ace.

"One time I's livin' 'nother place and it am 'twixt sundown and dusk. I
had a li'l boy 'hind me and I seed a big sow with no head comin' over de
fence. My ma, she allus say what I see might be 'magination and to turn
my head and look 'gain and I does dat. But it still dere. Den I seed a
hoss goin' down de road and he drag a chain, and cross de bridge and
turn down de side road. But when I git to de side road I ain't seed no
hoss or nothin'. I didn't say nothin' to de li'l boy 'hind me on de mule
till I gits most home, den asks him did he see anythin'. He say no. I
wouldn't tell him 'fore dat, 'cause I 'fraid he light out and outrun me
and I didn't want to be by myself with dem things. When I gits home and
tell everybody, dey say dat a man name McCoy, what was kilt dere and I
seed he spirit.

"I's 'bout twenty-one when I marries Mandy Green. Us has twelve chillen,
and a world of grandchillen. I travels all over Louisiana and Texas in
my time, and come here three year ago. My son he work in de box fact'ry
here, and he git a bodily injurement while he workin' and die, and I
come here to de burial and I been here ever since.

420269

FRANK BELL, 86, was a slave of Johnson Bell, who ran a saloon in
New Orleans. Frank lives in Madisonville, Texas.

"I was owned by Johnson Bell and born in New Orleans, in Louisiana.
'Cordin' to the bill of sale, I'm eighty-six years old, and my master
was a Frenchman and was real mean to me. He run saloon and kept bad
women. I don't know nothing 'bout my folks, if I even had any, 'cept
mama. They done tell me she was a bad woman and a French Creole.

"I worked 'round master's saloon, kep' everything cleaned up after
they'd have all night drinkin' parties, men and women. I earned nickels
to tip off where to go, so's they could sow wild oats. I buried the
nickels under rocks. If master done cotch me with money, he'd take it
and beat me nearly to death. All I had to eat was old stuff those people
left, all scraps what was left.

"One time some bad men come to master's and gits in a shootin' scrape
and they was two men kilt. I sho' did run. But master cotch me and make
me take them men to the river and tie a weight on them, so they'd sink
and the law wouldn't git him.

"The clothes I wore was some master's old ones. They allus had holes in
them. Master he stay drunk nearly all time and was mean to his slave.
I'm the only one he had, and didn't cost him nothing. H