This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

young man was kind enough to treat, for me to not over do the thing. One reason we all refused was because we were too full of rice and gumbo. At that time I was seventeen and Willie was nineteen. My father had turned me loose. I mean gave me the privilege to go out with certain young fellows. But the one I was engaged too before I started dating Willie Hover, he didn't approve of because he was known to drink some before he started liking me. He was ten years older than me and had gone with dozens of girls even was engaged to several of them but declared to me he never loved any of them as he did me. He had a sister who was married and had six children and they lived aways above our home and she had been a mother to me since I was real small, had did all of my sewing for me and never charged a penny. I loved her as much as any friend could love another. So that's where I got acquainted with her brother. I had a friend who was my sister-in-law's sister spending a couple of weeks with me so one night after supper I said to Becky, What can I tell my daddy to get him to let us go to Mrs. Millers? And she thought for a minute and said, tell him you haven't got any salt to go in his pancakes in the morning, he loved pancakes. So I went into his bedroom where he was reading as usual, and I said papa, I don't have a bit of salt to go in your pancakes for breakfast so could Becky and I go up to Mrs. Millers and borrow some? He pulled his spectacles down over his nose and looked at me for a second and said, yes; if you don't stay too long because your old dad will be worried about you. We went and stayed about an hour and she, Mrs. Miller, had written me a note that afternoon and told me Georgia was there so we sat around a few minutes and she said Pearl, I want you to go to the organ and play Prince Empril's Waltz for Georgia. So I went to the organ and started to play when she came out with her guitar and handed it to him so we played several hymns as well as other songs, such as Red Wing, I've Never Loved Anyone But You, The Bicycle Built for Two and a few others, so then I said we'd better go because my daddy would be worried about us. 1 never wondered at that time whether the Lord was going to forgive me for the lie I had just told my father. But anyway, while we were still sitting at the organ, Mrs. Miller took Becky and the children into the kitchen and left he and I to ourselves so that was when he asked me the question and I told him I had promised my dad that I wouldn't get married until I was eighteen and I said I've got to be true to my word. So he said OK, then I'll be waiting for you. He and Ola, his thirteen year old niece walked home with us and that's the first time
21