From these he commenced to rear a stock which in time became large.
"My father and his brothers and sisters were getting large enough to
help a little; but my grandfather has told me that my father was nine
years old before he ever tasted a piece of bacon or pork. When my
father was eighteen years of age he went with a drove of beef cattle to
New Orleans. He first went to Baton Rouge, thence down the river. He
soon sold out advantageously; for he came home with a young negro man
and his wife, some money, and my mother, whom he had met and married on
the route. Well, from those negroes, and eight head of cattle, all the
family have come to have something.
"I was born nine months after that trip, and grew up, as father had
done before me, on the banks of that little creek. I doubt if there
ever was a book in my grandfather's house. I certainly never remember
to have seen one there, and I was sixteen years old when he died. I
think I was very nearly that old before I ever saw any woman but those
of the family, and I know I was older than that before ever I wore
shoes or pants.
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