purchaser. Besides this he made lots of money training horses for gentlemen of leisure and also devoted much of his leisure time to catching and breaking wild horses which he sold for good money after he had handled them for a short time and put some style into their gaits. He was a wonder with the lasso and rarely if ever missed catching a horse, and in this sport he was most ably assisted by his horse "Ben," who knew almost as much as Charloe did about the business.
The slaves had a means of communicating with distant plantations which was always a mystery to their owners. During the Civil War my mother and three of my sisters were refugees in a little Mississippi village, and were without money and in danger of starvation, as they could not communicate with my elder brother in New Orleans or with friends in Baton Rouge. But hostile armies and picket lines were not obstacles of much importance to Katish when she wanted to get word to Charloe of the condition of the family—Charloe being in Baton Rouge, within the Union lines, and more than a hundred miles away. Charloe immediately mounted his horse and without much difficulty managed to pass through both the Federal and Confederate lines and carried to my mother quite a large sum of real money which he gave to her, and which greatly relieved the distress of the family, especially as my sister, Mrs. La Noue, had a family of little children who were crying for bread. It must be remembered that Charloe was of course a freedman as long as he remained within the Union lines, but knew that he again became a slave when he entered the territory held by the Confederates.
Until I was thirteen years of age I was the constant companion of Charloe. When I was a baby, mounted on his horse, he would carry me around with him, and I do not remember the time when I first rode a horse by myself. My father was a lawyer with a very large practice, and a
