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I wouldn't ride with anyone in a boat on the river but when the high water was up below the house in the branch I'd ride then. Now tell me the difference, because water in the ravine was six to eight feet deep. The bank down there was real low and the river came over the bank and overflowed.
The best I can remember, I was some where around eight and a half or nine years old when they took me back home to my dad and brother Jerome. So then my father made arrangements with a family by the name of Scheultise in Gainesville, Miss, to board me through the week to go to school, then my daddy would pick me up on Friday afternoon after school and take me back early Monday A.M.
There was a girl about fourteen years old at school who could curse like a sailor, so nearly all the children would pick on her and they'd put me up to pull the ribbon off from her hair, slip up behind her with a stick and pull her dress up. The kids would dare me to do those kind of things and I didn't have any better sense than to take their dare. You see what a bad girl I was! My teachers name was Miss Emma Thompson. After her term of school was out in Gainesville she married Tom Dean. She lived here in Pearlington, sometime later, then after they were married a year or so, they decided to split up so my daddy gave Tom a good talking too for an hour or more and he went right on and took her back and as far as I know they never separated again. Raised quite a large family. One of their daughters live here in Pearlington. Her marriage name is Ernisteen Davis. I asked her mother years later after I was married and had a family of my own why she never would punish me and she said Well, you were a little thrown away orphan and I felt sorry for you. I can't remember whether I went to school any where else or what I did those four years between the age of nine and thirteen. Oh, yes! It has come to my memory. My third sister, Olla, was real sick and they brought she and her four children up home to the old Daniels place so sister Stella could wait on her and take care of the children. So she kept getting worse instead of better so they took her to the Presbyterian hospital in N. O. where she died shortly after wards with blood poison, caused from neglect on the doctors part.
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