"Ouah Captain, Ole George Free, was a preacher an he’d have prayun meetin’s in his tent. All the ole women from aroun’ would come—an’ we’d have big times on Sunday mahnin’s. One time one o’ the boys, Ed Johnson, got drunk an’ the provost guahd put ’m in jail. Nex’ mahnin, Capin Free go down theah to git him an’ he raise so much racket Ol Cunnel say ’Turn im loose, Ole Cap’m go crazy ’bout his niggers.’
"We was stationed down in Helena, Arkansas, aftuh the fightin was ovah an’ the officers sent up no’th fo’ some teachers, to have school fo’ us. They call it the Norman Institute an we each paid fifty cents a month to go. The teachers was Quakers an they never laughed or smiled. They a’ways seemed tuh be thinkin—seemed tuh think it was a sin to have fun. 'Ah kin still heah em—how they usta say, ’Thou shall get thy lessons ovah.’ We was mustered out in St. Louis in 1866.
"Aftuh ah come back heah tuh Commerce Ah started a school, Ah called it 'Select School’ an’ they each paid fifty cents a month—grown folks come tuh mah school some o’ em fifty an sixty year old an ah had all ah cud take caah of—Latuh, Ah taught school out in the country.
"Why do they call me doctuh? See that diploma on the wall! I got that fum a school of hypnotism. Yes’m a correspondence course. No’m, I nevuh practised it much, jes a little now an then for fun.
"One time the Ku Klux come aroun. They knock on the doah, then they say 'Please give me a drink, Ah ain’t had a drink since the battle o’ Shiloh.’ What fo’ they say that? Why, you see, they wants us tuh think they’s the spirits a’ the sojers killed at Shiloh an they been in hell so long they drinks all the water they kin git. This one man make us carry him five buckets of water, an’ it look like he drink em but nex mahnin’ theys a big mud puddle side thu doah."
*Interview with Alice Sewell,* *St. Louis, Missouri.
*Never having attended school a day in her 86 years of life has not cramped the style of Alice Sewell, one of St. Louis’ former Negro slaves. Alice lives with a married daughter, Mattie Hill, and a grandson, Henry Morse, at 329 South Ewing Avenue.
Spotlessly dressed, much after the fashion of a nurse, and weighing less than 100 pounds, Alice presents a pleasing picture as she chats interestingly with visitors. Her mind is keenly alive to what is going on in the world. She is much annoyed by the roistering younger folks, as she outlines in her observations in the following chat: