The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bishop and the Boogerman, by Joel Chandler Harris, Illustrated by Charlotte Harding

Title: The Bishop and the Boogerman

Author: Joel Chandler Harris

Release Date: June 10, 2011 [eBook #36370]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BISHOP AND THE BOOGERMAN***

E-text prepared by David Edwards, Mary Meehan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org)

THE BISHOP AND THE BOOGERMAN

BEING THE STORY OF A LITTLE TRULY-GIRL, WHO GREW UP; HER MYSTERIOUS COMPANION; HER CRABBED OLD UNCLE; THE WHISH-WHISH WOODS; A VERY CIVIL ENGINEER, AND MR. BILLY SANDERS THE SAGE OF SHADY DALE

By JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

Drawings by Charlotte Harding

NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY SUNNY SOUTH PUBLISHING CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1909

"They paused—then she pointed to the darkest corner"

CONTENTS

PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV
PART V

By JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

ILLUSTRATIONS

"They paused—then she pointed to the darkest corner"

"It seemed to Adelaide that it held a whole bushel of fried chicken and biscuits"

"The child stared at her uncle so seriously that he was actually embarrassed"

"Old Jonas would listen by her bedside to convince himself that she was really breathing"

"They began to creep forward, making as little noise as possible"

"'You are pouting,' she said, 'or you'd never be sitting in this room where nobody ever comes'"

"'That's why you see these shoes lookin' like they're spang new'"

"Mr. Sanders went from the courthouse with a sweeping stride"

THE BISHOP AND THE BOOGERMAN

PART I

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. 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.

Adelaide! Doesn't the very sound of the name make you feel a little bit better than you were feeling awhile ago? Doesn't it remind you of the softest blue eyes in the world, and of long curly hair, spun from summer sunbeams that were left over from last season's growing? If all these things don't flash in your mind, like magic pictures on a white background, then you had better turn your head away, and not bother about the things I am saying. And another thing: Don't imagine that I am writing of the Right-Now time, for, one day when Adelaide and I were playing in the garden, we found Eighteen-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eight hiding under a honeysuckle vine, where it had gone to die. Adelaide picked the poor thing up and put it in the warm place in her apron that she keeps for all the weaklings; and now when we want to remember a great many things, both good and bad, we go back to the poor thing we found under the honeysuckle vine.

It was a very good thing that old Jonas Whipple, of Shady Dale, had a sister who married and went to Atlanta, because Adelaide was in Atlanta, and nowhere else; it was the only place where she could have been found. Old Jonas's sister had been in Atlanta not longer than a year, if that long, when, one day, she found Adelaide, and appeared to be very fond of her. At that