punished, (not any more than having her head cracked by her Master when
she nodded while fanning him.) "No mam, not none of our niggers wuz
whipped. Why I recollect once, my brother wuz out without a pass an' de
patter rollers kotch him and brung him to old Miss and said he'd have
ter be whipped, old Miss got so mad she didn't know what ter do, she
said nobody wuz a goin' ter whip her niggers, but the patter roller men
'sisted so she said after er while, 'Well, but I'm goin' ter stan' right
here an' when I say stop, yer got ter stop', an' they 'greed to dat, an'
the third time dey hit him she raised her han' an' said 'STOP' an' dey
had ter let my brother go. My Miss wuz a big 'oman, she'd weigh nigh on
ter three hundred pound, I 'spect."

After her master's death Arrie had to go into the field to work. She
recalled with a little chuckle, the old cream horse, "Toby" she use to
plow. She loved Toby, she said, and they did good work. When not plowing
she said she "picked er round in the fields" doing whatever she could.
She and the other slaves were not required to do very hard work. Her
mother was a field hand, but in the evenings she spun and wove down in
their cabin. Aunt Arrie added "an' I did love to hear that old spinnin'
wheel. It made a low kind of a whirring sound that made me sleepy." She
said her mother, with all the other negro women on the place, had "a
task of spinnin' a spool at night", and they spun and wove on rainy days
too. "Ma made our clothes an' we had pretty dresses too. She dyed some
blue and brown striped. We growed the indigo she used fer the blue,
right dar on the plantation, and she used bark and leaves to make the
tan and brown colors."

Aunt Arrie said the Doctor was always called in when they were sick,
"but we never sont fer him lesse'n somebody wuz real sick. De old folks
doctored us jest fer little ailments. Dey give us lye tea fer colds.