"The slaves lived in old log houses; just one room, one door, one
window, one everything. They had any kind of furniture they could git.
Some of them had old homemade beds and some of them one thing and
another. You know the white folks wasn't goin' to give them no
furniture.
"They had plenty of meat and bread and milk to eat. Coarse food--the
commonest kind of food they could get 'hold of! When I knowed anything,
I was in the big house eating the bes' with the white folks. Some of
them could live well then. My mama gave me to the Owenses--her old
mistress. I was raised on a pallet in the house. I was in the house from
the time I was large enough to be taken from my mother. I didn't never
do any work till I was married. Old mistress wouldn't let me work. Just
keep by her and hand her a drink of water, and on like that. She's dead
now--dead, dead, dead! They didn't leave but two children, they was
'round in the country somewheres then I left there.
"After I married I went to her husband's first wife's child. She had
about nine or ten boys and one girl. I raised part of them. But most of
them was great big children--big enough for me to throw a glass of milk
at their heads. I would fight. Sometimes they used to hear them
hollering and come out, and I would be throwing a glass at one and
jumping across the table at the other. But when them boys grew up, they
loved me just the same as anybody. Nobody in town could touch me, right
or wrong."