Then he was told about "Green Pastures" and asked what he thought of it. "Why my Lord have Mercy! The Lord is a Spirit—we are changed.
"I roll the carpet for Missis to get in the carriage; a two-foot carpet from the house roll to the stoop for the carriage.
"My mother—yes Ma'am—108 years old—a smart woman in the house. Oh my Lord, Missis—cook! She wouldn't kill a chicken out of the yard; she had a coop to put them in, and it was cleaned out every day. My mother would fix the flowers; she would take this little flower, and that little flower, and put them together, and make up a beautiful bouquet, and hand them out to everybody. My father knew all about planting; the people would come to ask 'Daddy Tony' how to plant this and when to plant that.
"I heard all the War talk, I saw a comet." (Indicating its position in the heavens, he seemed inspired, forgot his surroundings, looking back). "I saw the curtain-cloud—and snow clouds—rolls and rolls. In the War I was with my master, Capt. Cherry, and Dr. Knox, Captain in the Civil War, and Capt. Dick McMichael—all those fine gentlemen. They had hog-skin saddles that creaked—Crench—crench—as they rode;" (He was enthusiastic) "the way they could ride! Those hosses were as sensible as people; they could jump from side to side; they knew everything.
"Capt. Cherry said to me—'Why weren't you white! Why weren't you white! Why weren't you white!' I lost my old Captain—then I was with Gen. Frank Bamberg, and with his brother, Capt. Isaac Bamberg—I was Orderly. Sometimes in the War we had one hardtack a day, and had to drink water on 'um, to make 'um swell. We had to get out salt out of water, most anywhere."
"I saw Gen. Lee many times; I knew him; he had his close beard around his face; he looked fine and sat his horse so splendid." Mack was asked the color of the horse, and described the gray. Here he remembered the battlefield—"I did this"—he enacted silently—dexterously—the placing of the dead and wounded on the stretchers and bearing them away—worked so rapidly that his breath was labored. "I made the balloon flight—my eyes were good—they carried me because any object that I saw, I knew what it was; a rope ladder led up to the basket—the beautiful thing—we went up on the other side of Beaufain street; there were no houses there then, and we came down on the Citadel Green."
Mack had spoken several times with enthusiasm of the officer's cavalry 'pump sole boots'. After he had polished them, "Capt. Edwards (of Elloree) gave me a $500.00 bill for cleaning his 'pump sole boots'." Mack proudly enacted the Captain's jolly but pompous manner, as he gave the bill, and added, "I had thousands of dollars in Confederate money when the War broke up. If we had won I would be rich."
After War period: "The time Capt. Wade Hampton was stumping I followed him all over the State; I led 500 head; was with him to Camden, Orangeburg and all the way to Hampton County; led 500 Negroes through the County; I was Captain of them; I rode 'Nellie Ponsa' and wore my red jacket and cap and boots; I had a sword too; my 'red shirt' died year before last."
Asked if he knew 'Riley', Mack answered promptly—"'Democrat Riley', yes Ma'am, used to drive that fine carriage, and old Col. Cunningham's family." Riley was an ex-slave, a tall black man, devoted to the South, as he was, a Democrat of high principle, and respected by all—hated by many—a power in himself.
"I lose all my ancestors. I got a niece, Queenie Brown, in Orangeburg; I got a daughter in New Jersey; one in New York, married to a Clyde Line man; lost sight of both; both old.