I slipped off one night to see the girl, and asked her for a lock of her hair; but she refused to give it.
Believing that my success depended greatly upon this bunch of hair, I was bent on having a lock before I left that night let it cost what it might.

As it was time for me to start home in order to get any sleep that night, I grasped hold of a lock of her hair, which caused her to screech, but I never let go until I had pulled it out.

This of course made the girl mad with me, and I accomplished nothing but gained her displeasure.
Such are the superstitious notions of the great masses of southern slaves.

It is given to them by tradition, and can never be erased, while the doors of education are bolted and barred against them.

But there is a prohibition by law, of mental and religious instruction.
The state of Georgia, by an act of 1770, declared "that it shall not be lawful for any number of free negroes, molattoes or mestinos, or even slaves in company with white persons, to meet together for the purpose of mental instruction, either before the rising of the sun or after the going down of the same." 2d Brevard's Digest, 254-5.