Gabriel Tolliver: A Story of Reconstruction by Joel Chandler Harris is about the life of Cephas and Sophia, who one day receive a letter from an old friend. Excerpt: "Cephas! here is a letter for you, and it is from Shady Dale! I know you will be happy now." For several years Sophia had listened calmly to my glowing descriptions of Shady Dale and the people there. She was patient, but I could see by the way she sometimes raised her eyebrows that she was a trifle suspicious of my judgment and that she thought my opinions were unduly colored by my feelings."

"Gabriel Tolliver" by Joel Chandler Harris, bound sections from the journal "The Era", pages 37-47; 175-191; 282-298; 428-444; 533-547; 674-690; 65-77; 170-184; 275-288; 378-393; 503-518.

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Excerpt from Gabriel Tolliver: A Story of Reconstruction The letter was from an old friend of mine - a school mate - and it was an invitation to Sophia, begging her to take a day off, as the saying is, and spend it in Shady Dale. Your children, the letter said, will be glad to visit their father's old home, and I doubt not we can make it interesting for the wife. The letter closed with some prettily turned compliments which rather caught Sophia. But her suspicions were still in full play. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reproduction of the original: Gabriel Tolliver by Joel Chandler Harris

"Cephas! here is a letter for you, and it is from Shady Dale! I know you will be happy now."For several years Sophia had listened calmly to my glowing descriptions of Shady Dale and the people there. She was patient, but I could see by the way she sometimes raised her eyebrows that she was a trifle suspicious of my judgment, and that she thought my opinions were unduly coloured by my feelings. Once she went so far as to suggest that I was all the time looking at the home people through the eyes of boyhood—eyes that do not always see accurately. She had said, moreover, that if I were to return to Shady Dale, I would find that the friends of my boyhood were in no way different from the people I meet every day. This was absurd, of course—or, rather, it would have been absurd for any one else to make the suggestion; for at that particular time, Sophia was a trifle jealous of Shady Dale and its people. Nevertheless, she was really patient. You know how exasperating a man can be when he has a hobby. Well, my hobby was Shady Dale, and I was not ashamed of it. The man or woman who cannot display as much of the homing instinct as a cat or a pigeon is a creature to be pitied or despised. Sophia herself was a tramp, as she often said. She was born in a little suburban town in New York State, but never lived there long enough to know what home was. She went to Albany, then to Canada, and finally to Georgia; so that the only real home she ever knew is the one she made herself—out of the raw material, as one might say.