as two and a half years, as near as I can remember, when my own slave
mother's house was burned to the ground, and I shall never forget that
Saturday night. My mother's husband had gone to a dance and mother was
there alone with her little ones, and we all came near getting burned
up. We were all asleep when I awoke and found the house in a blaze. I
did not know enough or I was so much scared that I did not call to my
mother, but I think that she heard me when I rolled out of the bed, and
she was out of the bed quick as could be and getting the feather beds
she threw them out of the door and got the children and threw them out,
and she, finding that she did not have them all, said, "My God! I have
not all of my little ones;" and she ran in the house to look and she
found me under the bed, for I saw so much fire that I was getting out of
it, and God be praised that I was saved from that fire, and I have not
had the time to run after any fires since, for that fire was all the
fire I want.

I had not to stay there then, for the time is near at hand when I shall
go to my white mother's to live, for she is in Tennessee and will come
home soon to be with her darling child; and when she shall start again I
shall go, and now the times are all well for me as then, but the time
has come that the Lord has called her away from her child to be with
Him, and how could I live without her? And she was to leave her sick
child there for her own mother to care for, and God will raise up
friends in this lonely world to look after those that cry unto heaven,
believing that He is a hearer of the true prayer. I shall always
remember that Saturday afternoon when I was lying so sick when my
dearly beloved white mother took so sick, and they had the doctor there
for me, and he had to see after her the same time, and she was getting
so much worse all the time and the doctor had not any hopes of her, and
they took me from the room where she was, to a room upstairs and she had
them to take me down to look at her once more. That was on Sunday and on
Monday she heard the call to her to come up to that blessed land where
she should be forever with the Lord and her dear husband.

What a glory it must be for those that have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb.

I can call to mind when she the blessed one, that I call my white
mother, went to get me some shoes and a fine hat, and the one that sold
them told her, as she looke