"Have you got any corn for my horse?"
"Course we have; we'uns got a cow and we always keep fodder and corn both."
I went back, got my horse and put him in an old shanty back of the house and gave him a good feed of corn and fodder. When I went in after taking care of my horse old aunty was bustling around getting supper. Just then the old man stepped in. He had an old flint-lock gun in one hand and in the other he had a possum, sure enough. The negro was all of six feet in height and was just the opposite of aunty. He looked as if the wind would blow him away. His gun was as long as himself and looked as if it had been made in the year of one, it was so battered up. The stock had been broken many times and tied up with strings, and the old darkey looked about the same as his gun. No shoes on his feet, and oh! such feet it hasn't been my lot to see for many a day. His ankle was right in the middle of his foot. When he saw me I do not think I ever saw anyone more astonished than he was then. His eyes looked like two peeled onions. He commenced to open his mouth and the more he looked the wider it opened. "Well, uncle," said I, "what do you think of me?" "Well," said he, shutting his mouth, "I don't know." I thought we were in the same boat as far as that was concerned. Old aunty walked up to him, snatched the possum out of his hand, gave him a smart box on the ear and said: "Ain't you got no manners? standin' der wid yer mouf open as wide as a barn door! You don't know nuffin; you make me awful 'shamed. Now, you go and sit down dere and don't open dat big mouf of yours till supper. Does ye heah?" I think he heard, for let me tell you, when she opened her mouth you would think there was a cyclone coming.
It did not take aunty long to take the skin off that possum and clean it. She soon had it in the skillet with sweet potatoes.
Old aunty passed close to me and saw my saber. "Oh," said she, "what's dat?" I told her that the right name for it was saber, but most of the boys called it a cheese knife. "For de Lawd sake, is dat what you cut cheese wid?" I explained its use to her, after which she asked me if I was a Yankee soldier. I answered in the affirmative. "Now, is dat so? My old marster told me that you'ns had horns." Now, it may be that the reader will think this overdrawn, but let me say that most any of my comrades will corroborate my statement when I say that not only did the negroes think that the Yankees had horns, but there were a great many white folks who would tell us the same thing. I remember on one of our foraging trips we came up to a very nice farm house, and an old lady came out and said, "Are you'ns Yankees? why, I thought they had horns."
After old aunty got her curiosity satisfied she stepped to the door and got two large ears of corn and walked up to the fireplace and threw them into the fire.
"What are you doing that for?" I asked.
"I is goin' to make coffee out of dat corn. Don't you like coffee?"
"Yes, but I have better coffee than that."
"Good Lord! has you got store coffee?"