ier there. Most any of 'em could pick 900 pounds.
It was heavier and fluffier. We left the cotton country in Mississippi,
but nobody knew anything about cotton out here that I knew of.

"I've heard my parents say too, them men that had plantations and a
great lot of slaves, they would speculate with 'em and would have a
chain that run from the front ones to the back ones. Sometimes they
would have 15 or 20 miles to make to get them to the sale place, but
they couldn't make a break. Where they expected to make a sale, they
kept 'em in corrals and they had a block there to put 'em up on and bid
'em off. The average price was about $500, but some that had good
practice, like a blacksmith, brought a good price, as high as $1,500.

"I heard my mother and father say they would go 15 or 20 miles to a
dance, walkin', and get back before daylight, before the 'padderollers'
got 'em. The slaves would go off when they had no permission and them
that would ketch 'em and whip 'em was the 'padderollers.' Sometimes they
would have an awful race.

"If they happened to be a slave on the plantation that could jes' read a
little print, they would get rid of him right now. He would ruin the
niggers, they would get too smart. The' was no such thing as school here
for culluds in early days. The white folks we was raised up with had
pretty good education. That's why I don't talk like most cullud folks. I
was about grown and the' was an English family settled close, about half
a mile, I guess. They had a little boy, his name was Arthur Ederle, and
he come over and learned me how to spell 'cat' and 'dog' and 'hen' and
such like. I was right around about 20 years old. I couldn't sign my
name when I was 18 years old.

"I can remember one time when I was young, I saw something I couldn't
'magine what it was, like a billygoat reared up on a tree. But I knew
the' wasn't a billygoat round there near, nor no other kinds of goats.
It was in the daytime and I was out in a horse pasture, I was jes'
walkin' along, huntin', when I saw that sight. I guess I got within 50
steps of it, then I turned around and got away. I never did think much
about a ghost, but I think it could be possible.

"I don't remember scarcely anything about the war because I was so
little and times was so different; the country wasn't settled up and
everything was wild, no people, hardly. Of course, my life was in the
woods, you might say, didn't hardly know when Sunday come.

"