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CRUEL TREATMENT.

I was but a lad, yet I can remember well the cruel treatment I received.
Some weeks it seemed I was whipped for nothing, just to please my
mistress' fancy. Once, when I was sent to town for the mail and had
started back, it was so dark and rainy my horse got away from me and I
had to stay all night in town. The next morning when I got back home I
had a severe whipping, because the master was expecting a letter
containing money and was disappointed in not receiving it that night, as
he was going to Panola to spend Christmas. However, the day came and all
the family went except me. During the time they were gone the overseer
whipped a man so terribly with the "bull whip" that I had to go for the
doctor, and when Dr. Heningford, the regular family physician, came, he
said it was awful--such cruel treatment, and he complained about it. It
was common for a slave to get an "over-threshing," that is, to be
whipped too much. The poor man was cut up so badly all over that the
doctor made a bran poultice and wrapped his entire body in it. This was
done to draw out the inflammation. It seems the slave had been sick, and
had killed a little pig when he became well enough to go to work, as his
appetite craved hearty food, and he needed it to give him strength for
his tasks. For this one act, comparatively trivial, he was almost
killed. The idea never seemed to occur to the slave holders that these
slaves were getting no wages for their work and, therefore, had nothing
with which to procure what, at times, was necessary for their health and
strength--palatable and nourishing food. When the slaves took anything
the masters called it stealing, yet they were stealing the slaves' time
year after year. When Boss came home he was called on by the town
officials, for the case had been reported to them. Boss, however, got
out of it by saying that he was not at home when the trouble occurred.
The poor slave was sick from his ill treatment some four or five months,
and when he recovered there was a running sore left on his body, from
the deep cuts of the whip, which never healed. I can not forget how he
looked, the sore was a sickening sight; yet, when he was able to walk he
had to return to work in the field.

I had not been at Pontotoc very long when I saw the hounds run a slave,
by name Ben Lyon. "Old Ben," as he was called, ran away and had been
gone a week when he was seen by a woman who