s ten dollars per month, and God
bless those of my sisters who could help mother to care for her little
ones, for they had not been called home then, and God be praised for all
that we have ever did for her love and comfort while she kept house.

The subject was only a few years old, when she saw her heart so fixed
that she could not leave me at my mother's any longer, so she took me to
be her own dear, loving child, to eat, drink, sleep and to go wherever
she went, if it was for months, or even years; I had to be there as her
own and not as a servant, for she did not like that, but I was there as
her loving child for her to care for me, and everything that I wanted I
had; truly do I feel grateful to my Heavenly Father for all of those
blessings that came to me in the time that I needed so much of love and
care.

This dear lady, Mrs. Bettie House, my white mother, died at the
beginning of the war and then the time came for poor me to go to my own
dear mother again for awhile, and soon the time came for us to be parted
asunder, where we did not see one another any more until after the war
of 1865. And we all thought that mother was dead, for we did not hear
any tidings of her after she had reached the far South.

I shall never forget that lovely Sunday morning when I saw my dear
mother returning again to her own native home and her own dear ones once
more, but mother would not go to the house with us, as she did not want
to take the law in her own hands. So she told sister and I where she was
stopping and told us to come to her after we had told the gentleman
where we lived, and I went to him and told him that mother had come back
and wanted to have us to come where she was staying. He, Mr. House, did
not want us to go, and I took my oldest sister and marched out to go
where mother was and he did not like that freedom, and he tried to find
which way that we had gone to the place, but he did not find us, and we
had been to the place where the people were that had homes, and that
they would kill us at first sight, and that was all that I wanted to
see, and I did not find one thing true of their sayings.

Mother now has to tell the gentleman where to find all of her own dear
ones whom God in His love for had kept for her, and she should have
been very grateful to Him that her life had been prolonged and all that
she had left alive were still alive, awaiting for her to return, and
finding that her children were all over i