uggling along. All the other girls were trying to have a good time.
But she would be settin' down trying to make a quilt or something else
useful, and he said to a friend of his, 'That woman would make a good
wife; I am going to marry her.' And he did.

"She used to spin her fine and coarse sewing thread and yarn to make
socks and stockings with. Her stockings and socks for the babies and
papa would always be yarn. She could do pretty work. She had a large
family. She had seventeen children and she kept them all in things she
made herself. She raised ten of them. She would make the thread and yarn
and the socks and stockings for all of these. I have known the time when
she used to make coats and pants for my father and brothers. She would
make them by hand because they didn't have any machines then. Of course,
she made all the underwear. She put up preserves and jellies for us to
eat in the winter. She used to put up kraut and stuff by the barrel. I
have seen some happy days when I was with my daddy and mother. He raised
pigs and hogs and chickens and cows. He raised all kinds of peas and
vegetables. He raised those things chiefly for the home, and he made
cotton for money. He would save about eight or ten bales and put them
under his shed for stockings and clothes and everything. He would have
another cotton selling in March.

"When my father was in the army, he would sometimes be out in the
weather, he told us, and he and the other soldiers would wrap up in
their blankets and sleep right in the snow itself.

"I farmed all my life until 1897. I farmed all my life till then. I was
at home. I married in 1895. My first husband and I made three crops and
then he stopped and went to public work. After that I never farmed any
more but went to cooking and doing laundry work. I came from Clarendon
here in 1901.

"I never had any experiences with the Yankees. My mother used to tell
how they took all the old master's stuff--mules and sugar--and then
throwed it out and rode their horses through it when they didn't want it
for theirselves.

"I married a second time. I have been single now for the last three
years. My husband died on the twentieth of August three years ago. I
ain't got no business here at all. I ought to be at my home living well.
But I work for what I get and I'm proud of it.

"A working woman has many things to contend with. That girl downstairs
keeps a gang of men coming and going, and sometimes some of th