The Bishop and the Boogerman

by Joel Chandler Harris

None of us forgot Randall, or could afford to forget him, for we were journeying along together. His evolution was out of the usual order. Adelaide merely fulfilled the promises of her childhood, and the expectations of those who were in love with her; whereas, Randall outran prophecy itself. The Boogerman developed into a full-fledged minister of the Methodist Church, and, in the course of that development, became a complete engine of modern industry. He went so far and so fast that he had an abundance of time to devote to the religious enthusiasm that kept him inwardly inflamed; and such was the power of his rude eloquence that he attracted the admiration of whites as well as blacks. He was ignorant, but he had a gift that education has never been able to produce in a human being—he had the gift of eloquence. When he was in the pulpit his rough words, his simple gestures, the play of his features, the poise of his body, his whole attitude, were as far beyond the compass of education as it is possible for the mind to conceive. This gift, or power, became so well known that he had a real taste of what is called reputation in this world. 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. His credit at the little bank was as good as that of most white men, and his simple word was as good as a bond.

The men of his race watched him with a curious kind of awe. When one of them asked him how he managed to accomplish the results that were plain to every one, his reply was: "Good gracious, man! I jest goes ahead and does it, that's how." He had a great knack of meeting opportunity before she knocked at his door—of meeting her and hitching her to his shack of a buggy, where she served the purpose of a family horse. He had the confidence and sympathy of all the white people who knew him. He began to buy tracts of land, and one of his purchases included High Falls, where the children and grown people had their picnic grounds. Many thought this a wild investment, especially old Jonas, who rated him soundly for throwing away his hard-earned money; but Mr. Sanders, who, with all his humour and nonsense, was by all odds the shrewdest business man in all that region, declared that the time would come when the money that Randall had paid for it would be smothered by the money he could sell it for. Randall explained to old Jonas the reason why he had bought this remarkable water-power; it was because the water came so free and fell so far.

All this, by the way, as we were journeying along. We began to try to forget Eighteen-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eight; we knew right were it was, but, as we got farther and farther away from it, it seemed to lose some of its importance; and, sometimes, when we couldn't help but remember it, it came back to us as though it was the memory of a bad dream. People began to look up and stir about, Progress, hand-in-hand with Better Conditions, crawled out of the woods, where they had been hiding, and began to pay visits to their old friends. Mr. 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. I never could understand the secret of it, and, indeed, I never tried, until one day a scientist came along peddling his ideas and theories. He declared that there was an explanation somewhere in one of his books, but so far, I have been unable to find it. There was nothing in his dull books about Adelaide and her individuality. It should be borne in mind that Adelaide had, in the course of seventeen years, developed into Something that was quite beyond art and education. Her inimitable personality, which was hers from the first, and quite beyond the contingencies of chance or change, continued to be inimitable. She had received all the advantages that money could buy; but this fact only emphasised her native charm. She was a child as well as a young woman, with the sweet unconsciousness of the one and the dazzling loveliness of the other.

Mean as he was said to be, it was a well-known fact that old Jonas's money would go as far as that of any man; and when it came to a question of Adelaide, it was as free as the money of some of our modern millionaires when they desire to advertise their benevolence. He was determined, he said, that his niece should have all the polish the schools could furnish. He called it polish for the reason that he had many a hot argument with Mr. Sanders and Lawyer Tidwell with respect to the benefits of education—the education furnished by our modern system of public schools. He didn't believe in it; there was always too much for some people, and not enough for others; there was no discrimination in the scheme. Moreover, it put false ideas in some people's heads, and made them lazy and vicious. But he had never said a word in opposition to polish, and when he sent Adelaide to one of the most expensive schools, it was not to educate her, he said, but to give her the "polish" that would elevate her above ordinary people.

Adelaide received the polish, but refused to be elevated, and when she returned home, unchanged and unspoiled, old Jonas Whipple said to himself that his money had been spent in vain. He wanted to see her put on airs and hold herself above people, but this she never did; and she would have laughed heartily at old Jonas's thoughts if she had known what they were. Mr. Whipple seemed to have an idea that culture and refinement are things that you can put your fingers on and feel of, and he was sure that dignity and personal pride are their accompaniments. Yet he gave no outward sign of his disappointment if he really had any, and he swallowed such regrets as possessed him with a straight face; for he saw, with a secret pride and pleasure that no one suspected, that Adelaide was the most charming young girl in all that neighbourhood. It filled him with pride for which he could not account when he observed that she could hold her own in any company, and that, wherever she went, she was the centre of admiration and interest.

Now, it was not long before the promoters of a railway line from Atlanta to Malvern came knocking at the doors of Shady Dale. Mr. 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; he was an oracle because he knew how to make money, though it is well known that the making of money does not depend on a very high order of intelligence. Old Jonas's objections to a railway were not amenable to reason or argument; it was sufficient that they were satisfactory to him. He had them all catalogued and numbered. There were six of them, and they ran about as follows:

1. A railroad would add to the racket and riot of the neighbourhood, when, even as things were, it was a difficult matter for decent people to sleep in peace. 2. (This objection was impressive on account of its originality; no one had ever thought of it). The passing of railway trains would produce concussion, and this concussion, repeated at regular intervals, would cause the blossoms of the fruit trees to drop untimely off, and would no doubt have a disastrous effect on garden vegetables. 3. The railroad would not stop in Shady Dale, but would go on to Atlanta, thus making the little town a way-station, and drain the whole county of its labour at a time when everybody was trying to adjust himself to the new conditions. 4. Instead of patronising home industries and enterprises, people would scramble for seats on the cars, and go gadding about, spending anywhere but at home the little money they had. 5. Every business and all forms of industry in the whole section adjacent to the line would be at the mercy of the road and its managers; and, 6. What did people want with railroads, when a majority of the loudest talkers had earned no more than three dollars apiece since the war?

Mr. Sanders tried hard to destroy these objections by means of timely and appropriate jokes. But jokes had no effect on Mr. Whipple. Moreover, there was one fact that no jokes could change: a great body of land belonging to old Jonas lay right across the face of the railway survey, and there was no way to avoid it except by making a detour so wide that Shady Dale would be left far to one side. You would think, of course, that it was an easy matter to condemn a right of way through old Jonas's land, and so it would have been but for one fact that could not be ignored. There was a bitter controversy going on between the people and the roads, and the managers were trying to be as polite as they could be under the circumstances. The controversy referred to finally resulted in the passage of the railway laws that are now on the statute books of the state. The promoters of the line to Shady Dale had no desire to arouse the serious opposition of Mr. Whipple and his friends; they had no idea of making a serious contest in view of the state of public opinion, and they had made up their minds that if they failed to secure the right of way through old Jonas's lands by fair words, they would leave Shady Dale out of their plans altogether. They had already surveyed another line that would run six or seven miles north of the town, and work on this would have begun promptly but for the representations of Mr. Sanders and other substantial citizens, who declared that only a short delay would be necessary to bring old Jonas to terms. But that result, by the interposition of Providence, as it were, was left for others to accomplish.

Of the contest going on between the old-fashioned, unprogressive faction, headed by her uncle, and the spirited element of which Mr. Sanders was the leader, Adelaide had no particular knowledge. She knew in a general way that some question in regard to the new railroad was in dispute. She had heard the matter discussed, and she had laughed at some of the comments of Mr. Sanders on the obstinacy of her uncle, but the whole matter was outside the circle of her serious thoughts and interests until, at last, it was brought home to her in a way that the novel writers would call romantic, though for some time it was decidedly embarrassing.

Blushing and laughing, she told Mr. Sanders about it afterward. That genial citizen regarded it as a good joke, and, as such, he made the most of it. She was walking about in the garden one day, thinking of childish things, and remembering what fine times she and Mr. Sanders had had when she was a tiny bit of a girl. She was very old now—quite seventeen—but her childhood was still fresh in her remembrance, and she was quite a child in her freshness and innocence. The corn-patch was in a new place now, but to her it was still the Whish-Whish Woods. In the days when she brought down the Boogerman with her cornstalk gun, the corn was growing in the garden next to a side street on which there was very little passing to and fro; but now the corn-patch was next to a thoroughfare that was much frequented. Remembering how delighted she had been when Randall, the Boogerman, responded so completely to her pretence of shooting him with her cornstalk gun, she was seized by a whim that gave her an almost uncontrollable desire to repeat the performance.