laborers and running errands, he had little to do.
Most of the time of the slave children was spent in playing ball and
wrestling and foraging the woods for berries and fruits and playing
games as other children. They were often joined in their play by the
master's children, who taught them to read and write and fired Duncan
with the ambition to be free, so that he could "wear a frill on his
colar and own a pair of shoes that did not have brass caps on the toes"
and require the application of fat to make them shine.

Wearing his shoes shined as explained above and a coarse homespun suit
dyed with oak bark, indigo or poke berries, he went to church on Sunday
afternoons after the whites had had their services and listened to
sermons delivered by white ministers who taught obedience to their
masters. After the services, most of the slaves would remove their shoes
and carry them in their hands, as they were unaccustomed to wearing
shoes except in winter.

The women were given Saturday afternoons off to launder their clothes
and prepare for Sunday's services. All slaves were required to appear on
Monday mornings as clean as possible with their clothing mended and
heads combed.

Lye soap was used both for laundering and bathing. It was made from
fragments of fat meat and skins that were carefully saved for that
purpose. Potash was secured from oak ashes. This mixture was allowed to
set for a certain period of time, then cooked to a jelly-like
consistency. After cooling, the soap was cut into square bars and
"lowanced out" (allowance) to the slaves according to the number in each
family. Once Duncan was given a bar of "sweet" soap by his mistress for
doing a particularly nice piece of work of polishing the harness of her
favorite mare and so proud was he of the gift that he put it among his
Sunday clothes to make them smell sweet. It was the first piece of
toilet sopa that he had ever seen; and it caused quite a bit of envy
among the other slave children.

Duncan Gaines does not remember his grandparents but thinks they were
both living on some nearby plantation. His father was the plantation
blacksmith and Duncan liked to look on as plowshares, single trees,
horse shoes, etc were turned out or sharpened. His mother was strong and
healthy, so she toiled all day in the fields. Duncan always listened for
his mother's return from the field, which was heraled by a song, no
matter how tired she was. She was very fond of her ch