I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together,
and God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a
civilized manner. On the plantation in Virginia, and even later,
meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get
theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.
It was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another.
Sometimes a portion of our family would eat out of the skillet or
pot, while some one else would eat from a tin plate held on the
knees, and often using nothing but the hands with which to hold
the food. When I had grown to sufficient size, I was required to
go to the "big house" at meal-times to fan the flies from the
table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a pulley.
Naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned
upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good
deal of it. I remember that at one time I saw two of my young
mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the
yard. At that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the
most tempting and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I
then and there resolved that, if I ever got free, the height of
my ambition would be reached if I could get to the point where I
could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way that I saw those
ladies doing.

Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many
cases, often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I
think the slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites,
because the usual diet for slaves was corn bread and pork, and
these could be raised on the plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar,