ho played fer frolics, and fer de white folks,
too."

According to Melinda Mitchell, who lived on the plantation of Rev. Allen
Dozier in Edgefield County, South Carolina, the field hands and house
servants forgot cares in merriment and dancing after the day's work was
over. When asked about her master, a Baptist preacher, condoning dancing
Melinda replied with the simple statement, "He wasn't only a preacher,
he was a religious man. De slaves danced at de house of a man who
'tended de stack, way off in de fiel' away fum de big house." They
danced to the tunes of banjos and a homemade instrument termed, "Quill",
evidently some kind of reed. It was fairly certain that the noise of
merriment must have been heard at the big house, but the slaves were not
interrupted in their frolic.

"My mammy wus de bes' dancer on de plantachun," Melinda said proudly.
"She could dance so sturdy she could balance a glass o' water on her
head an never spill a drop." She recalls watching the dancers late into
the night until she fell asleep.

She could tell of dances and good times in the big house as well as in
the quarters. The young ladies were belles. They were constantly
entertaining. One day a wandering fortune-teller came on the piazza
where a crowd of young people were gathered, and asked to tell the young
ladies' fortunes. Everything was satisfactory until he told Miss Nettie
she would marry a one-armed man. At this the young belle was so
indignant that the man was driven off and the dogs set on him. "But de
fortune teller told true-true," Melinda said. A faint ominous note crept
into her voice and her eyes seemed to be seeing events that had
transpired almost three-quarters of a century ago. "After de war Miss
Nettie did marry a one-arm man, like de fortune-teller said, a
Confederate officer, Captain Shelton, who had come back wid his sleeve
empty."

SLAVE SALES

There were two legal places for selling slaves in Augusta; the Lower
Market, at the corner of Fifth and Broad Street, and the Upper Market at
the corner of Broad and Marbury Streets. The old slave quarters are
still standing in Hamburg, S.C., directly across the Savannah River from
the Lower Market in Augusta. Slaves who were to be put up for sale were
kept there until the legal days of sales.

Advertisements in the newspapers of that day seem to point to the fact
that most slave sales were the results of the death of the master, and
the consequent settlement of e