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 time, Adelaide had hardly been aroused from her dreams. She
may have opened her eyes sometimes, but she seemed sleepy; and when she
snored, as the majority of people will, when they are not put to bed
right, everybody said she was crying. It was so ridiculous that she
sometimes smiled in her sleep. But the most mysterious thing about it,
was that old Jonas's sister knew she was named Adelaide almost as soon
as she found her. Now, how did old Jonas's sister know that? Adelaide
and I have often tried to figure it out when we were playing in the
garden, but no matter how many figures we made in the sand, there was
always something or other in the top row that stood for No-Time, and we
didn't know how to add that up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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