Shirt
campaign was. You never see so much talkin', fightin', and fussin' as
dat. You know de Yankees was still here and they not 'fraid, and de
Hampton folks was not 'fraid, so it was a case of knock down and drag
out most of de time, it seem to me. Long at de end, dere was two
governors; one was in de Wallace House and one in de Capitol. Men went
'bout town wid deir guns.

"Mammy keep busy cookin', nussin', and washin', and us chillun help. You
know I had two brudders older than me and a little baby brudder 'bout a
year old, when my mammy rent a small farm from Master Greenfield, down
at de end of Calhoun Street, near de Broad River. We plant cotton. I was
then eleven years old and my brudder was twelve and thirteen. My mammy
help us plant it befo' she go to work at de hotel.

"She was home washin', one day, when my brudders and me was choppin'
cotton. We chop 'til 'bout eleven o'clock dat mornin' and we say: 'When
we gits out de rows to de big oak tree we'll sit down and rest.' We
chillun lak each other and we joke and work fast 'til we comes to de end
of de rows and in de shade of de big oak. Then we sets down, dat is, my
oldest brudder and me, 'cause my young brudder was a little behind us in
his choppin'. As he near de finish, his hoe hit somethin' hard and it
ring. Ha rake de dirt 'way and keep diggin', light lak.

"What you doin', brudder?' I say. He say: 'Tryin' to find out what dis
is. It seem to be a pot lid.' Then we jump up and go to him and all of
us grabble dirt 'way and sho' 'nough it was a pot lid and it was on a
pot. We digs it out, thinkin' it would be a good thing to take home. It
was so heavy, it take us all to lift it out.

"It was no sooner out than we takes off de lid and we is sho' s'prised
at what we see. Big silver dollars lay all over de top. We takes two of
them and drops them together and they ring just lak we hear them ring on
de counters. Then we grabble in de pot for more. De silver went down
'bout two inches deep. Twenty dollar gold pieces run down 'bout four
inches or so and de whole bottom was full of big bundles of twenty
dollar greenbacks.

"We walks up to de house feelin' pretty big and my oldest brudder was
singin':

'Hawk and buzzard went to law,
Hawk come back wid a broken jaw.'

"Mammy say widout lookin' at us: 'What you all comin' to dinner so soon
for?' Then she looked up and see de pot and say: 'Land sakes, what you
all got?' Then we puts de big pot down in