Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/80

78 Sunday. He said, that for several years past, he had not been able to provide any clothes for himself; as he had a wife with several small children, on an adjoining plantation, whose master gave only one suit of clothes in the year to the mother, and none of any kind to the children, which had compelled him to lay out all his savings in providing clothes for his family, and such little necessaries as were called for by his wife from time to time. He had not had a shoe on his foot for several years, but in winter made a kind of moccasin for himself of the bark of a tree, which he said was abundant in the swamps, and could be so manufactured as to make good ropes, and tolerable moccasins, sufficient at least to defend the feet from the frost, though not to keep them dry.

The old man whom I have alluded to before, was in the field with the others, though he was not able to keep up with his row. He had no clothes on him except the remains of an old shirt, winch hung in tatters from his neck and arms; the two young girls had nothing on them but petticoats, made of coarse tow-cloth, and the woman, who was the mother of the children, wore the remains of a tow-linen shift, the front part of which was entirely gone; but a piece of old cotton bagging tied round her loins, served the purposes of an apron The younger of the two boys was entirely naked