“One time old marster say ‘Charlie how come this yard so dirty?’ You know there would be a little track around. I said, will you give me that old gray horse after I clean it and he said ‘Yes’. So I call up the boys and we’d clean it up, and then the old gray horse was mine. It was just the old worn out stock you understand.
“I want to tell you when the old folks got sick they would bleed them, and when the young folks got sick they give you some blue mass and turn you loose.
“I remember when old marster’s son Sam went to war and got shot in the leg. Old marster was cryin’ ‘Oh, my Sam is shot’. He got in a scrummage you know. He got well but he never could straighten out his leg.
“When freedom come, I heard ’em prayin’ for the men to come back home. Miss Mary called us all up and told us our age and said, ‘You all are free and can go where you want to go, or you can stay here.’
“Oh yes, the Ku Klux use to run my daddy if they caught him out without a pass, but I remember he could outrun them—he was stout as a mule.
“I been here so long and what little I’ve picked up is just a little fireside learnin’. I can read and write my name. I can remember when we thought a newspaper opened out was a bed-cover. But a long time after the war when the public school come about, I had the privilege of going to school three weeks. Yes mam, I was swift and I think I went nearly through the first reader.
“I am a great lover of the Bible and I’m a member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church.
“I’m glad to give you some kind of idea ’bout my age and life. I really am glad. Goodbye.”