.

Q. How many children are there on your own property?
--A. I could scarcely form an idea.

Q. There are five schools?
--A. There are five schools, and I should suppose from 300
to 500 children.

Q. Those are educated in public schools?
--A. Yes, sir.

Q. I understand you to say that nearly all of them attend?
--A. Yes, sir.

Q. For how long a time each year is school kept open?
--A. The schools extend all the year except vacation, I
think, which is about three months; but a number of the
negroes will withdraw their children from school during
cotton-picking season, to help them pick the crop.

Q. Between what ages do they actually attend school?
--A. From 6 to 19. I know a great many of them who are going
to school who are 17, 18, and 19, who can just begin to read
and write a little.

Q. Do you find any inclination among the older negroes who
are past school age to endeavor to read and write?
--A. Not very much, but they are anxious their children
should, and appeal to them. In almost every instance where a
man has a child who can read and write, he will bring him
along with him when he makes a contract. They are very proud
of their children being able to read and write.

Q. Are they satisfied, as a rule, with their simply
becoming able to read and write, or do they like to have
them make a little further progress in mathematics,
geography, &c.?
--A. As a class they look to them simply to read and write.
They think when they have got that far they know everything;
but then there are certain ones who have ambition, just as
it is with our own race. There are some men who have tastes
for literature, and receive a better education than others
do, but it is not the same proportion of the negro race of
course that it is with our own. There are instances where
negroes are also anxious to obtain a collegiate education,
and become school teachers.

Q. I do not know that you are able to state to what extent
they actually attend school in the hill districts?
--A. I am not.

Q. You speak both of your own plantation and of other
plantations as well as your own in that regard?
--A. I am speaking of the alluvial lands along the
Mississippi River.

Q. In Arkansas?
--A. Not only in