as I was a mind tu, until I was eight or nine year old, though Master and Mistress used to make I and John keep Sunday ’mazin strict; yet, I remember one Sunday, when they was gone to Quaker meetin’, I and Hagar, (she was my sister, and lived with my mother, and mother was free,) well, I and Hagar went down to the creek jist by the house, a fishin’. She stood on the bridge, and I waded out up to my middle, and had big luck, and in an hour I had a fine basket full. But jist then I see a flouncin’ in the water, and a great monstrous big thing got hold of my hook, and yauked it arter him, pole, line, nigger and all, I’d enemost said, and if he didn’t make a squashin’ then I’m a white man. Well, Hagar see it, and she was scart almost to pieces, and off she put for the house, and left me there alone. Well, I thought sure ’nough ’twas the Devil, I’d hearn tell so much ’bout the old feller; and I took my basket and put out for the house like a white-head, and I thought I should die, I was so scart. We got to the house and hid under the bed, all a tremblin’ jist like a leaf, afeard to stir one inch. Pretty soon the old folks comes home, and so out we crawled, and they axed us the matter, and so we up and telled ’em all about it, and Master, says he ‘why sure ’nough ’twas the Devil, and all cause you went a fishin’ on a Sunday, and if you go down there a fishin’ agin Sunday he’ll catch you both, and that’ll be the end of you two snow-balls.”
A. “Didn’t he whip you, Peter, to pay for it?”
P. “Whip us? No, Sir; I tell ye what ’tis, what he telled us ’bout the Devil, paid us more’n all the whippens in creation.”
A. “What was the big thing in the creek?”
P. “Why, I s’pose ’twas a shark; they used to come up the creek from the ocean.”
A. “Did you have much Religious Instruction?”
P. “Why, the old folks used to tell us we musn’t lie and steal and play sabba’day, for if we did, the old boy would come and carry us off; and that was ’bout all the Religion I got from them, and all I knowed ’bout it, as long as I lived there.”
A. “What did you used to do when you got old enough to work?”
P. “Why, I lived in the house, and almost jist like a gal I knew when washin’-day come, and I’d out with the poundin’-barrel, and on with the big kittle, and besides I used to do all the heavy cookin’ in the kitchen, and carry the dinner out to the field hands, and scrub, and scour knives, and all sich work.”
A. “Did you always used to have plenty to eat?”