In 1866, a northern gentleman, Mr. Thorn, was renting the Bond farm. He was very kindly disposed toward the colored people. He wrote to Memphis for a teacher for a colored school. The parties to whom he wrote, referred him to Miss Celia Winchester. She accepted the school.

There were no railroads in this part of the country at that time. The only method of transportation was from Memphis, by steam boat, down the Mississippi and up the St. Francis rivers to Wittsburg.

When the boat arrived at Wittsburg, Mr. Thorn, not knowing the customs of the south, secured a room at the hotel for Miss Winchester, who was an Oberlin, Ohio, graduate. She had attended school with the whites at that famous seat of learning. She too, was ignorant of the customs prevailing in the south.

When the proprietor of the hotel learned that Miss Winchester was colored, he went out and bought a cowhide. He met Mr. Thorn on the street, held a pistol on him and cowhided him.

Mr. Thorn stood and cried. He said that he was seventy years old and had never done any one any harm in his life. What he had done was not intended as a violation of custom.

We lived about sixteen miles out from Wittsburg. The next day a wagon met Mr. Thorn and Miss Winchester and took them the farm.

Thus was opened the first school for Negroes in this part of the country and the first school I had ever seen. In the school my step-father and myself were classmates in the A B C class.

Later on, Mr. Thorn's wife came from the north to visit her husband. She opened a night school for those old people who could not attend the day school. The hours were from seven to nine.

It was a curiosity to me to see so many people, some of whom were gray-headed, trying to learn to read and write. They were enthusiastic and very much in earnest.

This condition held good for the whole neighborhood. In the daytime, the children would gather pine knots to make light at night. All about the country one could see lights in the homes and people trying to learn their lessons.

Coal oil and electric lights were unknown. The white people, in the great house, used candles. The colored people used pine knots and little flat iron lamps filled with grease; and used a rag for a wick.

When the weather grew warm, people would collect pine knots and at night they would gather in great crowds in the open, and then such singing of A B C's and a-b ab, you never heard. The whole colored population seemed to be crazy about education.

I remember an old lady seventy-eight years old, who was determined to learn to read, and in less than eight weeks she was reading the Bible. I know of another instance of a Negro, named John Davis, who in twelve months after he learned his A B C's, was elected Justice of the Peace. He had learned to read and write. He did not know enough to prepare his docket and papers, but the kindly disposed white people for whom he worked, would fix up his documents for him. He would sign them “John Davis,” J. P. These white people were southern born democrats.

There was a. Mr. Brooks, a white democrat, who was John Davis' predecessor in office, who would frequently prepare Davis' docket and warrants. The docket went regularly before the grand jury and was favorably passed upon. Davis served out his term and was eventually married. He lived respected by all who knew him.

It must be remembered that at that time the southern white man was largely disfranchised.

As Mrs. Thorn advanced with her educational work, it was very encouraging to see the good results of her efforts.

As the season drew to a close, it was common to hear the old people spelling at their exercises. When they reached “baker” in the old blue back speller, it was b-a ba, k-e-r ker, baker; l-a la, d-y dy, lady; s-h-a sha, d-y dy, shady; at the wash tub, over the cook pot, in the kitchen, at the mule lot and in the cotton patch, it was “baker,” “lady,” “shady,” from sun-up to sunset, and way into the night.

“I remember,” says Mr. Bond, “once when I was quite young, one of my tasks was to look after the calves. When the cows came up to the cow pen, I would let them in. Then I would drive the calves half a mile to get them into the lane and back through the lane to the cow pen.

I thought I would make a slip gap. I got some rails and dragged them up. I was not big enough to carry the rails, so I would move one end ahead, then I would go back and move the other end. When I got ready to put it into place, I would take a rail and by prizing, managed to get the rail in.

The overseer came by one day and asked me who made the slip gap. I told him I made it. He had a paddle with a strap on the end. He said he was going to whip me for lying to him. I told him I had not lied. He said he would like to see me make another. I then showed him how I managed to make it.

In the time of the Civil War, the high cost of living was as much in evidence as it is today.

I can remember that when I was a little boy, living on the Bond farm on the Bay road in Cross County, Ark., that anything like a square meal was a thing of the past. There was neither meat nor bread to be had. We had a little wheat that would be ground in an old-fashioned corn mill. From this we would make mush for breakfast and cush and greens for dinner.

On one occasion my step-father killed a quail with a clod. My mother prepared and cooked the bird with dumplings. It made a meal for seven people.

One morning as we were going to the field we heard the hounds in the distance. As the sun rose higher the hounds seemed to be getting nearer. About nine o'clock the dogs were running around the north end of the farm. This was not unusual, as there were plenty of deer and panther in Arkansas, so we paid little attention to the hounds. To our surprise a big buck jumped into the field where we were at work. It was about a mile and a half to the next fence. Mr. Cook, the overseer, had his horse tied to a bush near where the deer jumped into the field. The overseer being like the rest of us, half starved, mounted his horse and gave chase. The deer that had been running for six or seven hours was

There was a woman named Julia Ann on our plantation, who, one day at dinner time, went to a tree where she had hung her dinner bucket. She reached up and got the bucket and backed up to the tree and sat down between its protruding roots to eat her dinner. When she got up, she found she had been sitting on a rattle snake. The snake was killed. He had fifteen rattlers and a button on his tail. Ann fainted when she saw the snake. She said that she had felt the snake move, but thought that it was the cane giving way beneath her.

Snakes of that size and variety were numerous in Arkansas in those times.

I heard of an instance where a man built a house on a flat, smooth rock on a piece of land that he had bought. It was in the autumn when he built his house. When the weather grew cold he made a fire on the rock. There had been a hole in the rock, but the man had stopped it up.

One night he had retired, and late in the night, his child, which was sleeping between him and his wife, became restless and awakened him. He reached for the child and found what he supposed was his wife's arm across the child. He undertook to remove it and to his consternation, found he had hold of a large snake. He started to get out of bed, to make a light, and the whole floor was covered with snakes. He got out of the house with his wife and child.

The next day the neighbors gathered, burned the house and killed hundreds of snakes.

The house had been built over a den of snakes.

When I first came to Arkansas as a little slave boy, things were different from what they are today. Arkansas was on the western frontier. The clearings were small and far between. There were trails here and there, but few roads.

Wild game of all kinds was abundant. Deer, turkeys, bears, raccoons, o'possums and all varieties of small game were so plentiful that one only had to look about him to see some one or more kinds of game.

It was next to impossible to make a corn crop unless there was some one to hunt at night and guard the fields of ripening grain. If this was not done, the farms would be stripped of their corn.

There was a man named Slade, whose duty it was to hunt all night. He slept in the day time. He could not bring in all the game he would kill, hence the hands on our place would divide themselves into squads and take time about hunting with Slade at night until he had killed a load of coons, and they would then carry them home and go to sleep, leaving Slade to make the rest of the night alone.

The meat secured in this way would last several families for some time. The next night another squad would accompany Slade on his hunt.

One night a party who had been hunting with Slade, started for home. The night was dark and cloudy. They lost their way. They finally came to the bank of a lake they had never seen before. There was a boat moored where they came out. They saw a light across the lake, so they got into the boat and rowed across to see if they could get information as to the direction home.

One their way back across the lake—it was by this time nearly sun-up—they ran their boat upon something which began to move. Upon investigation, it proved to be a large turtle. They secured it and sent for a mule to haul it out. When the shell was removed they had one hundred and forty-eight pound of turtle meat.

Such was the abundance of wild life in those days that whole families could subsist on game if they so desired.