"Some of the slaves ran away, but they would catch them and bring them
back, you know. Put the dogs after them. The dogs would just run them up
and bay them just like a coon or 'possum. Sometimes the white people
would make the dogs bite them. You see, when the dogs would run up on
them, they would sometimes fight them, till the white people got there
and then the white folks would make the dogs bite them and make them
quit fighting the dogs.
"One man run off and stayed twelve months once. He come back then, and
they didn't do nothin' to him. 'Fraid he'd run off again, I guess.
"We didn't have no church nor nothing. No Sunday-schools, no nothin'.
Worked from Monday morning till Saturday night. On Sunday we didn't do
nothin' but set right down there on that big plantation. Couldn't go
nowhere. Wouldn't let us go nowhere without a pass. They had the
paterollers out all the time. If they caught you out without a pass,
they would give you twenty-five licks. If you outrun them and got home,
on your master's plantation, you saved yourself the whipping.
"The black people never had no amusement. They would have an old
fiddle--something like that. That was all the music I ever seen.
Sometimes they would ring up and play 'round in the yard. I don't
remember the games.
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