ould
horses or cows. Dey was two men. I kin rekellect. I know one was called
Mr. Tom Heckle. He used to buy slaves, speculating. The other was named
Wilson. They would sell your mother from the children. That was the
reason so many colored people married their sisters and brothers, not
knowing until they got to talking about it. One would say, 'I remember
my grandmother,' and another would say, "that's _my_ grandmother," then
they'd find out they were sister and brother.

"Speculators used to steal children," said Eugene. "I saw the wagons.
They were just like the wagons that came from North Carolina with apples
in. Dey had big covers on them. The speculators had plantations where
they kept the children until they were big enough to sell, and they had
an old woman there to tend to those children."

"I was a butler." (A dreamy look came into Eugene's old eyes.) "So I
were young. I saw a girl and fell in love with her, and asked her to
marry me. 'Yes,' she said, 'when I get grown!' I said, 'I am not quite
grown myself.' I was sixteen years old. When I was twenty-one years old
I married her in my father's house. My mother and father were dead then.
I had two sisters left, but my brothers were dead too."

"I quit butling when I got married. They was enlarging the canal here.
It was just wide enough for the big flats to go up with cotton. They
widened it, and I went to work on dat, for $1.25 a day. They got in some
Chinese when it was near finished, but they wasn't any good. The
Irishmen wouldn't work with niggers, because they said they could make
the job last eight years--the niggers worked too fast. They accomplished
it in about four years.

"After working on the canal, I left there and helped dig the foundations
of Sibley Mill. The raceway, the water that run from canal to river, I
helped dig that. Then after that, I went to Mr. Berckmans and worked for
him for fifty years. All my children were raised on his place. That's
how come my boy do garden work now. I worked for 50c a day, but he give
me a house on the place. He 'lowed me to have chickens, a little fence,
and a garden. He was very good to us. That was Mr. P.J. Berckmans. I
potted plants all day long. I used to work at night. I wouldn't draw no
money, just let them keep it for me. After they found out I could read
and write and was an honest fellow, they let me take my work home, and
my children helped me make the apple grass and plum grass, and mulberry
grass