Pleasure to me is wonder - the unexplored , the unexpected, the hidden and the secret. Old Bess tells me not to mind at it, she tells me to forget all that , and find pleasure in the work, or maybe pleasure in the master Jesus.

But I can't do it. When the free preacher comes down, or when the whippings start, I just slip away into the woods and I talk at the trees and the birds and the bugs, and I pretend like I the master until I get so hungry I have to sneak back.

We all know the stories about the real master; how he don't eat and don't sleep, and how he wanders the woods at night and sings up at the sky, and how sometimes he takes a house slave with him, and sometimes they don't come back.

When they came to sell Old Bess's grandson she screamed so loud I couldn't stand it, I ran into the woods as far as I ever went, and I stayed longer than I ever did before, and I found the masters treasure.

I don't know the reading, it's death for a slave to learn it, but that don't matter. When I opened the treasure it looked right into my mind and it watched me, and it judged me, and it showed me the real masters of this earth.

Now I walk the woods, and I know the secrets, and when I sing even the trees stop to listen, and now it's all going to change.