the same as in the morning, except that we
had meat twice a week.

On very few estates are the colored people provided with any bedding:
the best masters give only a blanket; this master gave none; a board,
which the slave might pick up any where on the estate, was all he had
to lie on. If he wished to procure bedding, he could only do so by
working at nights. For warmth, therefore, the negroes generally sleep
near a large fire, whether in the kitchen, or in their log huts; their
legs are often in this way blistered and greatly swelled, and
sometimes badly burnt: they suffer severely from this cause.

When the water-mill did not supply meal enough, we had to grind with
the hand-mill. The night was employed in this work, without any thing
being taken from the labor of the day. We had to take turn at it,
women as well as men; enough was to be ground to serve for the
following day.

I was eight months in the field. My master, Mr. Sawyer, agreed to
allow me eight dollars a month, while so employed, towards buying
myself; it will be seen he did not give me even that. When I first
went to work in the corn-field, I had paid him $230 towards this third
buying of my freedom. I told him, one night, I could not stand his
field work any longer; he asked, why; I said I was almost starved to
death, and had long been unaccustomed to this severe labor. He wanted
to know why I could not stand it as well as the rest. I told him he
knew well I had not been used to it for a long time; that his overseer
was the worst that had ever been on the plantation, and that I could
not stand it. He said he would direct Mr. Brooks to give each of us a
pint of meal or corn every evening, which we might bake, and which
would serve us next morning, till our breakfast came at noon. The
black people were much rejoiced that I got this additional allowance
for them. But I was not satisfied; I wanted liberty.

On Sunday morning, as master was sitting in his porch, I went to him,
and offered to give him the $230 I had already paid him, if, beside
them, he would take for my freedom the $600 he had given for me. He
drove me away, saying I had no way to get the money. I sat down for a
time, and went to him again. I repeated my offer to procure the $690,
and he again said I could not. He called his wife out of the room to
the porch, and said to her, 'Don't you think Moses has taken to
getting drunk?' She asked me if it was so; I denied it, when she
inquired w