"They went in the pantry and got everything they wanted to eat. And they had a big feast. While they were feasting, the old man came in disguised as a tramp—face smutty and clothes all dirty and raggedy. They couldn't tell who he was. He walked up just as though he wanted to eat and begged the boys for something to eat. The boys said to him, 'Stan' back, you shabby rascal, you; if'n they's anything left, you get some; if'n they ain't none left, you get none. This is our time. Old massa done gone to PhilameYawk and we're having a big time.'
"After they were through, they did give him a little something but they still didn't know him. I never did learn the details about what happened after they found out who the tramp was. My father told me about it.
Whipping a Slave
"I heard my father say his old master give him two licks with a whip once. Him and another man had been off and they came in. Master drove up in a double surrey. He had been to town and had bought the boys a pair of boots apiece. He told them as he got out of the surrey to take his horses out and feed them. My father's friend was there with him and he said: 'Le's get our boots before we feed the horses.' After that the master walked out on the porch and he had on crying boots. The horses heard them squeaking and they nickered.
"Master said, 'Henry, I thought I told you to feed them horses. Henry was so taken aback that he couldn't say a thing. Henry was my father, you know. Master went and got his cowhide. He said, 'Are you going to obey my orders?' About the time he said that, he hit my father twice with the cowhide, and my father said, 'Oh pray, master, oh pray,' and he let him go. He beat the other fellow pretty bad because he told him to 'Le's get the boots first.'
"Old master would get drunk sometimes and get on the niggers and beat them up. He would have them stark naked and would be beating them. Then old missis would come right out there and stop him. She would say, 'I didn't come all the way here from North Carolina to have my niggers beat up for nothin'.' She'd take hold of the cowhide, and he would have to quit. My father had both her picture and the old man's.
Prayer
"I can remember how my mother used to pray out in the field. We'd be picking cotton. She would go off out there in the ditch a little ways. It wouldn't be far, and I would listen to her. She would say to me: 'Pray, son,' and I would say, 'Mother, I don't know how to pray,' and she would say, 'Well, just say Lord have mercy.' That gave me religious inclinations. I cultivated religion from that time on. I would try to pray and finally I learned. One day I was out in the field and it was pouring down rain, and I was standing up with tears in my eyes trying to pray as she taught me to. We weren't picking cotton then. I was just walking out. My mother was dead. I would be walking out and whenever I would get the notion I would stop right there and go to praying.
"In slave times, they would have a prayer meeting out in some of the places and they would turn a pot down out in front of the door. It would be on a stick or something and raised up a short distance from the ground so that it wouldn't set flat on the ground. It seems that that would catch the sound and keep it right around there. They would sing that old song:
'We will camp awhile in the wilderness
And then I'm going home.'