Our Fellows

My name is Joseph Coleman, and at the time my story begins I was sixteen years of age. Mark was my twin brother; and he looked and acted so much like me, or else I looked and acted so much like him, that only our very intimate friends could tell us apart. We always dressed alike, and that, no doubt, had something to do with the remarkable resemblance we bore to each other. Many were the mistakes that were made in regard to our identity-some of them laughable, others proving exactly the reverse, especially when I was called upon to stand punishment for his misdeeds. On one occasion Mark got into a difficulty with a half-breed. About a week afterward, while I was riding along the road, I met this same half-breed with a big switch in his hand, and all that saved me from a severe whipping was the speed of my horse. Then there was our old enemy, Tom Mason, who had been badly worsted in an attempt to whip Mark, and ever since that time he had been robbing my traps, shooting at my dog and killing my doves, thinking all the while that he was revenging himself upon Mark, when he was in reality punishing me. At the time of which I write we lived in Warren County, ten miles below Vicksburg, where our father owned an extensive plantation. He cultivated one thousand acres of cotton and six hundred acres of corn. He owned one hundred and fifty working mules and horses, twice as many young cattle, which ran loose in the swamp, and about twenty-five hundred hogs. It required from sixty to seventy-five cows to supply the plantation with milk and butter, and almost as many dogs to protect the stock from the wild beasts.