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Work Projects Administration

"Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 7"


"Rabbits had a scant time. The boys would go out and track six or eight
rabbits at a time. We had rabbits of all descriptions. We had rabbits
for breakfast, rabbits for dinner, rabbits for supper time. We had fried
rabbits, baked rabbits, stewed rabbits, boiled rabbits. Had rabbits,
rabbits, rabbits the whole six or eight weeks the snow stayed on the
ground.
"I remember when I was about twelve years old a woman had two small
children. She went away from home and for fear that the children would
get hurt on the outside she put them in the house and locked the door.
In some way they got a match and struck it and the house caught fire.
All the neighbors were a long ways off and by the time they reched the
house it had fallen in. Finally the mother came and looked for her
children and asked the neighbors did they save them. They said no, they
did not know they were in the house. In fact they were too late anyway.
So the fire was still hot and they had to wait for the ashes to cool and
when the ashes got cool they went looking for the children and found the
burned buttons that were on their little clothes, so they began raking
around in the ashes and at last found each of their little hearts that
had not burned, but the little hearts were still jumping and the man who
found the hearts picked them up in his hand and stood speechless.


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