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I used to go with Sister Emma and Jahue and all the Murphy family. Nice boys and they made it lively around there at times. I believe they were the worlds worst to play tricks on people. They had an old negro who worked for them all the time and they'd take him with them and he'd sleep under the ox wagon and one night the ones in the tent way in the night heard old Pap hollering bloody murder and some of the men ran out to see what in the world was wrong and old Pap came running to them hollering, its a ghost after me, don't you see him. Poor fellow was so weak, he could hardly walk. So they scared the ghost off and tried to get Pap to go back to bed but no sir, he sat up the rest of the night by the tent door. It was Mr. Jimmy with a white sheet around him with eye holes with red flannel over the holes. I guess it was enough to scare him way in the night. They used to pull all kinds of tricks on that old negro. He was as good as gold, would do any thing they wanted him to do. I believe if they had told him to jump in the fire, he would have did it. He loved that Murphy family as much as he did himself. I could tell you so many little tricks they play on him but it would take to long.
The Murphys had a great large tent that would sleep 12 and 14 people. Men on one side and women on the other side, on pallets and some mattresses. One night awhile after every one had gone to bed, it came a terrible storm. Thunder and the fieriest lightning and torrents of rain, so the water begun to come in under the edges of the ten so some of the men had to put their rain coats on and go out into that terrible rain and get shovels and dig a ditch all the way around that tent. Everyone had to pull their bedding back from the edge of the tent. But the storm began to calm down so they all got dried off and dry cloths on and went back to bed. And the next morning it was just beautiful, you'd have never dreamed there'd even been a storm. One of Emma's babies were little so she sat up on a trunk and held the baby in her arms, she was so scared when the storm was raging so. Mrs. Murphy tried to comfort her and tell her every thing was going to be alright. But she was too frightened to believe it.
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