Joel Chandler Harris

“ Adelaide showed not the slightest surprise when Lucindy recounted her astonishing adventure. She seemed to be glad that the cook had now discovered for herself about Cally-Lou, but she seemed very much distressed, and also irritated, that the Chill-Child-No-Child (as she sometimes called her) should be so thoughtless as to wander about in the darkness with nothing on her feet and little on her body. With both hands Adelaide pushed back her wonderful hair that was almost hiding her blue eyes. ”

“ A deaf old lady sitting on her piazza, on the opposite side of the street, smiled sweetly at Adelaide, and held her trumpet to her ear, as if, by means of its echoing depths, she could hear what the laughing young woman was saying. Adelaide did have something to say, evidently—something that an ear-trumpet could not interpret across the wide street, for she made a little gesture with her head, which her companion failed to see, and she sent some signal whirling through the air by means of a fluttering white hand. ”

“ As he came to the ambush, Adelaide promptly thrust her cornstalk gun forward, with a loud cry of "bang!" The result was as surprising as, and far more embarrassing than, when she made-believe to shoot Randall. This time the victim, instead of falling on the ground and writhing, as a man should do if he is seriously wounded, nearly jumped out of his skin, crying, "Good gracious!" ”

“ Sanders said it gave him a kind of Christmas feeling to see the hard times vanishing. Old Jonas felt better, too. At any rate, he seemed to take more interest in Adelaide, who, by this time, had developed into a wonderfully charming young woman—just how charming, I leave you to imagine; for she was a young woman and still a child. It is given to few people in this world to have this combination and to be able to manage it as it should be managed. I don't know whether to call it the art of living, or the instinct that makes Everybody feel as though he were Somebody. ”

“ To any one who knew little of the negro race, Randall's remarks would have sounded tremendously like a sly joke, with a little irony thrown in for good measure; but though the negro's voice was soft and deliberate, he was terribly in earnest, and those who heard him understood and appreciated this simple recital of a harrowing experience already behind him, and his lively fear of something worse to come.
"Well, when you get to be a bishop," remarked old Jonas, "I expect you to come and black my shoes." ”

“ Sanders said, they had about them an appearance of violence calculated to make the Boogerman fall on his knees and surrender the moment he was discovered. An ordinary gun might miss fire—such things have been known before now—but a cornstalk gun, never! All you have to do when you have a cornstalk gun, is to point it at the destined victim, shut your eyes and say Bang! in a loud voice, and the thing is done. And if people or things—whatever and whoever you shoot at—should be mean enough to remain unhurt, why, then, that is their fault, and much good may their meanness do them! ”

“ Adelaide felt that she could just hug John Bell, but the man who had made such a narrow escape from the horses' feet had an entirely different view of the matter.
"You shorely must be tryin' to show off," he growled to John Bell; "an' what for, I'd like to know? The next time you kill me, I'll have the law on you!"
"Quite so," remarked John Bell, with a grin that showed his white teeth. "But I want you to know that I've got company; let folks that ain't got company look out for themselves! Have you seen Mr. Jonas Whipple around here?" ”

“ Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-eight seemed to be very pale when Adelaide and I found it under the honeysuckle vine, but in old Jonas's garden it was particularly brilliant in its colours of green. Green is the admiration of summer, and it has more beautiful shades than the rainbow. ”

“ Adelaide and I have come to the conclusion that if you can't believe anything at all, not even the things that are as plain as the nose on your face—if you can't enjoy what is put here to be enjoyed—if you are going to turn up your nose at everything we tell you, and deny things that we know to be truly-ann-true, just because we haven't given you the cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die sign—then it's your own fault if we don't reply when you try to give the wipple-wappling call. ”

“ He was a pattern, a model, for the men of his race, and, indeed, for the men of any race, for there never was a moment when he was idle after he discovered that an honest and industrious man can make and save money. All that he made, he gave to old Jonas Whipple to keep for him. The more Randall worked the more he learned how to work, so that in the course of a year or two, there was nothing in the way of work that he couldn't do well. ”

“ Old Jonas reached out his hand to make a move, and held it suspended in the air while Adelaide was talking to Cally-Lou. "Sanders," he said, after awhile, "do you suppose the child really thinks she's talking to some one. Can she see Cally-Lou?"
"Why not?" replied Mr. Sanders placidly. "Folks ain't half as smart when they grow up as they is when they're little children. They shet the'r eyes to one whole side of life. Kin you fling your mind back to the time when your heart was soft, an' your eyes sharp enough for to see what grown people never seed? Tell me that, Jonas." ”

“ He hates me for doing him a favour, and he hates the nigger for striking him when striking a white man was a hanging offence. He pretends to be a nigger-lover now because he wants office; but when you tell him that this boy is at my house, one of two things will happen: he'll get together a gang of men of his own kidney and try the Ku-Klux game, or he'll have him arrested for assault with intent to murder."
"Bishop," said Adelaide, who had only a dim idea of the meaning of what she had heard, "please don't let them get my Boogerman. ”

“ And then old Jonas became furiously angry. "Take him away, John Bell!" he commanded; "I hold you responsible! Confound you! why don't you drive on." With that he went into the house.
Mr. Sanders cared not a whit for old Jonas's irritation, and so he alighted from the coach and followed the rest into the house. He was just in time to hear Adelaide begin her course of instruction to old Jonas.
"Nunky-Punky," said she, very solemn, "why didn't you wait for Mr.——oh, I know who he is, he's the Peskerwhalian Bishop!—why didn't you wait for the Bishop?" ”

“ And more than that, if you know so much that you don't know anything, or less than anything, you will have to go somewhere else to be amused and entertained; you will have to find other play-fellows. You might persuade us to play with you if you had something nicer than peppermint candy, and sweeter than taffy, and then Adelaide would show you things that you never so much as dreamed of before, and tell you things you never heard of. ”

“ Sanders mean a great deal more than another man's wisdom. You'll discover that for yourself when you come to know him well."
"But you can't do business by means of jokes," the young fellow protested.
"That's the way Mr. Sanders transacts his business," Adelaide responded, "and he's a very prosperous man. As for your grandfather's ghost, Uncle Jonas will raise it if you give him half an opportunity. You'll learn a great deal from Mr. Sanders and Uncle Jonas if you stay here long enough." ”

“ Sanders and a number of others were inclined to be more than hospitable to the enterprise, but old Jonas Whipple was opposed to it tooth-and-nail. His arguments in opposition to the enterprise will be thought amusing and ridiculous in this day and time, but it is notorious, the world over, that any man with money can have a substantial following without resorting to bribery, and there were many in Shady Dale, who, basing their admiration on the fact that he had been very successful as a money-maker, in the face of the most adverse conditions, were ready to endorse anything that old Jonas said ”

“ Sanders and old Jonas were soon absorbed in a game of checkers, but they were not so completely lost in their surroundings that they failed to pay heed to Adelaide as she went from room to room calling Cally-Lou. Presently she seemed to find her in the parlour.
"You are pouting," she said, "or you'd never be sitting in this room where nobody ever comes. Why, they don't have any fires in here, and nothing to eat. Nunky-Punky says if the sun was to shine in here, the carpet would curl up and get singed. You don't know what it is to be singed, do you? ”

“ Sanders tried to pilot him through the deep water—so to speak—in which he found himself. "Sit down, Jonas, and take Miss Adelaide on your knee, an' let the thing be done right. Kinder shet your eyes an' pucker your mouth, and she'll do the rest."
"Sanders," said old Jonas, bristling up again, "if you really want to hurt my feelings just say so. You have no real delicacy about you. How do you know some one hasn't told the little girl that it is her duty to pretend to want to kiss her uncle, whether she wants to or not? ”

“ He's too hard-headed for to let people know him as he is. Now, don't think I'm doin' any obiturary work, bekaze the fact is old Jonas ain't a bit better than he ought to be. I reckon, he is too hard-headed for to let people know him as he is, but the fact is that old Jonas is human; he ain't a bit better than the rest on us—an' he may be wuss in some spots. Ef you've ever took notice, the people between the best man in the world an' the wust, make a purty fa'r average. I reckon," Mr. Sanders went on, regarding Somers with a child-like smile, "I reckon you ain't never played poker as a habit?" ”

“ Sanders, when he had concluded, was surprised to find that old Jonas seemed to be more hurt than angry; and he would have gone into the parlour where Adelaide was still playing with Cally-Lou, but old Jonas turned around and faced him.
"You've said a great many things, Sanders, that nobody else would have said, and I gather that you consider me to be a pretty mean fellow; but did it ever occur to you that perhaps I'm not as mean as I seem to be? Did it ever occur to you that a man could be so shy and suspicious that he was compelled to close his mind against what you call love and affection ”

“ You-all have put old Tuttle in a place where he has a little power, and now, after all these years, he wants to slap Randall in jail, when he knows just as well as you know that he hit the boy a hundred times as many licks as the boy hit him. ”

“ Not a thing in the world but pyore joy, Jonas! Climb up in the waggon and let's all take a ride. I'm dead in love wi' this little gal here; won't you j'ine me? Nan Dorrin'ton used to be my beau-lover, but Nan's too old, an' now Adelaide's done took her place! Slap yourself on the hams an' crow like a rooster! Jump up an' crack your heels together twice before you come to earth ag'in. We've ketched the Boogerman, an' was gittin' ready for to fetch him home bekaze we had him whar he could nuther back nor squall, but jest about that time, here come Lucindy. ”

“ Sanders continued, his anger rising as he stirred the embers of recollection—"wuss'n that, you never spoke a word to Cordelia from that day tell the day she died—an' she your own sister! It's a mighty good thing that Lumsden was well off while the war lasted. When it ended, he was as poor as I was. He had land, but who kin eat land? Thar wa'n't but one reely rich man in the community, Jonas, an' that man was you. You had bought up all the gold for a hundred mile aroun', but not so much as a thrip did Cordelia ever git out'n you. ”

“ Well, when I know'd her son the first letter of his name was Randall Bowden, bekaze Bowden was the name of the man he belonged to—you remember him, Jonas?"
"He admitted me to the bar and came within one of frightening me to death," responded old Jonas.
"Well, you're a lawyer, an' you know mighty well that a man an' a citizen can't change his name wi'out a special law passed by the legislatur'. Now, ef the Boogerman was a plain nigger, it wouldn't make a bit of difference what he called hisse'f. But thar ain't no plain niggers any more; they're all sufferin' citizens. ”