that in addition to the immediate family there
sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who slept
in the same room. On more than one occasion I went outside the house
to get ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to bed. They
usually contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep, either on the
floor or in a special part of another's bed. Rarely was there any place
provided in the cabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but
usually some provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard.

The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread. At times I
have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and "black-eye peas"
cooked in plain water. The people seemed to have no other idea than to
live on this fat meat and corn bread,--the meat, and the meal of which
the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store in
town, notwithstanding the face that the land all about the cabin homes
could easily have been made to produce nearly every kind of garden
vegetable that is raised anywhere in the country. Their one object
seemed to be to plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases cotton was
planted up to the very door of the cabin.

In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had been
bought, or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at a cost of
as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of
the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars. I remember that on one
occasion when I went into one of these cabins for dinner, when I sat
down to the table for a meal with the four members of the family, I
noticed that, while there were five of us at the table, there was but
one fork for the five of us to use. Naturally there was an awkward pause
on my part. In the opposite corner of that same cabin was an organ
for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthly
instalments. One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!

In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so
worthless that they did not keep correct time--and if they had, in nine
cases out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could
have told the time of day--while the organ, of course, was rarely used
for want of a person who could play upon it.

In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat down to the
table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could see plainly that
this was an awkward and u