At that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the
most tempting and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I
then and there resolved that, if I ever got free, the height of
my ambition would be reached if I could get to the point where I
could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way that I saw those
ladies doing.
Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many
cases, often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I
think the slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites,
because the usual diet for slaves was corn bread and pork, and
these could be raised on the plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar,
and other articles which the whites had been accustomed to use
could not be raised on the plantation, and the conditions brought
about by the war frequently made it impossible to secure these
things. The whites were often in great straits. Parched corn was
used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses was used instead of
sugar. Many times nothing was used to sweeten the so-called tea
and coffee.
The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones.
They had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were
about an inch thick, were of wood. When I walked they made a
fearful noise, and besides this they were very inconvenient,
since there was no yielding to the natural pressure of the foot.
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