 CHAPTER ONE OF THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBURY FINN. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished. Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the author, per G.G. Chief of Ordinance. Explanatory. In this book a number of dialects are used to it. The Missouri Negro dialect, the extremist form of Backwood's Southwestern dialect, the Ordinary Pike County dialect, and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork, but painstakingly end with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. The author. Huckleberry Finn. Seen? The Mississippi Valley. Time? Forty to fifty years ago. CHAPTER ONE. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I'd never seen anybody but Lide one time or another without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly, Tom's Aunt Polly she is, and Mary and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers as I said before. Now the way that the book winds up is this. Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars a piece, all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out in interest, and it fetched us a dollar, a day, a piece, all the year round, more than a body could tell what to do with. The widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me, but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal, regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways, and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar hogs head again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom saw her, he hunted me up, and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable, so I went back. The widow, she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. Well then the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the vitals. Though there warn't really anything to matter with him, that is, nothing, only everything, was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different. Things get mixed up, and the juice kinda swaps around, and the things go better. After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bull rushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him, but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time, so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock and dead people. Pretty soon I wanted to smoke and asked the widow to let me, but she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That's the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was, bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody being gone, you see, yet finding the power to fall with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too, of course that was all right, because she done it herself. Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable, slim old maid with goggles on, had just come to live with her and took a set at me now with a spelling book. She worked me middle and hard for about an hour and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't have stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry, and don't scrunch up like that Huckleberry, set up straight. And pretty soon she would say, don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry, why don't you try to behave? Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres. All I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said. She said she wouldn't say it for the whole world. She was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so because it would only make trouble and wouldn't do no good. Now she had got a start. She went on and told me all about the good place. She said all the body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it, but I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. Miss Watson, she kept pecking at me, and he got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I sat down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful, and I heard an owl away off, hoo-hooing about somebody that was dead, and a whip or wheel, and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die, and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then, away out in the woods, I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind, and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night, grieving. I got so downhearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off, and it lit in the candle, and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign, and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared, and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times, and crossed my breast every time, and then I tied up a little lock in my hair with a thread to keep witches away, but I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've lost a harsh shoe that you've found, instead of kneeling it up over the door, but I hadn't never heard anybody say it was any way to keep off the bad luck when you'd killed a spider. I sat down again, shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke, for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock way off in the town go, boom, boom, boom, twelve licks, and all still again, stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees, something was stirring. I sat still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a meow, meow, down there. That was good, says I, meow, meow, as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and sure enough there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me. CHAPTER II We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrooched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger named Jim was sitting in the kitchen door. We could see him pretty plain because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out a minute, listening. Then he says, Who da? He listened some more. Then he came tiptoeing down and stood right between us. We could have touched him nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there weren't a sound, and we was there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dashing scratched it, and then my ear begun to itch, and next my back right between my shoulders seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty time since. If you are with the quality or out of funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy, if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says, Say, who is you? Where is you? Dog, my cats, if I didn't hear something. Well, I know what I was going to do. I was going to sit down here and listen till I hear it again. So he sat down on the ground, twerks to me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes, but I dessin' scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I don't know how I was going to sit still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes, but it seemed to sit longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckon I couldn't stand it more than a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy. Next he begun to snore, and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom, he made a sign to me, kind of a little noise with his mouth, and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun, but I said no, he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come, but Tom wanted to risk it, so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away, but nothing would do Tom, but he must crawl to where Jim was on his hands and knees and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while. Everything was so still and lonesome. As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterwards, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the tree again and hung his hat on a limb to show who'd done it. And next time Jim told it, he said they rode him down to New Orleans, and after that, every time he told it, he spread it more and more. Till by and by, he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with them miles open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire, but whenever one was talking and letting on to know about such things, Jim would happen in and say, hmm, what you know about witches, and that nigger was carked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil gave him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to, just by saying something to it, but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece, but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks maybe, and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine, and down by the village was the river a whole mile broad and awful still in grand. We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys hid in the old tan yard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two-mile-and-a-half to the big scar on the hillside and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep a secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't have noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom said, Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everyone that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood. Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band and never tell any of the secrets. If anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked across in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did, he must be sued, and if he'd done it again, he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he had got it out of his own head. He said some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books and robber books and every gang that was high-toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers said, Here's Huck Finn, he ain't got no family. What you going to do about him? Well, ain't he got a father? says Tom Sawyer. Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he ain't been seen in these parts for a year or more. They talked it over and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do. Everybody was stumped and set still. I was most ready to cry, but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson. They could kill her. Everybody said, Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in. Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper. Now, says Ben Rogers, what's the line of business of this gang? Nothing but robbery and murder, Tom said. But who are we going to rob? Houses or cattle or stuff? Stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery. It's burglary, said Tom Sawyer. We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road with masks on and kill the people and take their watches and money. Must we always kill the people? Oh, certainly it's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed. Ransomed? What's that? I don't know, but that's what they do. I've seen it in books. So of course, that's what we've got to do. But how can we do it if we don't know what it is? Why blame it all? We've got to do it. Did not tell you it's in the books. Do you want to go to do it different from what's in the books and get things all muddled up? Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer. But how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? That's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is? Well, I don't know. But perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead. Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you say that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death and to bother some lot they'll be to eating up everything and always trying to get loose. Oh, you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them ready to shoot them down if they move a peg? A guard? Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't the body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here? Because it ain't in the books. So that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular or don't you? That's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn them anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir. We'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way. All right, I don't mind. But I say it's a full way anyhow. Say, do we kill the women too? Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you, I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No. Nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave and you're always as polite as pie to them, and by and by they fall in love with you and never want to go home anymore. Well, if that's the way, I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Might as soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellows waiting to be ransomed that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say. Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now. Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now. And when they wake him up, he was scared and cried and said he wanted to go home to his maw and didn't want to be a robber anymore. So they all made fun of him and called him a crybaby. And that made him mad. And he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom gave him a five cents to keep quiet and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people. Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much only Sundays. And so he wanted to begin next Sunday. But all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday. And that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could. And then we elected Tom Sawyer, first captain, and Joe Harper, second captain of the gang. And so started home. I clumped up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up in clay, and I was all tired. End of chapter two. Chapter three of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter three. Well, I got a good going over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes. But the widow, she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I would bathe a while if I could. Then Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it weren't so. I tried it. Once I got a fishline, but no hooks. It weren't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way. I sat down one time back in the woods and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Win get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back a silver snuff box that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, I says to myself. There ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts. This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant. I must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself. This was including Miss Watson as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it except for the other people. So at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it anymore and just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way that makes the body's mouth water, but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there won't no help for him anymore. I thought it all out and reckoned I would belong to the widows if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he wasn't going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low down in ordinary. Pa, he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me. I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always wail me when he was sober and could get his hands on me, though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river, grounded, about twelve miles above town, so people said. They judged it was him anyway, said this rounded man was just his size and was ragged and had uncommon long hair, which was all like Pa. But they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it weren't much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I weren't comfortable long, because I happen to think of something I knowed mighty well that a rounded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed then that this weren't Pa, but a woman dressed up in man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market. But we never hibed any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs ingots, and he called the turnips and stuff jewelry, and we would go to the cave and pow wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blaze and stick which he called a slogan, which was to sign for the gang to get together. And then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-Rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants and six hundred camels and over a thousand sumptomules, all loaded down with diamonds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, so we would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot as scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready. He never could go after a turnip cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though there was only lathe and broomsticks, and you might scour them till you rotted, and then they weren't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-Rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade, and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there weren't no Spaniards and A-Rabs, and there wasn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday school picnic, and only a primer class at that. We busted it up and chased the children up the holler, but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no diamonds, and I told Tom Saw her so. He said there was loads of them there anyway, and he said there was A-Rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them then? He said if I weren't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants, and treasure, and so on. But we had enemies, which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school just out of spite. I said, all right, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numbskull. Why, said he, a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big a round as a church. Well, I says, suppose we got some genies to help us. Can't we lick the other crowd then? How are you going to get them? I don't know. How do they get them? Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in with the thunder and lightning and ripping around and the smoker rolling, and everything they are told to do, they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots and belting a Sunday school superintendent over the head with it or any other man. Who makes them tear around so? Moah, whoever rubbers the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubbers the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace 40 miles long out of diamonds and fill it full of chewing gum or whatever they want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it, and they've got to do it before sun up next morning too, and more. They've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand. Well, says I, I think there are a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves instead of fooling them away like that. And what's more, if I was one of them, I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp. How you talk, Huck Finn, why you'd have to come when he rubbed it whether you wanted to or not? What? And I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right then, I would come, but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country. Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know anything somehow, perfect saphead. I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I recollected I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed until I sweat like an engine, calculating to build the palace and sell it. But it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckon he believed in the A-rabbs and the elephants, but as for me, I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday school. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This Sleabery Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 Well, three or four months run along and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, but I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired, I played hooky, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school, the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they weren't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the wood sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me. One morning I happened to turn over the salt cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck. But Miss Watson was in ahead of me and crossed me off. She says, Take your hands away, Huckleberry. What a mess you are always making. The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren't going to keep off the bad luck. I know that well enough. I started out after breakfast feeling worried and shaky and wondering where it was going to fall on me and what it was going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind. So I never tried to do anything but just poked along low spirited and on the watch out. I went down to the front garden and clump over the style where you go through the highboard fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the style a while and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in after standing around so. I couldn't make it out. It was very curious somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot heel made with big nails to keep off the devil. I was up in a second and shining down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thackers as quick as I could get there. He said, Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest? No, sir, I says. Is there some for me? Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night. Over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it, you'll spend it. No, sir, I says. I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all. Nor the six thousand other. I want you to take it. I want to give it to you. The six thousand at all. He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says, Why, what can you mean, my boy? I says, Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it, won't you? He says, Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter? Please take it, says I, and don't ask me nothing. Then I won't have to tell no lies. He studied a while, and then he says, Oh, I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me, not give it. That's the correct idea. Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over and says, There, you see it says, For a consideration. That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it. So I signed and left. Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which he had took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him Pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use. He said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass know-how even if the brass didn't show because it was so slick it felt greasy and so that would tell on it every time. I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge. I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it and said he wouldn't manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night. And next morning you couldn't see no brass and it wouldn't feel greasy no more so anybody in town would take it in a minute let alone a hair-ball. Well I know the potato would do that before but I had forgot it. Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim and Jim told it to me. He says your old father don't know yet what he are going to do. Sometimes he spec- you'll go away and then again he spec- he'll stay. The best way is to rest easy and let the old man take his own way. There's two angels hovering round about him. One of them is white and shiny and the other one is black. The white one gets him to go right a little while but then the black one sail in and bust it up. A body can't tell yet which one going to fetch him at the last but you is right. You're going to have considerable trouble in your life and considerable joy. Sometimes you're going to get hurt and sometimes you're going to get sick but every time you're going to get well again. There's two gals flying about you and your life. One of them is light and the other one is dark. One is rich and the other is poor. You're going to marry the poor one first and the rich one by and by. You want to keep away from the water as much as you can and don't run no risk because it's down in the bills that you're going to get hung. When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there sat Pap his own self. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This Sleevery Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 I had shut the door too. Then I turned around and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time. He tanned me so much. I reckon I was scared now too, but in a minute I see I was mistaken. That is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected. But right away, after I see, I weren't scared of him worth bothering about. He was almost fifty and looked at. His hair was long and tangled and greasy and hung down and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. He was all black, no gray. So was his long, mixed up whiskers. There weren't no color in his face where his face showed. It was white, not like another man's white, but white to make a body sick. A white to make a body's flesh crawl. A tree-toed white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes, just rags. That was all. He had one ankle rested on to the knee. The boot on that foot was busted and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor, an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. I stood a-looking at him. He sat there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up, so he had come in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says, Star-chie clothes vary. You think you're a good deal of a big bug, don't you? Maybe I am. Maybe I ain't. I says, Don't you give me none of your lip? says he. You put on considerable many frills since I've been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated too, they say. Can read and write? You think you're better than your father now, don't you, because he can't. I'll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such high-falutin' foolishness, eh? Who told you you could? The widow, she told me. The widow, hey? And who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business? Nobody never told her. Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And lookie here, you dropped that school, you hear? I learned people to bring up a boy to put on ass over his father and let on to be better in what he is. You let me catch you foolin' around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read and she couldn't write another before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died. I can't, and here you're a swellin' yourself up like this. I ain't demand to stand it, you hear? Say, let me hear you read. I took up a book and began something about General Washington and the wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says, it's so you can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now, lookie here, you stopped that puttin' on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty, and if I catch you about that school, I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son. He took up a little blue and yellower picture of some cows and a boy and says, what's this? It's somethin' they give me for learnin' my lessons good. He tore it up and says, I'll give you somethin' better. I'll give you a cow hide. He sat there, rumblin' and growlin' a minute. Then he says, ain't you a sweet senty dandy, though? A bed and big clothes and a lookin' glass and a piece of carpet on the floor. And your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tan yard. I never see such a son. I bet I'll take some of these frills outta you before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no end to your ass. Hey, say you're rich. Hey, how's that? They lie, that's how. Looky here, man, how you talk to me? I'm a standin' about all I can stand now, so don't give me no sass. I've been in town two days, and I ain't heard nothin' but about you being rich. I heard about a way down the river, too. That's why I come. You get me that money tomorrow. I want it. I ain't got no money. It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You get it? I want it. I ain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thacker. He'll tell you the same. All right. I'll ask him, and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it. I ain't got only a dollar, and I want that, too. It don't make no difference what you want it for. You just shell it out. He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going downtown to get some whiskey, said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me for puttin' on frills, and tryin' to be better than him. And when I reckoned he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop that. Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bully-ragged him, and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn't. And then he swore he'd make the law force him. The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian. But it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man. So he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it. Said he'd rather not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he cow-hired me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and Pat took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carryin' on, and he kept it up all over town with a tin pan, till most midnight. Then they jailed him, and next day they got him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied. Said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. When he got out the new judge said he wasn't going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried and said he'd been a fool and fooled away his life. But now he wasn't going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words, so he cried, and his wife, she cried again. Pat said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so, so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand and said, look at it gentlemen and ladies all, take a hold of it, shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog, but it ain't so no more. It's the hand of a man that started in on a new life and will die before he'll go back. You mark them words. Don't forget, I said them. It's a clean hand now, shake it. Don't be afeared. So they shook it one after the other all around and cried. The judge's wife, she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got powerful thirsty and clumped out on the porch roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of Forty Rod and clumped back again and had a good old time. And towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rode off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and most froze to death when somebody found him after sunup. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundence before they could navigate it. The judge, he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 He went for Judge Thatcher. Huck decided to leave. Political economy thrashing around. Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money. And he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or I'll run him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite-pap. The law trial was a slow business. Appeared like they weren't ever going to get started on it, so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off in the judge to keep from getting to cow-hiding. Every time he got money he got drunk, and every time he got drunk he raised cane around town, and every time he raised cane he got jailed. He was just suited. This kind of thing was right in his line. He got to hanging around the widows too much, and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring and catched me, and took me up the river about three miles in a skiff and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there weren't no houses, but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head at night. He had a gun which he had stolen, I reckon, and we fished and hunted and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whiskey, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time and lit me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but Pat drove him off with a gun, and it weren't long after that till I was used to being where I was and liked it, oh, but the cow-high part. It was kind of lazy and jolly and laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing and no books nor study. Two months or more would run along, my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widows where you had to wash and eat on a plate and comb up and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing because the widow didn't like it, but now I took it up again because Pat hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. But by and by Pat got too handy with his hickory and I couldn't stand it. I was all over-welds. He got to going away so much too and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was going three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got grounded, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There weren't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimney. It was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pat was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away. I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times. Well, I was most all the time at it because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last. I found an old rusty wood saw without any handle. It was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin, behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting toward the end of it when I heard Papp's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon Papp come in. Papp weren't in a good humor, so he was his natural self. He said he was downtown and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial. But then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widows any more and be so cramped up and civilized as they call it. Then the old man got to Cussan and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed him all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any. And after that he polished off with a kind of general cuss all around, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's his name when he got to them and went right along with his Cussan. He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him, he knowed of a place six or seven miles off to Stomyon, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute. I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty pound sack of cornmeal and a side of bacon, ammunition and a four gallon jug of whiskey, and an old book and two newspapers for watching, besides some tow. I towed it up a load and went back and sat down on the bow with a skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun in some lines and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away from the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if Pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or grounded. I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would have thought he was Adam. He was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the government. This time, he says, Call this a government? Why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law, a standing reddit to take a man's son away from him, a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last and ready to go to work and begin to do something for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him, and they call that government. That ain't all another, the law backs that old judge statue up and helps him to keep me out of my property. Here's what the law does. The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upwards and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitting for a hog. They call that government. A man can't get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I have a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I've told him so. I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of them heard me and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents, I leave the blamed country and never come a near it again. Then it's the very words. I says, look at my hat, if you call it a hat. But the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin. Then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through the genistove pipe. Look at it, says I. Such a hat for me to wear, one of the wealthiest men in this town, if I could get my rights. Oh yes, this is a wonderful government. Wonderful. Why look at here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio, a mooladder, most as wide as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat. And there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had. And he had a gold watch and chain and a silver-headed cane, the awfulest old gray-headed neighbor in the state. And what do you think? He said he was a professor in a college and could talk all kinds of languages and know everything. And that ain't the worst. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is a country you're coming to? It was election day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I weren't too drunk to get there. And when they told me there was a state in this country where they let that nigger vote, I draw it out. I says, I'll never vote again. Them's the very words I said, they all hurt me. And the country may rot for all me. I'll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger, why, he wouldn't give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out of the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up an auction and sold? That's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? They said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There now, that's a specimen. They call that a government that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. Huh, it's a government that calls itself a government that lets on to be a government that thinks it's a government, and yet's got to set stock still for six whole months before it can take hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted, free nigger and papoise going on so he never noticed where his old ember legs was taking him to. So he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins. And the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language mostly hold at the nigger and the government, though he gave the tub some too, all along here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it. So now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt and rolled there and held his toes, and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Soberry Hagen in his best days, and he said it laid over him too, but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. After supper pap took the jug and said he had enough whiskey there for two drunks and one delirium trimens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I could steal the key. I saw myself out, one on the other. He drank and drank and tumbled down on his blankets by and by, but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep and the candle burning. I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said there was crawling up his legs, and then he would give a jump and scream and say one had bit him on the cheek, but I couldn't see no snakes. He started and run round and round the cabin hollering, take him off, take him off, he's biting me on the neck. I never see a man look so wild in his eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out and fell down panting. Then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands and screaming and saying there was devils a hold to him. He wore out by and by and laid still a while moaning. Then he laid stiller and didn't make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by a corner. By and by he raised a part way and listened with his head to one side. He says very low. Trap, trap, trap, that's the dead. Trap, trap, trap, they're coming after me, but I won't go. Oh, they're here, don't touch me, don't, don't hands off, they're cold, let's go, oh, let a poor devil alone. Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone. And he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging, and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket. By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet, looking wild. He see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp knife, calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged and told him I was only huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh and roared and cussed and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone, but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out and dropped down with his back against the door and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him and said he would sleep and get strong, then he would see who was who. So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split bottom chair and clumped up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel pointing towards Papp and sat down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 Laying for him Locked in the cabin Sinking the body resting Get up, what you bout? I opened my eyes and looked around trying to make out where I was. It was after sun up and I had been sound asleep. Papp was standing over me looking sour and sick too. He says, what you doing with this gun? I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing so I says somebody tried to get in so I was laying for him. Why didn't you rouse me out? Well, I tried but I couldn't, I couldn't budge you. Well, all right, don't stand there blabbering all day but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a minute. He unlocked the door and I cleared out up the river bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down and a sprinkler in the bark so I know the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me because as soon as that rise begins here comes cord wood floating down in pieces of log rafts. Sometimes a dozen logs together so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood yards and the sawmill. I went along up the bank with one eye out for Papp and another one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe just the beauty to about 13 or 14 foot long riding high like a duck. I shot head first off of the bank like a frog closing all on and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it because people often done that to fool folks and when the chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift canoe sure enough and I clummed in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this, she's worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore Papp wasn't in sight yet and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully all hung over with vines and willows I struck another idea. I judged I'd hide her good and then instead of taking to the woods when I run off I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good and not have such a rough time trapping on foot. It was pretty close to the shanty and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time but I got her head and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows and there was the old man down the path of peace just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun so he hadn't seen anything. When he got along I was hard at it taking up a trot line. He abused me a little for being so slow but I told him I fell in the river and that was what made me so long. I know he would see I was wet and then he would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home. While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up both of us being about wore out I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep Papp and the widow from trying to follow me it would be a certain true thing then trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me. You see all kinds of things might happen. Well I didn't see no way for a while but by and by Papp raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water and he says another time a man comes a proud and round here you roused me out you hear that man weren't here for no good. I had a shot him next time you roused me out you hear then he dropped down and went to sleep again but what he'd been saying gave me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself I can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by along comes part of a long raft nine logs fast together. We went out with a skiff and towed it ashore then we had dinner. Anybody but Papp would have waited and seen the day through so as to catch more stuff but that warn Papp style. Nine logs was enough for one time he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff and started off towing the raft about half past three. I judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had a good start then I out with my saw and went to work on that log again. Before he was to the side of the river I was out of the hole. Him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. I took the sack of cornmeal and took it to where the canoe was hid and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in. Then I done the same with the side of bacon then the whiskey jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was and all the ammunition. I took the wadding. I took the bucket and gourd. I took a dipper and a tin cup and my old saw and two blankets and the skillet and the coffee pot. I took fish lines and matches and other things, everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe but there wasn't any only the one out at the wood pile and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun and now I was done. I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things so I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place and put two rocks under it and won against it to hold it there for it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch the ground. If you stood four or five feet away and didn't know it was sawd you would never notice it and besides this was the back of the cabin and it weren't likely anybody would go fooling around there. It was all grass clear to the canoe so I hadn't left the track. I followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river all safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds. When I see a wild pig, hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms, I shot this fellow and took him into camp. I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerably doing it. I fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe and laid him down on the ground to bleed. I say ground because it was ground hard packed with no boards. Well next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it all I could drag and I started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in and down it sunk out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there. I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that. Well last I pulled out some of my hair and bloody the axe good and stuck it on the backside and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket so he wouldn't drip till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of metal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw for there weren't no knives or forks on the place, papped on everything with his clasp knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and threw the willows east to the house to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes and ducks too you might say in the season. There was a slew and a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away. I don't know where but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped Papp's whetstone there too so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string so it wouldn't leak no more and took it and my saw to the canoe again. It was about dark now so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow then I took a bite to eat and by and by I laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself they'll follow the track of that sack full of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leaves out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that and won't bother no more about me. All right. I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson's Island is good enough for me. I know that island pretty well and nobody ever comes there and then I can paddle over to town nights and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place. I was pretty tired and the first thing I know that I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could have counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along. Black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet and it looked late and smelt late. You know what I mean? I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in roll-locks when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches and there it was. A skiff away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept coming and when it was the breast of me I see there weren't but one man in it. Thanks I, maybe it's Pap though I weren't expecting him. He dropped below me with the current and by and by he came a swinging up shore in the easy water and he went by so close I could have reached out the gun and touched him. Well it was Pap sure enough and sober too by the way he laid his oars. I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a spinning downstream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more toward the middle of the river because pretty soon I would be passing the fur landing and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I lay there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe looking away to the sky not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine. I never knowed it before and how far a body can hear on the water such nights. I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said too every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days in the short nights now. The other one said this weren't one of the short ones he reckoned and then they laughed and he said it over again and they laughed again. Then they waked up another fellow and told him but he didn't laugh. He ripped out something brisk and said let him alone. The first fellow said he allowed to tell it to his old woman. She would think it was pretty good and he said that weren't nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was near to three o'clock and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away and I couldn't make out the words any more but I could hear the mumble and now within a laugh too but it seemed a long ways off. I was away below the ferry now. I rose up and there was Jackson's Island about two miles and a half downstream heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river big and dark and solid like a steamboat without any lights. There weren't any signs of the bar at the head. It was all under water now. It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate. The current was so swift and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side toward the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about. I had to part the willow branches to get in and when I made fast nobody could have seen the canoe from the outside. I went up and sat down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town three mile away where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile upstream coming along down with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, star an oars there, heaver head to starboard. I heard that as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now so I stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This sleeper vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8, Sleeping in the Woods, Raising the Dead, Exploring the Island, Finding Jim, Jim's Escape, Signs, Ballum. The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the grass in the cool shade thinking about things and feeling rested and rather comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes but mostly it was big trees all about and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves and the freckled places swapped about a little showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels sat on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. I was powerful, lazy and comfortable, didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I think I hear a deep sound of boom away up the river. I rouses up and rests on my elbow and listens. Pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up about to brass the ferry. And there was the ferry boat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. Boom! I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry boat side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water trying to make my carcass come to the top. I was pretty hungry but it weren't going to do for me to start a fire because they might see the smoke. So I sat there and watched the cannon smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there and it always looks pretty on a summer morning. So I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drowned carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a look out and if any of them is floating around after me, I'll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have and I weren't disappointed. A big double loaf come along and I most got it with a long stick but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course, I was where the current set in the closest to the shore. I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver and set my teeth in. It was baker's bread. What a quality eat, none of you low down corn-pone. I got a good place amongst the leaves and sat there on a log munching the bread and watching the ferryboat and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me and here it has gone and done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there is something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays but it don't work for me and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. The ferryboat was floating with the current and I allowed I'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along because she would come in close where the bread did. When she got pretty well along down toward me I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread and lay down behind the log on the bank in a little open place where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along and she drifted in so close that they could have run out of plank and walk to shore. Most everybody was on board. Pap and Judge Thatcher and Bessie Thatcher and Joe Harper and Tom Sawyer and his old Aunt Polly and Sid and Mary and plenty more. Everybody was talking about the murder but the captain broke in and says, look sharp now the current set the closest here and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I hope so anyway. I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails nearly in my face and kept still watching with all their might. I could see them first rate but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out, stand away and the cannon let all such a blast right before me that it made me deep with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke and I judged I was gone. If they had had some bullets in, I reckon they had got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt thanks to goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming now and then further and further off and by and by after an hour I couldn't hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot and was given it up but they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side under steam and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast ahead of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw and toward sundown I started my campfire and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. When it was dark I set by my campfire smoking and feeling pretty well satisfied but by and by it got sort of lonesome and so I went and sat on the bank and listened to the currents swashing along and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down and then went to bed. There ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome. You can't stay so. You soon get over it. And so for three days and nights no difference just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it. It all belonged to me so to say and I wanted to know all about it. But mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries ripe in prime and green summer grapes and green raspberries and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by I judged. Well I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I weren't far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along but I hadn't shot nothing. It was for protection though I would kill some game now home. About this time a modern ear stepped on a good sized snake and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers and I after it trying to get shot at it. I clipped along and all of a sudden I bounded right onto the ashes of a campfire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for it to look further but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I slunk along another piece further and then listened again and so on and so on. If I see a stump I took it for a man. If I tried on a stick and broke it it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half and the short half too. When I got to camp I weren't feeling very brash there wasn't much sand in my craw but I says this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours but I didn't see nothing. I didn't hear nothing. I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well I couldn't stay up there forever so at last I got down and I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time all I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry so when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a supper and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I heard a plunkety plunk plunkety plunk and says to myself horse is coming and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I heard a man say we better camp here if we can find a good place the horses is about beat out let's look around. I didn't wait but shoved off and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. I didn't sleep much I couldn't somehow for thinking and every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck so the sleep didn't do me no good. By and by I says to myself I can't live this way I'm going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me I'll find out or bust well I felt better right off so I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows the moon was shining and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day I poked along well on to an hour everything stills rocks and sound to sleep well by this time I was most down to the foot of the island a little ripply cool breeze begun to blow and that was as good as saying the night was about done I gave her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods I sat down there on a log and looked out through the leaves I see the moon go off watch and the darkness began to blanket the river but in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops and no the day was coming so I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that campfire stopping every minute or two to listen but I had no luck somehow I couldn't seem to find a place but by and by sure enough I catch the glimpse of fire away through the trees I went for it cautious and slow by and by I was close enough to have a look and there laid a man on the ground it most gave me the fantods he had a blanket around his head and his head was nearly in the fire I sat there behind the clupp of trees in about six foot of him and kept my eyes on him steady it was getting gray daylight now pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hold off the blanket and it was miss Watson's Jim I bet I was glad to see him I says hello Jim and skipped out he bounced up and stared at me wild then he drops down on his knees and puts his hands together and says don't hurt me don't I ain't never done no harm to no ghosts I always liked dead people and done all I could for them you go and get in the river again where you belongs and don't do nothing to old Jim and it's always your friend well I weren't long making him understand I weren't dead I was ever so glad to see Jim I weren't lonesome now I told him I weren't afraid of him telling the people where I was I talked along but he only sat there and looked at me never said nothing then I says it's good daylight let's get breakfast make up your campfire good what's the use of making up the campfire to cook strawberries in such truck but you got a gun ain't you then we can get something better than strawberries strawberries in such truck I says is that what you live on I couldn't get nothing else he says why how long you've been on this island Jim I come here I did not after you were skilled what all that time yes indeedy and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbish to eat oh sir nothing else well you must be most starved ain't you I reckon I could eat a horse I think I could how long you've been on this island since the night I got killed no why what has you lived on but you got a gun oh yes you got a gun that's good now you kill something and I'll make up the fire so we went over to where the canoe was and while he built the fire in the grass he opened place amongst the trees I fetched meal and bacon and coffee and coffee pot and frying pan and sugar and 10 cups and the nail was set back considerable because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft I catched a good big catfish too and Jim cleaned him with his knife and fried him when breakfast was ready we lulled on the grass and it's smoking hot Jim laid in with all his might for he was most about starved then when we had got pretty well stuffed we laid off and leased by and by Jim says but look here duck who was it that was killed in that chanty if it weren't you then I told him the whole thing and he said it was smart he said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had then I says how do you come to be here Jim and how'd you get here he looked pretty uneasy and didn't say nothing for a minute then he says maybe I better not tell why Jim well there's reasons but you wouldn't tell on me if I was to tell you would you hook blamed if I would Jim well I believe you hook I I run off jam but mine you said you wouldn't tell you know you said you wouldn't tell hook well I did I said I wouldn't and I'll stick to it honest engine I will people would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum but that don't make no difference I ain't going to tell and I ain't going back there anyways so now let's know all about it well you see us this way old missus that smith swanson she picks on me all the time and treats me pretty rough but she always says she wouldn't sell me down to all ends but I noticed they was a nigga trading round the place considerable lately and I began to get on easy well one night I creeps in the dough pulled late and the dough wasn't one quite should and I hear old missus tell the winner she grind to sell me down to all leans but she didn't want to but she said she could get eight hundred dollars for me and it is such a big stack of money she couldn't resist the winner she tried to get her to say she wouldn't do it but I never waited to hear the rest I let out my quick I tell you I took out and shinned down to hill and specter steal a skip long to show some as above the town but there was people are stirring yet so I head in the old humble down koopa shop on the bank to wait for everybody to go away well I was down night there was somebody around all the time longer by six in the morning skiffs were going to go by and about eight and nine every shift that went long was talking about how your pap come over to the town and says you's killed these last skiffs was full of ladies and gentlemen are going over for a cedar place sometimes they'd pull up to the show and take a rest before they started to cross so by the talk I got to know all about the killing. I was powerful sorry you's killed huck but I ain't no more now. I laid down under shavings all day I was hungry but I weren't afraid because I know the old Mrs and the winner was going to start to the camp meeting right after breakfast and be gone all day and they knows I goes off with the cattle about daylight so they wouldn't expect to see me round the place and so they wouldn't miss me till at a dark in the evening the other servants wouldn't miss me because they shun out to take holiday soon as the old folks is out of the way well when it come dark I took out up the river road and went about two mile or more to where they want no houses I made up my mind about what I was going to do you see if I keep on trying to get away a foot the dogs would track me and if I stole a skip to crossover they'd missed that skip you see and they know about where I land on the other side and where to pick up my track so I says a raft is what eyes adder it don't make no track I see a lighter coming round with the pint by and by so I weighed in and shoved a log ahead of me and swum more than halfway across the river and got in amongst the driftwood and then keep my head down low and kind of swim again to current till the raft come along then I swam to the stern of it and took a hold it clouded up and it was put at dark for a little while so I clump up and laid down on the planks the men is all way under in the middle of where the lantern was the river was a rising and there was a good current so I reckon that by four in the morning I'd be 25 mile down the river and did not slip in just before daylight and swim a show and take to the woods on the Illinois side but I didn't have no luck when we was most down to the head of the island a man begun to come up with the lantern I see it weren't no use for the wait so I slid overboard and stuck out for the island well I had a notion I could land most anywhere but I couldn't back to bluff I was most of the foot of the island before I found a good place I went into the woods and judged I wouldn't fool with rafts no more long as they moved the lantern around so I had my pipe and a plug a dog leg and some matches in my cap and they weren't wet so I was all right and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time why didn't you get mud turtles how you going to get them you can't slip on them and grab them and how's the body going to hit him with a rock how could a body do it in the night and I wasn't going to show myself on the bank in the daytime well that's so you had to keep to the woods all the time of course did you hear him shooting the cannon oh yes I know it was out of you I see him go by here watched him to the bushes some young birds come along flying a yard or two at a time and lighting Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way and so he reckoned it was the same when young birds done it I was going to catch some of them but Jim wouldn't let me he said it was death he said his father laid mind a sick once and some of them catch the bird and his old granny said his father would die and he did and Jim said you mustn't count the things you're going to cook for dinner because that would bring bad luck the same if you shook the tablecloth after sundown and he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died the bees must be told about it before sun up next morning or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die Jim said bees wouldn't sting itch it's but I didn't believe that because I had tried them a lot the time myself and they wouldn't sting me I had heard about some of these things before but not all of them Jim knowed all kinds of signs he said he knowed most everything I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck and so I asked him if there weren't any good luck signs he says might a few and they ain't no used to a body what you want to know when good lucks are coming for want to keep it off and he said if and you got hairy arms at a hairy breast it's a sign that you are going to be rich well there's some use in the sign like that because it's so far ahead you'll see maybe you's got to be po a long time first and so you might get discouraged and kill yourself if you didn't know by the sign that you want to be rich by and by have you got hairy arms at a hairy breast Jim what's the use to ask that question don't you see I has well are you rich no but I've been rich once and going to be rich again once I had 14 dollars but I took the speculating and got busted out what did you speculate in Jim well first I tackle stock what kind of stock why livestock cattle you know I put 10 dollars in a cow but I ain't going to risk no more money in stock decal up and died on my hands so you lost 10 dollars no I didn't lose it all I only lost about nine of it I sold a hide and tell her for a dollar and 10 cents you had five dollars and 10 cents left did you speculate anymore yes you know that one legged nigga that belongs to old Mr. Braddish well he sought up a bank and said anybody that put in a dollar would get four dollar mo at the end of the year well all the niggas went in but they didn't have much I was the only one that had much so I stuck out promoting four dollars and I said if I didn't get it I'd start a bank myself well of course that nigga wants to keep me out of the business because he says there weren't business enough for two banks so he says I could put my five dollars in and he'd pay me 35 at the end of the year so I done it then I reckoned I'd invest the 35 dollars right off and keep things moving there was a nigga named Bob that had catch the wood flat and his master didn't know it and I bought it off in him and told him to take the 35 dollars when the end of the year come but somebody stole the wood flat that night and the next day the one legged nigga say the banks busted so they didn't none of us get no money what did you do with the 10 cents Jim well I was going to spend it but I had a dream and the dream told me to give it to a nigga named ballam ballam his ass they call him for short and he's one of them chuckleheads you know but he's lucky they say and I see I weren't lucky the dream say let ballam invest the 10 cents and he'd make a raise for me well ballam he took the money and when he was in church he had the preacher say that whoever give to the poll lend to the lord and bound to get his money back a hundred times so ballam he took and give the 10 cents to the poll and laid low to see what was going to come of it well what did come of it Jim nothing came of it I couldn't manage to collect that money no way and ballam he couldn't I ain't going to lend no more money doubt I see the security bound to get your money back a hundred times the preacher says huh if I could get the 10 cents back I call it square and be glad at a chance well it's all right Jim long as you're going to be rich again sometime or other yes and I was rich now come to look at it I owns myself and I was worth eight hundred dollars I wish I had the money I wouldn't want no more end of chapter eight chapter nine of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter nine the cave the floating house I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I'd found when I was exploring so we started and soon got to it because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide this place was a tolerable long steep hill or ridge about 40 feet high we had a rough time getting to the top the size was so steep and the bush is so thick we tramped and clump around all over it and by and by I found a good big cavern in the rock most up to the top on the side towards Illinois the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together and Jim could stand up straight in it it was cool in there Jim was for putting our traps in there right away but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place and had all the traps in the cavern we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island and they would never find us without dogs and besides he said them little birds had said it was going to rain and did I want the things to get wet so we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern and lugged all the traps up there then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in amongst the thick willows we took some fish off the lines and set them again and begun to get ready for dinner the door of the cavern was big enough to roll the hogs head in and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on so we built it there and cooked dinner we spread the blankets inside for a carpet and eat our dinner in there we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lightening so the birds was right about it directly it begun to rain and it rained like all fury too and I never see the wind blow so it was one of these regular summer storms it would get so dark that it looked all blue black outside and lovely and the rain would rash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby and here would come a blast the wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to toss in their arms as if they was just wild and next when it was just about the bluest and blackest it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops a plunging about a way off yonder in the storm hundreds of yards further than you could see before dark is sin again in a second and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling grumbling tumbling down the sky toward the underside of the world like rolling empty barrels downstairs where it's long stare and they bounce a good deal you know Jim this is nice I says I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here and pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread well you wouldn't have been here if it hadn't been for Jim you'd have been down there in the woods without any dinner and getting most drown to do that you would honey chickens knows when it's going to rain and so do the birds child the river went on raising and raising for 10 or 12 days till at last it was over the banks the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom on that side it was a good many miles wide but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across a half mile because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs day times we paddled all over the island in the canoe it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside we went winding in and out amongst the trees and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way well on every old broken down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame on a kind of being hungry that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to but not the snakes and turtles they would slide off in the water the ridge our cabin was in was full of them we could have had pets enough if we'd wanted them one night we catch a little section of a lumber raft nice pine planks it was 12 foot wide at about 15 or 16 foot long and the top stood above water six or seven inches a solid level floor we could see saw logs go by in the daylight sometimes but we let them go we didn't show ourselves in daylight another night when we was up at the head of the island just before daylight here comes a frame house down on the west side she was a two-story and tilted over considerable we paddled out and got aboard come in at an upstairs window but it was too dark to see yet so we made the canoe fast and sat in her to wait for daylight the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island then we looked in at the window we could make out of bed a table and two chairs a lot of things around about on the floor and there was clothes hanging against the wall there was something lying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man so jim says hello you but it didn't budge so i hollered again and then jim says the man ain't asleep he's dead you hold still i'll go and see he went and bent down and looked and says it's a dead man yes indeed he naked too he been shot into back i reckon he's been dead two uh three days come in huck but don't look at his face it's too gashy i didn't look at him at all jim throwed some old rags over him but he didn't done it i didn't want to see him there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor and old whiskey bottles and a couple of masks made out of black cloth and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal there was two old dirty calico dresses and a sun bonnet and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall and some men's clothing too we put the lot into the canoe it might come good there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor i took that too and there was a bottle that had had milk in it and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck we would have took the bottle but it was broke there was a seedy old chest and an old head trunk with the hinges broke they stood open but there weren't nothing in them that was any account the way things were scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry and weren't fixed so as to carry off most of that stuff we got an old tin lantern and the butcher knife without any handle and a brand new barlow knife worth two bits in any store and a lot of tallow candles and a tin candlestick and a gourd and a tin cup and a radio bake wilt off the bed and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it and a hatchet and some nails and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it and a roll of buck skin and a leather dog collar and a horseshoe and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good curry comb and jim he found a rady old filibault and a wooden leg the straps was broke off it but bar in that it was a good enough leg though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim and we couldn't find the other one though we hunted all around and so take it all around we made a good haul when we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island and it was pretty broad day so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off i paddled over to the Illinois shore and drifted down most a half mile doing it i crept up the dead water under the bank and had no accidents and didn't see nobody we got home all safe end of chapter nine chapter ten of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter ten the find old hank bunker in disguise after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he came to be killed but jim didn't want to he said it would fetch bad luck and besides he said he might come in haunt us he said a man that weren't buried was more likely to go haunting around than one that was planted uncomfortable that sounded pretty reasonable so i didn't say no more but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i know who shot the man and what they'd done it for we rummaged the clothes we got and found eight dollars in silver sold up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat because if they didn't know the money was there they wouldn't have left it i said i reckoned they killed him too but jim didn't want to talk about that i says now you think it's bad luck but what did you say when i fetched in the snakeskin that i found on the top of the rid day before yesterday you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snakeskin with my hands well here's your bad luck we raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day jim never you mind hunter never you mind don't you get too pert it's a coming mind i tell you it's a coming it did come to it was a tuesday that we had that talk well after dinner friday we was laying around in the grass at the up end of the ridge and got out of tobacco i went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there i killed him and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket ever so natural thinking that'd be some fun when jim found him there well my night i forgot all about the snake and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light the snake's mate was there and bit him he jumped up yelling and the first thing the light showed was the vomit curled up and ready for another spring i laid him out in the second with a stick and jim grabbed pap's whiskey jug and began to pour it down he was barefooted and the snake bit him right on the heel that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that whatever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away and then skin the body and roast a piece of it i done it and he ate it and said it would help cure him he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist too he said that would help then i slid out quiet and throw the snakes clear away amongst the bushes for i weren't gonna let jim find out it was all my fault not if i could help it jim sucked and sucked at the jug and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again his foot swelled up pretty big and so did his leg but by and by the drunk began to come and so i judged he was all right but i'd rather been bit with a snake than perhaps whiskey jim was laid up for four days and nights then the swelling was all gone and he was around again i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take a hold of a snakeskin again with my hands now that i see what come of it jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time and he said that handling the snakeskin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet he said he'd rather see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snakeskin in his hand well i was getting to feel that way myself though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carol assist and foolishest things a body can do oh hank bunker done it once and bragged about it and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just kind of a layer as you may say they slid him edgewise between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him so so they say but i didn't see it pap told me but anyway it all come out of looking at the moon that way like a fool well the days went along and the river went down between its banks again and about the first thing we done was debate one of the big hooks with a skin rabbit and set it to catch a catfish that was as big as a man being six foot two inches long and weighed over 200 pounds we couldn't handle him of course he would have flung us into illinois we just sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned we found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball and lots of rubbish we split the ball open with a hatchet and there was a spool in it jim said he'd had it there a long time to coat it over and make a ball of it it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi i reckon jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one he would have been worth a good deal over at the village they paddle out such fish as that by the pound in the market house there everybody by some of him his meets as wide as snow and makes a good fry next morning i said it was getting slow and dull and i wanted to get a story up some way i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on jim liked that notion but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp then he studied it over and said couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl that was a good notion too so we shortened up one of the calico gowns and i turned up my trousers legs to my knees and got into it jim hitched it behind with the hooks and it was a fair fit i put on the sun bonnet and tied it under my chin and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a join a stove pipe jim said nobody would know me even in the daytime hardly i practiced around all day to get the hang of the things and by and by i could do pretty well in them only jim said i didn't walk like a girl and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britch's pocket i took notice and done better i started up the illinar shore in the canoe just after dark i started to cross to the town from a little below the ferry landing and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town i tied up and started along the bank there was a light burning and a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time and i wondered who had took up quarters there i slipped up and peeped in at the window there was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table i didn't know her face she was a stranger for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know now this was lucky because i was weakening i was getting afraid i had come people might know my voice and find me out but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know so i knocked at the door and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 11 hook and the woman the search prevarication going to Goshen come in says the woman and i did she says take a cheer i done it she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes and says what might your name be sarah williams whereabouts do you live in this neighborhood gnome in hookerville seven miles below i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out hungry too i reckon i'll find you something no i ain't hungry i was so hungry i had to stop two miles below here at a farm so i ain't hungry no more it's what makes me so late my mother's down sick and out of money and everything and i come to tell my uncle abner more he lives at the upper end of the town she says i ain't never been here before uh do you know him no but i don't know everybody yet i haven't lived here quite two weeks it's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town you better stay here all night take off your bonnet no i says i'll rest a while i reckon that and go on i ain't a fear to the dark she said she wouldn't let me go by myself but her husband would be in by and by maybe in an hour and a half and she said she sent him along with me then she got to talking about her husband and about her relations up the river and her relations down the river and about how much better off they used to us and how they didn't know but they made a mistake coming to our town instead of letting well alone and so on and so on till i was a fear that i had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder and then i was pretty willing to let her chatter right along she told about me and tom saw her finding the six thousand dollars only she got it ten and all about pap and what a hard lot he was and what a hard lot i was and at last she got down to where i was murdered i says who done it we've heard considerable about these goings on down in hookerville but we don't know who it was that killed huck fin well i reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that had liked to know who killed him some think old fin done it himself no is that so most everybody thought it at first he'll never know how now he comes to getting lynched but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim why he i stopped i reckon i better keep still she run on and never noticed i had put in at all the nigger run off the very night huck fin was killed sold as a reward out for him three hundred dollars and there's a reward out for old fin two two hundred dollars you see he come to town the morning after the murder and told about it and was out with him on the ferry boat hunt and right away after he up and left before night they wanted to lynch him but he was gone you see well next day they found out the nigger was gone they found out he hadn't been seen since ten o'clock the night the murder was done so then they put it on him you see and while they was full of it next day back comes old fin and went boo hoo into judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with the judge gave him some and that evening he got drunk and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers and then went off with them well he ain't come back since and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with the lawsuit people do say he weren't any too good to do it oh he's sly I reckon if he don't come back for a year he'll be all right you can't prove anything on him you know everything will be quiet and down then and he'll walk in huck's money as easy as nothing yes I reckon so him I don't see nothing in the way of it has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it no not everybody a good many things he done it but they don't get the nigger pretty soon now and maybe they can scare it out of him why they have to him yet well you're innocent ain't you does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up some folks think the nigger ain't far from here I'm one of them but I ain't talked it around a few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty and they happen to say hard and anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call Jackson's Island don't anybody live there says I know nobody says they I didn't say any more but I done some thinking I was pretty near a certain I had seen smoke over there about the head of the island a day or two before that and I says to myself like it's not that niggers hiding over there anyway says I it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt I hate seeing any smoke since so I reckon maybe he's gone if it was him but husband's going over to see him and another man he was going up the river but he got back today and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago I had got so uneasy I couldn't sit still I had to do something with my hands so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threaten it my hands shook and I was making a bad job of it when the woman stopped talking I looked up and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiled in a little I put down the needle and thread and let on to be interested and I was true and says three hundred dollars is a power of money I wish my mother could get it is your husband going over there tonight oh yes he went uptown with the man I was telling you of to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun they'll go over after midnight couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime yes and couldn't the nigger see better too after midnight he'll likely be asleep and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dark if he's got one I didn't think of that the woman kept looking at me pretty curious and I didn't feel a bit comfortable pretty soon she says what did you say your name was honey Mary Williams somehow it didn't seem to me I said it was Mary before so I didn't look up seemed to me I said it was Sarah so I felt sort of cornered and was a feared maybe I was looking at two I wish the woman would say something more the longer she said still the uneasy I was but now she says honey I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in oh yes I did Sarah Mary Williams Sarah is my first name some call me Sarah some call me Mary oh that's the way of it yes I was feeling better then but I wish I was out of there anyway I couldn't look up yet well the woman felt the talking about how hard times was and how poor they had to live and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place and so forth and so on and then I got easy again she was right about the rats you see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while she said she had to have things handy to throw with them when she was alone or they wouldn't give her no peace she showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot and said she was good shot with it generally but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago and didn't know whether she could throw true now but she watched for a chance and directly banged away at a rat but she missed him wide and said ouch it hurt her arms so then she told me to try for the next one I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back but of course I didn't let on I got the thing and the first rat that showed his nose I let drive and if he'd stayed where he was he'd have been a tolerable sick rat she said that was first rate and she reckoned I would have the next one she went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with I held up my two hands and she put the hank over them and went on talking about her and her husband's matters but she broke off to say keep your eye on the rats you'd better have the lead in your lap handy so she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment and I clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking but only about a minute then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face and very pleasant and says come now what's your real name what mom what's your real name is it bill or tom or bob or what is it I reckon I shook like a leaf and I didn't know hardly what to do but I says please don't poke fun at a poor girl like me mom if I'm in the way here I'll know you won't sit down and stay where you are I ain't gonna hurt you and I ain't gonna tell on you another you just tell me your secret and trust me I'll keep it and what's more I'll help you so my old man if you want him to you see you're a runaway apprentice that's all it ain't anything there ain't no harm in it you've been treated bad and you made up your mind to cut and bless you child I wouldn't tell on you tell me all about it now that's a good boy so I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer and I would just make a clean breast and tell her everything but she mustn't go back on her promise then I told her my father and mother was dead and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer he went away to be gone a couple of days and so I took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out and I had been three nights come in the thirty miles I traveled nights and hid day times and slept at the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way and I had a plenty I said I believed my uncle Abner would take care of me and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen Goshen child this ain't Goshen this is St. Petersburg Goshen's ten mile further up the river who told you this was Goshen why a man I met a daybreak this morning just as I was going to turn into the woods from a regular sleep he told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand and five miles would fetch me to Goshen he was drunk I reckon he told you just exactly wrong well he did act like he was drunk but it ain't no matter now I got to be moving along I'll fetch Goshen before daylight hold on a minute I'll put you up a snack to eat you might want it so she put me up a snack and says say when a cow's laying down which end to her gets up first and to me prompt now don't you stop to study over it which end gets up first the hind end mum well then a horse the far end mum which side of a tree does the moss grow on north side if fifteen cows is browsing on the hillside how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction the whole fifteen mum well I reckon you have lived in the country I thought maybe you was trying to focus me again what's your real name now George Peters mum well you try to remember it George don't forget to tell me it's Alexander before you go and then get out by saying it's George Alexander when I catch you and don't go about women in that old calico you do a girl tolerable poor but you might fool men maybe bless you child when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it hold the needle still and poke the thread at it that's the way a woman almost always does but a man always does to the way and when you throw at a rat or anything hit yourself up on tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can and miss your rat about six or seven foot throw stiff arm from the shoulder like there was a pivot there for it to turn on like a girl not from the wrist and elbow with your arm out to one side like a boy and mind you when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart she don't clap them together the way you did when you catch the lump of lead why I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle and I contrived the other things just to make certain now try to along to your uncle Sarah Mary Williams George Alexander Peters and if you get into trouble you send word to missus Judith Loftus which is me and I'll do what I can to get you out of it keep the river road all the way and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you the river roads are rocky one and your feet will be in a condition when you get to Goshen I reckon I went up the bank about fifty yards and then I doubled all my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was a good piece below the house I jumped in and was off in a hurry I went upstream far enough to take the head of the island and then started across I took off the sunbonded for I didn't want no blinders on then when I was about the middle I heard the clock begin to strike so I stopped some listens the sound come faint over the water but clear eleven when I struck the head of the island I never waited to blow though I was most winded and I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below as hard as I could I landed and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern there Jim laid sound asleep on the ground I roused him out and says get up and hump yourself Jim there ain't a minute to lose there after us Jim never asked no questions he never said a word but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared by that time everything we had in the world was on our raft and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow co where she was hit we put out the campfire in the cavern the first thing and didn't show a candle outside after that I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece and took a look but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it for stars and shadows ain't good to see by then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade past the foot of the island dead still never saying a word end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 12 slow navigation borrowing things boarding the wreck the plotters hunting for the boat it must have been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last and the raft didn't seem to go so mighty slow if a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore and it was well a boat didn't come for we hadn't even thought to put the gun in the canoe or a fishing line or anything to eat we was in rather too much of a sweat to think of so many things it weren't good judgment to put everything on the raft if the men went to the island I just expect they found the campfire I built and watched it all night for Jim to come anyways they stayed away from us and if my building the fire never fooled them it weren't no fault of mine I played it as low down on them as I could when the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a tow head in a big bend on the Illinois side and hacked off cottonwood branches with a hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave in in the bank there a tow head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow teeth we had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place so we weren't afraid of anybody running across us we laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore and up bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman and Jim said she was a smart one and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't sit down and watch a campfire no sir she'd fetch a dog well then I said why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start and he believed they must have gone up the town to get a dog and so they lost all that time or else we wouldn't be here on a tow head sixteen or seventeen mile below the village no indeed we would be in that same old town again so I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't when it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket and looked up and down and across nothing in sight so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blaze in weather and rainy and to keep things dry Jim made a floor for the wigwam and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with the frame around it for the hold it to this was to build a fire on and sloppy weather or chili the wigwam would keep it from being seen we made an extra steering or two because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something we fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming downstream to keep them getting run over but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats unless we was in what they call a crossing for the river was pretty high yet very low banks being still a little underwater so upbound boats didn't always run the channel but hunted easy water the second night we run between seven and eight hours with the current that was making over four mile an hour we catched fish and talked and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness it was kind of solemn drifting down the big steel river laying on our backs looking up at the stars and we didn't even feel like talking loud and it weren't often that we laughed only a little kind of a low chuckle we had might a good weather as a general thing and nothing ever happened to us at all that night nor the next nor the next every night we passed towns some of them away up on black hillsides nothing but a shiny bed of lights not a house could you see the fifth night we passed st. louis and it was like the whole world lit up in st. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st. louis but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that's still night there weren't a sound there everybody was asleep every night now i used to slip ashore toward ten o'clock at some little village and buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat and sometimes i lifted a chicken that weren't roosting comfortable and took him along pap always said take a chicken when you get a chance because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does and a good deed ain't ever forgot i never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself but that is what he used to say anyway mornings before daylight i slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon or a musch melon or a pumpkin or some new corn or things of that kind pap always said it weren't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time but the widow said it weren't anything but a soft name for stealing and no decent body would do it jim said he reckoned that the widow was partly right and pap was partly right so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them anymore then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others so we talked it over all one night drifting along down the river trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons or the cantaloupes or the musch melons or what but towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory and concluded to drop crab apples and persimmons we weren't feeling just right before that but it was all comfortable now i was glad the way it come out too because crab apples ain't ever good and the persimmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet we shot a waterfowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening take it all around we lived pretty high the fifth night below st louis we had a big storm after midnight with the power of thunder and lightning and the rain poured down in a solid sheet we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself when the lightning cleared out we could see a big straight riverhead and high rocky bluffs on both sides by and by says i hello gem looky under it was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock we was drifting straight down for her the lightning showed her very distinct she was leaning over with part of her upper deck above water and you could see every little chimney guy clean and clear and a chair by the big bell with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flash has come well it being away in the night and stormy and also mysterious like i felt just the way any other boy would have felt when i see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river i wanted to get a board of her and slink around a little and see what was there so i says let's land on her gem but gem was dead against it at first he says i don't want to go full and long and no rack we don't blame well and we better let blame well alone as the good book says like it's not there's a watchman on that rack watchman your grandmother i says there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot house and you reckon anybody's going to risk his life for a texas and a pilot house such a night as this when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute gem couldn't say nothing to that so he didn't try and besides i says we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom cigars i bet you and cost five cents apiece solid cash steamboat captains is always rich and get sixty dollars a month and they don't care a cent what a thing costs you know as long as they want it stick a candle in your pocket i can't rest gem till we give her a rummaging do you reckon tom soya would ever go by this thing not for pie he wouldn't he call it an adventure that's what he call it and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act and wouldn't he throw style into it wouldn't he spread himself nor nothing why you think it was christopher clumbus discovering kingdom come i wish tom soya was here gem grumbled a little but give in he said we mustn't talk any more than we could help and then talk mind alone the lightning showed us the wreck again just in time and we fetched the starboard derrick and made fast there the deck was high out there we went sneaking down a slope of it till arbor in the dark towards the texas feeling our way slow with our feet and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight and clumb on to it and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door which was open and by jiminy way down through the texas hall we see a light at all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick and told me to come along i says all right and was going to start for the raft but just then i heard a voice well out and say oh please don't boys i swear i won't ever tell another voice said pretty loud it's a lie jim turner you've acted this way before you always want more and you'll share the truck and you've always got it too because you swore to if you didn't you tell but this time you just said it one time too many you're the meanest treachery nest hound in this country by this time jim was gone for the raft i was just a violin with curiosity and i says to myself tom saw it i wouldn't back out now and so i won't either i'm gonna see what's going on here i dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage and crept aft in the dock till there weren't but one state room which was to me in the cross hall of the texas then in there i see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot two men standing over him and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand and the other had a pistol this one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying i lied to and i ordered to i mean skunk the man on the floor would shrivel up and say oh please don't bill i ain't ever going to tell and every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say did you ain't you never said no true thing in that you bet and once he said hear him beg and yet if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him he'd have killed us both and what for just for nothing just because we stood on our rights that's what's for but i'll lay you ain't going to threaten anybody any more jim turner put up that pistol bill bill says i don't want to jake packard i'm for killing him and didn't he kill old hatfield just the same weight and don't he deserve it but i don't want him killed and i've got my reasons for it bless your heart for them words jake packard i'll never forget you long as i live says the man on the floor started blubbering packard didn't take no notice of that but hung up his lantern on a nail and started towards where i was there in the dark and motion billed to come i crawfished as fast as i could about two yards but the boat slanted so i couldn't make very good time so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a state room on the upper side the man came upon along in the dark and when packard got to my state room he says here come in here and in he come and bill after him but before they got in i was up in the upper berth cornered and sorry i come then they stood there with their hands on the ledge of the berth and talked i couldn't see him but i could tell where there was by the whiskey they'd been having i was glad i didn't drink whiskey but it wouldn't make much of difference anyway because most of the time they couldn't have treated me because i didn't breathe i was too scared and besides the body couldn't breathe and hear such talk they talked low and earnest bill wanted to kill turner he says he says he'll tell and he will if we was to give both eyes to him now it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've served him shows you a born he'll turn states evidence now you hear me i'm for putting him out of his troubles so am i says packard very quiet blame it i sort of begun to think you wasn't well then that's all right let's go and do it hold on a minute i hate had my say yet you listen to me shooting's good but there's quieter ways if the things got to be done but what i say is this it ain't good sense to go courting around after a halter if you can get at what you're up to in some way that's just as good and at the same time don't bring you into no risks ain't that so you bet it is but how are you going to manage it this time well my idea is this we'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickings we've overlooked in the staterooms and shove for sure and hide the truck then we'll wait now i say it ain't gonna be more than two hours before this rat breaks up and washes off down the river see he'll be drowned it won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self i reckon that's a considerable site better and killing of him i'm unfavorable to kill on a man as long as you can get around it it ain't good sense it ain't good morose ain't i right yeah i reckon you are but suppose you don't break up and wash off well we can wait the two hours anyway and see can't we all right then come along so they started and i let out all in a cold sweat and scrambled forward it was darkest pitch there but i said in a kind of a coarse whisper jim and he answered up right in my elbow with the sort of a moan and i says quick jim it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning there's a gang of murderers in yonder and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck there's one of them is going to be in a bad fix but if we find their boat we can put all of them in a bad fix for the sheriff will get them quick hurry i'll hunt the law beside you hunt the starboard you start at the raft and oh my lord lord raft there ain't no raft no more she done broke losing gone i and here we is end of chapter 12 chapter 13 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this labor box recording is in the public domain chapter 13 escaping from the wreck the watchman seeking well i catched my breath and most fainted shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that but it warrant no time to be sent to mentoring we got to find that boat now had to have it for ourselves so we went a quaking and shaking down the starboard side and slow work it was too seemed a week before we got to the stern no sign of a boat jim said he didn't believe he could go on any further so scared he hadn't hardly any strength left he said but i said come on if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix sure so on we prowled again we struck for the stern of the texas and found it and then scrambled along forwards on the skylight hanging on from shutter to shutter for the edge of the skylight was in the water when we got pretty close to the cross hall door there was the skiff sure enough i could just barely see her i felt ever so thankful in another second i would have been aboard of her but just then the door opened one of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of feet from me and i thought i was gone but he jerked it in again and says hey that blame lantern out of sight bill he flung a bag of something into the boat and then got in himself and sat down it was Packard then bill he come out and got in Packard says in a low voice already shiv off i couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters i was so weak but bill says hold on uh do you go through him no didn't you no so he's got his share cash yet well then come along no used to take truck and leave money say won't he suspicion what we're up to maybe he won't but we've got to have it anyway come along so they got out and went in the door slammed too because it was on the koreen side and in half a second i was in the boat and jim come tumbling after me i out with my knife and cut the rope and away we went we didn't touch and or we didn't speak nor whisper nor hardly even breathe we went glide and swift along dead silent past the tip of the paddle box and past the stern and then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck and the darkness soaked her up every last sign of her and we was safe and noted when we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas store for a second and we know by that time that the rascals had missed their boat and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as jim turn it was then jim manned the oars and we took out after our raft now was the first time that i began to worry about the men i reckon i hadn't had time to before i began to think how dreadful it was even for murderers to be in such a fix i says to myself they ain't no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself yet and then how would i like it so says i to jim the first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it in a place where it's a good hiding place for you and skip and then i'll go and fix up some kind of yarn and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape so they can be hung when their time comes but that idea was a failure for pretty soon to begin to storm again and this time worse than ever the rain poured down and never a light showed everybody in bed i reckon we boomed along down the river watching for lights and watching for our raft after a long time the rain let up but the clouds stayed and the lightning kept whimpering and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead floating and we made for it it was the raft and mighty glad was we to get a board of it again we see a light now a way down to the right on shore so i said i would go for it the skip was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck we hustled it onto the raft in a pile and i told him to float along down and show a light when he judged he had gone about two miles and keep it burning till i come then i manned my oars and shoved for the light as i got down towards it three or four more showed up on hillside it was a village i closed in above the shore light and laid my oars and floated as i went by i see it was a lantern hanging on the jack staff of a double hull ferry boat i skimmed around for the watchman a wondering whereabouts he slept and by and by i found him roosting on the bits forward with his head down between his knees i gave his shoulder to a three little shoves and begun to cry he stirred up in a kind of starfish way and when he sees it was only me he took a good gap and stretch and then he says hello what's up don't cry bub what's the trouble i says pap and mam and sis and then i broke down he says oh dang it now don't take on so we all have our troubles and this it'll come out all right what's the matter with him there there are you the watchman of the boat yes he says kind of pretty well satisfied like i'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck hand and sometimes i'm the freight and passengers ain't as rich as old jim hornback and i can't be so blame generous and good to tom dick and harry as what he is and slam around money the way he does but i've told him many a time i wouldn't trade places with him for sessai a sailor's life's the life of me and i'm dirnd if i live to my lot of town where there ain't nothing ever going on not for all his schoondalix and as much more on top of it sessai i broke in and says they're an awful pair of trouble and who is what pap and mam and sis and miss hooker and if you take your ferry boat and go up there up where where are they on the wreck what wreck why there ain't but one what you don't mean the walter scott yes good land what are they doing that for gracious sake well they didn't go their purpose i bet they didn't my great goodness there ain't no chance for them if they don't get off mighty quick why in the nation did they ever get into such a scrape easy enough miss hooker was uh visiting up there to the town yes boots landing go on she was a visiting there at boots landing and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her niggle woman in the horse ferry to stay all night at her friend's house miss what you may call her i just remember her name and they lost their steering or and swung around and went afloat and down stern first about two mile and saddlebagged on the wreck and the ferryman and the niggle woman and the horses was all lost but miss hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck well about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading scow and it was so dark we didn't notice director we was right on it and so we saddlebagged but all of us were saved but bill whipple and oh he was the best creature i almost wished what had been me i do my jarge it's the beatingest thing i ever struck and then what did you all do well we hollered and took on but it was so wide there we couldn't make nobody hear us so pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow i was the only one that could swim so i made dash for it and miss hooker as she said if i didn't strike help sooner come here and hunt up her uncle then he'd fix the thing i made the land about a mile below and been fooling along ever since trying to get people to do something but they said why didn't such a knight in such a current there ain't no sense for it go for the steam ferry now if you go and buy jackson i like to and blame it i don't know but i will but who in the ding nations are going to pay for it do you reckon you're pap oh why that's all right and miss hooker she told me in particular that her uncle hornback great guns is he her uncle looky here you break for that light over the underway and turn out west when you get there and about a quarter mile out you'll come to the tavern tell him to dart you out to jim hornbacks and he'll foot the bill and don't you fool around any because he'll want to know the news tell him i'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town hump yourself now i'm going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer i struck for the light but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards and tucked myself in among some woodboats for i couldn't rest easy till i could see the ferry boat start but take it all around i was feeling rather comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang for not many would have done it i wish the widow knowed about it i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rap scallions because rap scallions and deadbeats is the kind of widow and good people take the most interest in well before long here comes the wreck dim and dusky sliding along down a kind of cold sheva went through me and then i struck out for her she was very deep and i could see in a minute there weren't much chance for anybody being alive in her i pulled all around her and hollered a little but there wasn't any answer all dead still i felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang but not much for i reckoned if they could stand it i could then here comes the ferry boat so i shelled for the middle of the river on a long downstream slant and when i judged i was out of irish i laid on my oars and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for mishooker's remains because the captain would know her uncle hornback would want them and then pretty soon the ferry boat give it up and went for the shore and i laid into my work and went to booming down the river it did seem a powerful long time before jim's light showed up and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand miles off by the time i got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east so we struck for an island and hid the craft and sunk the skiff and turned in and slept like dead people end of chapter 13 chapter 14 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this labry vox recording is in the public domain chapter 14 a general good time the harem french by and by when we got up we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck and found boots and blankets and clothes and all sorts of other things and a lot of books and a spyglass and three boxes of seagars we had never been this rich before in neither of our lives the seagars was prime we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking and me reading the books and having a general good time i told jim about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferry boat and i said these kinds of things was adventures but he said he didn't want no more adventures he said that when i went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died because he judged it was all up with him anyway it could be fixed for if he didn't get saved he would get grounded and if he did get saved whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward and then miss watson would sell him south sure well he was right he was the most always right he had an uncommon levelhead for a nigger i read considerable to jim about kings and dukes and urls and such and how gaudy they dressed and how much style they put on and called each other often your majesty and your grace and your lordship and so on instead of mr and jim's eyes bugged out and he was interested he says i didn't know there was so many of them i ain't heard about none of them scarcely but old king saw them um unless you counted them kings that's in the pack of cards how much do i can get get i says huh why they get a thousand dollars a month if they wanted they can have just as much as they want everything belongs to them ain't that gay and what they got to do huck they don't do nothing why how you talk they just sit around no that's so of course it is they just sat around except maybe when there's a war when they go to the war but other times they just lays around or go hawking just hawking and shh do you hear noise we skipped out and looked but it weren't nothing but a flutter of a steamboat's wheel way down coming around the point so we come back yeah says i and other times when things is dull they fuss with the parliament and if everything don't go just so he waxed their heads off but mostly they hang around the harem round which harem what's the harem the place where he keeps his wives don't you know about the harem salomon had one he had about a million wives wow yes that's so i i don't forgot it all harems are bowden house i reckon most likely they has uh rackety times in the nuster and i reckon the wives quarrel is considerable and that creased the racket yet they say salomon the wisest man that ever lived i don't take no stock in that because why would a wise man want to live in amidst of such a blim blamin all the time no indeed he wouldn't a wise man had taken build a bottle factory and then he could shut down the bottle factory when he wants to well he was the wisest man anyway because the widow she told me so her own self i don't care what the widow say he want no wise man nutter he had some of the dad fetches ways i ever see does you know about that child that he was going to chop into yes the widow told me all about it well then one that the beatingest notion in the world you just take a look at it a minute there's the stump there that one's the women here's you that's the other one i salomon and dish your dollar bills the child before under you claims it what does i do does i shine around amongst the neighbors and find out which are you to build do belong to and hand it over to the right one all safe and sound the way that anybody that had any gumption would know i taken a whack the bill in two and give half on it to you and the other half to the other woman that's the way salomon was going to do with the child now i ask you which to use for that half a bill can't buy nothing with it and what use is half a child i wouldn't give a darn for a million of them but hang it jim you clean mr point blame it you've missed it a thousand mile who me go along don't talk to me about your pints i reckon i know sense when i seize it and there ain't no sense in such doings as that dispute one about a half a child dispute was about a whole child and the man that think he can settle a dispute about a whole child would have child don't know enough to come in out the rain don't talk to me about salomon puck i knows him by the back but i tell you you don't get the point blame the point i reckon i knows what i knows and by new the real point is down it's down deeper it lays into we salomon was raised you take a man that's got only one or two chilling is that man going to be wasteful of chilling no he ain't he can't afford it he know how to value him but you take a man that's got about five million children running around the house and it's different he assumed chopper child and two is a cat there's plenty more a child or two more less want no consequence to salomon dad fit him i never see such a nigger if he got a notion in his head once they'll want no getting it out again he was the most down on salomon of any nigger i ever see so i went to talking about other kings and let salomon slide i told about louis 16th that got his head cut off in france long time ago and about his little boy the dolphin that would have been a king but they took and shut him up in jail and some say he died there holy little chap but some says he got out and got away and come to america that's good but he'll be partilosa they ain't no kings here is they hook no then he can't get no situation what he wanted to do well i don't know some of them gets on the police and some of them learns people how to talk french oh i hook don't the french people talk the same way we does no jim you couldn't understand a word they said not a single word well now i'll be ding busted how do that come i don't know but it's so i got some of that jabba out of a book suppose a man was to come to you and say polyvue frenzy what would you think i wouldn't say nothing i'd take and bust him over the head that is if he want white i wouldn't allow no nigger to call me that shucks it ain't calling you anything he's only saying do you know how to talk french well then why couldn't he say it why he is saying it that's frenchman's way of saying it well it's a blame ridiculous way and i don't want to hear no more about it there ain't no sense in it look here jim does a cat talk like we do no uh cat don't well does a cow no a cow don't another does a cat talk like a cow or a cow talk like a cat no they don't it's natural and right for them to talk different from each other ain't it of course and ain't it natural and right for a cat and cow to talk different from us why most surely it is well then why ain't it natural and right for a frenchman to talk different from us you answer me that is a cat a man hook no well then there ain't no sense in a cat talking like a man is a cow a man or is a cow a cat no she ain't either of them well then she ain't got no business to talk like either one or the other of them is a frenchman a man yes well then dad blame it why don't he talk like a man you answer me that i see it weren't no use wasting words you can't learn a nigger to argue so i quit end of chapter 14 chapter 15 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this libra vox recording is in the public domain chapter 15 huck loses the raft in the fog huck finds the raft trash we judged that three nights more would fetch us to caro at the bottom of illinois where the ohio river comes in and that was what we was after we would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the ohio amongst the free states and then be out of trouble well the second night a fog began to come on and we made for a towhead to tie to for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog but when i paddled ahead in the canoe with the line to make fast there wasn't anything but little saplings to tie to i passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank but there was a stiff current and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went i see the fog closing down and it made me so sick and scared i couldn't budge for most a half minute it seemed to me and then there weren't no raft inside you couldn't see 20 yards i jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed a paddle and set her back a stroke but she didn't come i was in such a hurry i hadn't untied her i got up and tried to untie her but i was so excited my hand shook so i couldn't hardly do anything with them as soon as i got started i took out after the raft hot and heavy right down the towhead that was all right as far as it went but the towhead weren't 60 yards long in the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog and hadn't no more idea which way i was going than a dead man thinks i it won't do the paddle first i know i'll run into the bank or a towhead or something i got to set still and float and yet it's my fidgety business to have to hold your hand still at such a time i whoop didn't listen a way down there somewhere as i here's a small whoop and up comes my spirits i went tearing after it listening sharp to hear it again the next time it come i see i weren't heading for it but heading away to the right of it and the next time i was heading away to the left of it and not gaining on it much either for i was flying around this way and that and tether but it was going straight ahead all the time i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time but he never did and it was the still places between whoops that was making the trouble for me well i fought along and directly i hear the whoop behind me i was tangled good now that was somebody else's whoop or else i was turned around i throw the paddle down i heard the whoop again it was behind me yet but in a different place it kept coming and kept changing its place and i kept answering till by and by it was in front of me again and i know the current had swung the canoes had downstream and i was all right if that was jim and not some other aftsman hollering i couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog the whooping went on and in about a minute i come a booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared the current was tearing by them so swift in another second or two it was solid white and still again i set perfectly still in listening to my heart thump and i reckon i didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred i just give up then i know what the matter was that cut bank was in ireland and jim had gone down to the side of it it weren't no towhead that you could float by in 10 minutes it had the big timber of a regular island it might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide i kept quiet with my ears cocked about 15 minutes i reckon i was floating along of course four or five miles an hour but you don't ever think of that no you feel like you are laying dead still on the water and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to yourself how fast you're going but you catch your breath and think my how that snag's tearing along if you think it a dismal and lonesome out on a fog that way by yourself in the night you try it once you'll see next for about a half an hour i whoops now and then and at last i hear the answer a long ways off and tries to follow it but i couldn't do it and directly i judged i'd got into a nest of towheads for i had a little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me sometimes just a narrow channel between them and some that i couldn't see i know was there because i hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks well i weren't long losing the whoops down amongst the towheads and i only tried to chase them a little while anyway because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern you never know the sound dodge around so and swap places so quick and so much i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river and so i judged the raft must be buttoned into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing it was floating a little faster than what i was well i seemed to be in the open river again by and by but i couldn't hear no sign of a whoop no ass i reckon the gem had fetched up on a snag maybe and it was all up with him i was good and tired so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldn't bother no more i didn't want to go to sleep of course but i was so sleepy i couldn't help it so i thought i would take just one little cat nap but i reckon it was more than a cat nap for when i waked up the stars were shining bright the fog was all gone and i was spinning down a big bend stern first well i didn't know where i was i thought i was dreaming and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week it was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks just a solid wall as well as i could see by the stars i looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water i took after it but when i got to it it weren't nothing but a couple of saw logs made fast together then i see another speck and change that then another and this time i was right it was the raft when i got to it jim was sitting there with his head down between his knees asleep with his right arm hanging over the steering oar the other oil was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt so she had a rough time i made fast and laid down under jim's nose on the raft and began to gap and stretch my fists out against jim and says hello jim have i been asleep why didn't you start me up goodness gracious is that you hook and you ain't dead you ain't grounded use back again oh it's too good for true honey it's too good for true let me look at you child let me feel you no you ain't dead use back again lob and sound just the same old hook the same old hook thanks to goodness what's the matter with you jim you better drinking drinking has i been a drinking has i had a chance to be a drinking well then what makes you talk so wild how does i talk wild how why ain't you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if i've been gone away hook hook fin you look me in di look me in di ain't you been gone away gone away why what in the nation do you mean i ain't been gone anywheres where would i go to well looky here boss there's something wrong there is is i me or who is i is i here or where is i now that's what i wants to know well i think you're here plain enough but i think you're a tango headed old fool jim uh is is i well you answer me this didn't you towed out the line into canoe for to make faster the towhead no i didn't what towhead i ain't seen no towhead you ain't seen no towhead looky here didn't the line pull loose and the raft go humming down the river and leave you in the canoe behind in the fog what fog why the fog the fog that's been round all night and didn't you whoop and didn't i whoop till we got mixed up into islands and one of us got lost and tell the one was just as good as lost because he didn't know where he was and didn't i bust up again a lot of them islands and have a terrible time and most get drowned i ain't that so boss ain't it so you answer me that well this is too many for me jim i ain't seen no fog nor no islands nor no troubles nor nothing i've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about 10 minutes ago and i reckon i'd done the same you couldn't have got drunk in that time so of course you've been dreaming dang fetch it how is it i'd want to dream all that in 10 minutes well hang on you did dream it because that didn't any of it happened but hook it's all just as plain to me is it don't make no difference how plain it is there ain't nothing in it i know because i've been here all the time jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes but sat there studying over it then he says well did i reckon i did dream it huck but dog my cats if it ain't the powerfulest dream i ever see and i ain't ever had no dream before that's tied me like this one oh well that's all right because a dream does tire the body like everything sometimes but this one was a staving dream tell me a lot about it jim so jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through just as it happened only he painted it up considerable then he said he must start in and interpreted because it was sent for a warning he said the first towhead stood for a man who would try to do us good but the current was another man that would get us away from him the whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck instead of keeping us out of it a lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrel some people and all kinds of mean folks but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river which was the free states and wouldn't have no more trouble it had clouded up pretty dark just after i got on to the raft but it was clearing up again now oh well that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes jim i says but what does these things stand for it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smash door you could see them first rate now jim looked at the trash and then looked at me and back at the trash again he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head and he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away but when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says what do they stand for i was going to tell you when i got all wore i would work and went to calling for you and went to sleep my heart was most broke because you was lost and then i didn't care no more what would become of me or the raft and when i wake up and find you back again all safe and sound the tears come and i could have got down on my knees and kiss your foot i so thankful and all you was thinking about was how you could make a food of old jim with a lie that truck there is trash and trash is what people is that puts dirt on the head of their friends and makes them ashamed then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that but that was enough it made me feel so mean i could almost kiss his foot to get him to take it back he was 15 minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigga but i done it and i weren't ever sorry for it afterwards neither i didn't do him no more mean tricks and i wouldn't have done that one if i didn't know what it would make him feel that way into chapter 15 chapter 16 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 16 expectation a white lie floating currency running by kyro swimming the shore we slept most all day and started out at night a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession she had four long sweeps at each end so we judged she carried as many as 30 men likely she had five big wigwams aboard wide apart and an open campfire in the middle and a tall flagpole at each end there was a power of style about her it amounted to something being a raftman on such a craft as that we went drifting down into a big bend and the night clouded up and got hot the river was very wide and was walled with solid timber on both sides you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever or a light we talked about kyro and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it i said likely we wouldn't because i had heard say there weren't but about a dozen houses there and if they didn't happen to have them lit up how was we going to know we was passing a town jim said if the two big rivers joined together there that would show but i said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again that disturbed jim and me too so the question was what to do i said paddle assure the first time a light showed and tell them pap was behind coming along with the trading scow and was a green hand at the business and wanted to know how far it was to kyro jim thought it was a good idea so we took a smoke on it and waited there weren't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town and not pass it without seeing it he said he'd be mighty sure to see it because he'd be a free man the minute he's seen it but if he missed it he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom every little while he jumps up and says there she is but it weren't it was jack lanterns or lightening bugs so he sat down again and went to watching same as before jim said it made him all over trembling and feverish to be so close to freedom well i can tell you it made me all over trembling and feverish too to hear him because i began to get it through my head that he was most free and who was to blame for it why me i couldn't get that out of my conscience no how nor no way it got to trouble in me so i couldn't rest i couldn't stay still in one place it hadn't never come home to me before what this thing was that i was doing but now it did and it stayed with me and scorched me more and more i tried to make out to myself that i weren't to blame because i didn't run jim off from his rightful owner but it weren't no use conscience up and says every time but you knowed he was running for his freedom and you could have paddled ashore and told somebody that was so i couldn't get around that no way that was where it pinched conscience says to me what had poor miss watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word what did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean why she tried to learn you your book she tried to learn you your manners she tried to be good to you everywhere she knowed how that's what she done i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead i fidgeted up and down the raft abusing myself to myself and jim was fidgeting up and down past me we neither of us could keep still every time he danced around it says das caro it went through me like a shot and i thought if it was caro i reckoned i would die of miserableness jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself he was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent and when he got enough he would buy his wife which was owned on a farm close to where miss watson lived and then they would both work to buy the two children and if their master wouldn't sell them they'd get an abolitionist to go and steal them it most froze me to hear such talk he would never dare to talk such talk in his life before just to see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free he was according to the old saying give a nigger an inch and he'll take an l thinks i this is what comes of my not thinking here was this nigger which i had as good as helped to run away coming right out flat footed and saying he would steal his children children that belong to a man i didn't even know a man that had never done me no harm i was sorry to hear jim say that it was such a lower end of him my conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever until at last i says to it let up on me it ain't too late yet i'll paddle the shore at the first light until i felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off all my troubles was gone i went to looking out sharp for a light and sort of singing to myself by and by one showed jim sings out we safe hook we safe jump up and crack your heels there's a good old chiro at last i just knows it i says i'll take the canoe and go and see jim it might be you know he jumped up and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on and gave me the paddle and as i shoved off he says put it soon i'll be a shouting for joy and i'll say it's all on account to hook i was a free man and i couldn't ever been free if it hadn't been for huck huck done it jim won't ever forget you huck used the best friend jim ever had and used the only friend old jim's got now i was paddling off all in a sweat to tell on him but when he says this it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me i went along slow then and i weren't right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i weren't when i was 50 yards off jim says there you goes the old true huck the only white gentleman that ever kept his promise to old jim well i just felt sick but i says i got to do it i can't get out of it right then along comes a skip with two men in it with guns and they stopped and i stopped one of them says what's that yonder a piece of a raft i says do you belong on it yes sir any man on it only one sir well there's five niggas run off tonight up yonder above the head of the bend if you're a man white or black i didn't answer up prompt i tried to but the words wouldn't come i tried for a second or two to brace up and not with it but i weren't man enough hadn't the spunk of a rabbit i see i was weakening so i just give up trying and up and says he's white i reckon we'll go and see for ourselves i wish you would says i because it's pap that's there and maybe you'd help me tow the raft to shore where the light is he's sick and so is ma'am and mary in oh the devil we're in a hurry boy but i suppose we've got to come buckle to your paddle and let's get along i buckle to my paddle and they lay to their oars when we had made a stroke or two i says pap will be mud and much bleach to you i can tell you everybody goes away when i want them to help me tow the raft to shore and i can't do it by myself well that's infernal mean odd to say boy what's the matter with your father it's the uh the well it ain't anything much they stop pulling it weren't but a mighty little ways to the raft now one says boy that's a lie what is the matter with your pap answer up square now and it'll be the better for you i will sir i will honest but don't leave us please it's the the uh gentlemen if you'll only pull ahead and let me leave you the headline you won't have to come in near the raft please do set her back john set her back says one they backed water keep away boy keep to lured confounded i just expect the wind has bloated to us your pap's got the smallpox and you know it precious well why didn't you come out and say so do you want to spread it all over well says i a blubbering i told everybody before they just went away and left us poor devil there's something in that we are right now sorry for you but we well hang it we don't want the smallpox you see uh look here i'll tell you what to do don't you try to land by yourself or you smash everything to pieces you float along down about 20 miles and you come to a town on the left hand side of the river it'll be long after sun up then and when you ask for help you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever don't be a fool again and let people guess what's the matter now we're trying to do you a kindness so you just put 20 miles between us that's a good boy it wouldn't do any good to land you under where the light is it's only a woodyard say i reckon your father's poor and i'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck here i'll put a $20 gold piece on this board and you get it when it floats by i feel might mean to leave you but my kingdom it won't do the fool with smallpox don't you see hold on parker says the other man here's a 20 to put on the board for me goodbye boy you do as mr parker told you and you'll be all right that's so my boy goodbye goodbye if you see any runaway niggers you get helping at them and you can make some money by it goodbye sir says i i won't let no runaway niggers get by me if i can help it they went off and i got aboard the raft feeling bad and low because i knowed very well i had done wrong and i see it warrant no use for me to try to learn to do right a body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work so he gets beat then i thought a minute says to myself hold on suppose you'd have done right and give jim up would you feel better than what you do now no says i i'd feel bad i'd feel just the same way i do now well then says i what's the use you learn it to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong and the wages is just the same i was stuck i couldn't answer that so i reckoned i wouldn't bother no more about it but after this always do whichever came handiest at the time i went into the wigwam jim weren't there i looked around he weren't anywhere i says jim he is hooked is he out of sight yet don't talk loud he was in the river under the stern ore with just his nose out i told him they were out of sight so he'd come aboard he says i was listening to all the talk and i slipped into the river and was going to shove for show if they come aboard then i was going to swim to the raft again when day was gone but lousy how you did fool him huck that was the smartest dodge i tell you child i expected save old jim old jim ain't going to forget you for that honey then we talked about the money it was a pretty good raise 20 a piece jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go into free states he said 20 mile more weren't far for the raft to go but he wished he was already there towards daybreak we tied up and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good then he worked all day fixing things in bundles and getting all ready to quit rafting that night about 10 we hold inside of the life of a town a way down in a left hand bend i went off in the canoe to ask about it pretty soon i found a man out in the river with a skiff setting a trot line i ranged up and says mister is that town kyro kyro no you must be a blame fool what town is it mister if you want to know go and find out if you stay here bothering around me for about a half minute longer you'll get something you won't want our paddle to the raft jim was awful disappointed but i said never mind kyro would be the next place i reckoned we passed another town before daylight and i was going out again but it was high ground so i didn't go no high ground around kyro jim said i had forgot it we laid up for the day on a toehead tolerable close to the left hand bank i begun to suspicion something so did jim i says maybe we went by kyro in the fog that night he says don't let's talk about it hook po niggas can't have no luck all the suspected that rattlesnake skin weren't done with its work i wish i'd never seen that snakeskin jim i do wish i'd never laid eyes on it it ain't your fault hook you didn't know don't fame yourself about it when it was daylight here was the clear ohio water ensure sure enough and outside was the old regular money so it was all up with kyro we talked it over it wouldn't do to take to the shore we couldn't take the raft upstream of course there weren't no way but to wait for dark and start back in the canoe and take the chances so we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket so as to be fresh for the work and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone we didn't say a word for a good while there weren't anything to say we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake skin so what was the use to talk about it it would only look like we was finding fault and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck and keep on fetching it to till we knowed enough to keep still by and by we talked about what we better do and found there weren't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in we weren't going to borrow it when there weren't anybody around the way pap would do for that might set people after us so we shoved out after dark on the raft anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a snakeskin after all that snakeskin done for us we'll believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us the place to buy canoes is off of rafts lying up its shore but we didn't see no rafts laying up so we went along during three hours and more well the night got gray and rather thick which is the next meanest thing to fog you can't tell the shape of the river and you can't see no distance you got to be very late and still and then along comes the steamboat up the river we let the lantern and judge if she would see it upstream boats don't generally come close to us they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs but nights like this they bull ride up the channel against the whole river we could hear her pound it along but we didn't see her good till she was close she aimed right for us often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs and thinks he's might as smart well here she comes and we said she was going to try and shave us but she didn't seem to be shearing off a bit she was a big one and she was coming in a hurry to looking like a black cloud with rows of glowworms around it but all of a sudden she bulged out big and scary with a long row of wide open furnace doors shining like red hot teeth and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us there was a yell at us and a jingling of bells to stop the engines a pow wow of cussing and whistling of steam and this gem went overboard on one side and I on the other she comes smashing straight through the raft I dived and I aimed to find the bottom too for a 30 foot wheel has got to go over me and I wanted it to have plenty of room I could always stay underwater for a minute this time I recognized they'd under a minute and a half then I bounced for the top in a hurry for I was nearly busting I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of my nose and puffed a bit of course there was a booming current and of course that boat started their engines again 10 seconds after she stopped them for they never cared much for raftmen so now she was turning along up the river out of sight in the thick weather though I could hear her I sung out for gem about a dozen times but I didn't get any answer so I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was treading the water and struck out for sure shoving it ahead of me but I made out to see that the drift of the current was toward the left hand shore which meant that I was in a crossing so I changed off and went that way it was one of these long slanting two mile crossings so I was a good long time and getting over I made a safe landing and clump up the bank I couldn't see but a little ways but I went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more and then I run across a big old-fashioned double log house before I noticed it I was going to rush by and get away but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me and I knowed better than to move another peg End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 17 An Evening Call The Farm in Arkansas Interior Decorations Stephen Dowling Botts Poetical Effusions In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out and says be done boys who's there I says it's me who's me George Jackson sir what do you want I don't want nothing sir I want only to go along by but the dogs won't let me what are you proud and around here this time of night for hey I weren't proud and around sir I fell overboard off of the steamboat oh you did did you strike a light there somebody what did you say your name was George Jackson sir I'm only a boy look here if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid nobody'll hurt you but don't try to budge stand right where you are rouse out bop and toms some of you and fetch the guns George Jackson is there anybody with you no sir nobody I heard the people stirring around in the house now and see a light the man sung out snatch that light away Betsy you old fool ain't you got any sense put it on the floor behind the front door bob if you and tom are ready take you places all ready now George Jackson do you know these shepherds since no sir I never heard of them well that may be so and it may end now already step forward George Jackson and mind you don't hurry come by to slow if there's anybody with you let him keep back if he shows himself he'll be shot come along now come slow push the door open yourself just enough to squeeze in do you hear I didn't hurry I couldn't if I wanted to I took one slow step at a time and there weren't a sound only I thought I could hear my heart the dogs were still as the humans but they followed a little behind me when I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting I put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more till somebody said there that's enough put your head in I'd done it but I judged they would take it off the candle was on the floor and there they all was looking at me and me at them for about a quarter of a minute three big men with guns pointed at me which made me whence I tell you the oldest gray in about 60 the other 230 or more all of them fine and handsome and the sweetest old gray headed lady and back of our two young women which I couldn't see right well the old gentleman says there I reckon it's all right come in as soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it and told the young men to come in with their guns and they all went in a big paul other had a new rag carpet on the floor and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows there weren't none on the side they held the candle and took a good look at me and all said why he ain't a shepherdson no there ain't any shepherdson about him then the old man said he hoped I would mind being searched for arms because he didn't mean no harm by it it was only to make sure so he didn't pry into my pockets but only felt outside with his hands and said it was all right he told me to make myself easy and at home and tell all about myself but the old lady says why bless you Saul the poor thing says where does he can be and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry true for you Rachel I forgot so the old lady says Betsy this was a nigger woman you fly around and get him something to eat as quick as you can poor thing and one of you girls go and wake up Buck and tell him oh here he is himself buck take this little stranger and get the way clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry buck looked about as old as me 13 or 14 or along there though he was a little bigger than me he hadn't owned anything but a shirt and he was very frowsy headed he came in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes and he was dragging a gun along with the other one he says ain't there no shepherdsons around they said no it was a false alarm well he says if they'd have been some I reckon I'd have got one they all laughed and Bob said why buck they might have scalped us all you've been so slow in coming well nobody come after me and it ain't right I'm always kept down I don't get no show never mind buck my boy says the old man you'll have show enough all in good time don't you fret about that go along with you now and do as your mother told you when we got upstairs to his room he got me a course shirt and a roundabout and pants of his and I put them on while I was at it he asked me what my name was but before I could tell him he started to tell me about a blue jay and the young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out I said I didn't know I hadn't heard about it before no way well guess he says how am I going to guess says I when I never heard tell of it before but you can guess can't you it's just as easy which candle I says why any candle he says I don't know where he was says I where was he why he was in the dark that's where he was well if you know where he was what did you ask me for why blame it it's a riddle don't you see say how long are you going to stay here you got to stay always we can just have boom in times they don't have no school now do you own a dog I've got a dog and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in do you like to comb up Sundays and all that kind of foolishness you bet I don't but ma she makes me kind of found these old bridges I reckon I better put them on but I'd rather not it's so warm are you ready all right come along old horse cold cornpone cold corn beef butter and buttermilk that is what they had for me down there and there ain't nothing better than that I've ever come across yet buck and his ma and all them smoked corn cobs except the nigger woman which was gone and the two young women they all smoked and talked and I eat and talked the young women had quilts around them and their hair down their backs they all asked me questions and I told them how my pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansas and my sister Marianne run off and got married and never was heard of no more and bill went to hunt them and he weren't heard of no more and Tom and Mark died and then there weren't nobody but just me and pap left and he was just trimmed out to nothing on account of his troubles so when he died I took what there was left because the farm didn't belong to us and started up the river deck passage and fell overboard and that was how I came to be here so they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed and I went to bed with buck and when I wake up in the morning dreaded all I forgot what my name was so I laid there about an hour trying to think and when buck waked up I says can you spell book yes he says I bet you can't spell my name says I I bet you what you dare I can says he all right says I go ahead G E O R G E J A X O N there now he says well says I you done it but I didn't think you could it ain't no slouch of a name to spell right off without studying I set it down private because somebody might want me to spell it next so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it it was a mighty nice family and a mighty nice house too I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style it didn't have an hour latch on the front door nor a wooden one with a buckskin string but a brass knob to turn the same as houses in town there weren't no bed in the parlor nor a sign of a bed but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them there was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom and the bricks was kept clean and read by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick sometimes they wash them over with red water paint that they call spanish brown same as they do in town they had big brass dog irons that could hold up a saw log there was a clock in the middle of the metal piece with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front and a round place in the middle of it for the sun you could see the pendulum swinging behind it it was beautiful to hear that clock tick and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape she would start in and strike 150 before she got tuckered out they wouldn't have took any money for her well there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock made out of something like chalk and painted up gaudy by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery and a crockery dog by the other and when you press down on them they squeaked but didn't open their mouths and all looked different or interested they squeaked through underneath there was a couple of big wild turkey wing fans spread out behind those things on the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellow and prettier than real ones is but they weren't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was underneath this table had a cover made out of beautiful oar cloth with a red and blue spread eagle painted on it and a painted border all around it had come all the way from philadelphia they said there was some books too piled up perfectly exact on each corner of the table one was a big family bible full of pictures one was pilgrims progress about a man that left his family it didn't say why i read considerable in it now and then the statements was interesting but tough another was friendships offering full of beautiful stuff and poetry but i didn't read the poetry another was henry clay speeches and another was dr guns family medicine which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead there was a hymn book and a lot of other books and there was nice split bottom chairs and perfectly sound too not bagged down in the middle and busted like an old basket they had pictures hung on the walls mainly washington's and lafayettes and battles and harlan mary's and one called sign in the declaration there was some that they called crayons which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only 15 years old they was different from any pictures i ever see before black are mostly that is common one was a woman in a slim black dress belted small under the armpits with bulges like cabbages in the middle of the sleeves and a large black scoop shovel bonnet with a black veil and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape and very wee black slippers like a chisel and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow under a weeping willow and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule and underneath the picture it said shall i never see thee more alas another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head and knotted there in front of a comb like a chairback and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with his heels up and underneath the picture it said i shall never hear thy sweet cheer up more alas there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon and tears running down her cheeks and she had an open letter in one hand with black ceiling wax showing on one edge of it and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth and underneath the picture it said and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas these was all nice pictures i reckon but i didn't somehow seem to take to them because if ever i was down a little they always give me the fantods everybody was sorry she died because she had laid out a lot more these pictures to do and her body could see by what she had done what they had lost but i reckon that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done but she never got the chance it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown standing on the rail of a bridge already to jump off with her hair all down her back and looking up to the moon with the tears running down her face and she had two arms folded across her breast and two arms stretched out in front and two more reaching up toward the moon and the idea was to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms but as i was saying she died before she got her mind made up and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it other times it was hid with a little curtain the young woman in the picture had a kind of nice sweet face but there were so many arms that made her look too spidery seemed to me this young woman kept a scrapbook when she was alive and used to pace obituaries and accidents and cases of patients suffering in it out of the Presbyterian observer and wrote poetry after them out of her own head it was very good poetry this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Steven Dowling Botts that fell down a well and was drowned oh to Steven Dowling Botts deceased and did young Steven sicken and did young Steven die and did the sad hearts thicken and did the mourners cry no such was not the fate of young Steven Dowling Botts though sad hearts around him thickened was not from sicknesses shots no whooping cough did rack his frame nor measles dreared with spots nor these impaired the sacred name of Steven Dowling Botts despised love struck not with woe that had of curly knots nor some of troubles laid him low young Steven Dowling Botts oh no then list with tearful lie while I his fate do tell his soul did from this cold world fly by falling down a well they got him out and emptied him alas it was too late his spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great if Emily and Granger Ford could make poetry like that before she was 14 there ain't no telling what she could have done by and by bucks said she could rattle off poetry like nothing she didn't even have to stop to think he said she would slap down a line and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one and go ahead she wore in particular she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sad for every time a man died or a woman died or a child died she would be on hand with her tribute before he was cold she called them tributes the neighbors said it was the doctor first then Emily then the undertaker the undertaker never got in ahead of Emily but once and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name which was whistler she weren't ever the same after that she never complained but she kind of pined away and did not live long poor thing many is the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little I liked all that family dead ones and all and weren't going to let anything come between us poor Emily made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive and it didn't seem right that there wasn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow they kept Emily's room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive and nobody ever slept there the old lady took care of the room herself though there was plenty of niggers and she sewed there a good deal and read a bible there mostly well as I was saying about the Paula there was beautiful curtains on the windows white with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls and cattle coming down to drink there was a little old piano too that had 10 pans in it I reckon and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young lady sing the last link is broken and play the battle of plague on it the walls of the rooms was plastered and most had carpets on the floors and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside it was a double house and the big open space betwixt them was roofed and floored and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day and it was a cool comfortable place nothing couldn't be better and warrant the cooking good and just bushels of it too end of chapter 17 chapter 18 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 18 Colonel Grangerford aristocracy feuds the testament recovering the raft the woodpile pork and cabbage Colonel Grangerford was a gentleman you see he was a gentleman all over and so was his family he was well-born as the saying is and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse so the widow Douglas said and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town and Pap he always said it too though he weren't no more quality than a mudcat himself Colonel Grangerford was very tall and very slim and had a darkish pilly complexion not a sign of red in it anywares he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face and he had the thinnest kind of lips and the thinnest kind of nostrils and a high nose and heavy eyebrows and the blackest kind of eyes suck so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you as you may say his forehead was high and his hair was black and straight and hung to his shoulders his hands was long and thin and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it and on Sundays he wore a blue tailcoat with brass buttons on it he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it there weren't no frivolousness about him not a bit and he weren't ever loud he was as kind as he could be you could feel that you know and so you had confidence sometimes he smiled and it was good to see but when he straightened himself up like a liberty pole and the lightning began to flicker out from under his eyebrows you wanted to climb a tree first and find out what the matter was afterwards he didn't have to tell anybody to mind their manners everybody was always good-mannered where he was everybody loved to have him around too he was sunshine most always i mean he made it seem like good weather when he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute and that was enough there wouldn't be nothing go wrong again for a week when him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good day and didn't set down again till they had sat down then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him and he held it in his hand and waited till toms and bobs was mixed and then they bowed and said uh duty to you sir and madam and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you and so they drank all three and bob and tom poured a spoon full of water on the sugar and the might of whiskey or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers and give it to me in buck and we drank to the old people too bob was the oldest and tom next tall beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces and long black hair and black eyes they dressed in white linen from head to foot like the old gentleman and wore broad Panama hats then there was miss charlotte she was 25 and tall and proud and grand but as good as she could be when she weren't stirred up but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks like a father she was beautiful so was her sister miss Sophia but it was a different kind she was gentle and sweet like a dove and she was only 20 every person had their own nigger to wait on them buck too my nigger had a monstrous easy time because i weren't used to having anybody do anything for me but bucks was on the jump most of the time this was all there was of the family now but there used to be more three sons they got killed and emeline that died the old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers sometimes a stack of people would come there horseback from 10 or 15 mile around and stay five or six days and have such junk it ends around about and on the river and dances and picnics in the woods daytime's and balls at the house nights these people was mostly kin folks of the family the men brought their guns with them it was a handsome lot of quality i'll tell you there was another clan of aristocracy around there five or six families mostly of the name of shepherdson they was as high toned and well-born and rich and grand as the tribe of granger forts the shepherdsons and granger forts used the same steamboat landing which was about two mile above our house so sometimes when i went up there with a lot of our folks i used to see a lot of the shepherdsons there on their fine horses one day buck and me was a way out in the woods hunting and heard a horse coming we was crossing the road buck says quick jump for the woods we done it and then peeped down the woods through the leaves put a soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier he had his gun across his pommel i had seen him before he was young horny shepherdson i heard buck's gun go off at my ear and horny's hat tumbled off from his head he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid but we didn't wait we started through the woods on a run the woods weren't thick so i looked over my shoulder to die to the bullet and twice i seen horny cover buck with his gun and then he rode away the way he come to get his hat i reckoned but i couldn't see we never stopped running till we got home the old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute it was pleasure mainly i judged then his face sort of smoothed down and he said kind of gentle i don't like that shooting from behind a bush why didn't you step into the road my boy the shepherdsons don't father they always take advantage miss charlotte held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tail and her nostril spread and her eyes snapped the two young men looked dark but never said nothing miss sophia she turned pale but the call to come back when she found the man warrant hurt soon as i could get buck down by the corn cribs under the trees by ourselves i says did you want to kill him buck well i bet i did what did he do to you him he never done nothing to me well then what did you want to kill him for why nothing only it's on account of the feud what's a feud why where was you raised don't you know what a feud is never heard of it before tell me about it well says buck a feud is this way a man has a quarrel with another man and kills him then that other man's brother kills him then the other brothers on both sides go for one another then the cousins chip in and by and by everybody's killed off and there ain't no more feud but it's kind of slow and takes a long time has this one been going on long buck well i should reckon it started 30 years ago or summers along there there was trouble about something and then a lawsuit to settle it and the suit went again one of the men and so he up and shot the man that won the suit which he would naturally do of course anybody would what was the trouble about buck land i reckon maybe i don't know well who done the shooting was it a grange afford or a shepherdson love us how do i know it was so long ago don't anybody know oh yes pot knows i reckon and some of the other old people but they don't know now what the rod was about in the first place has there been many killed buck yes right smart chance of funerals but they don't always kill pos got a few buck shot in him but he don't mind it because he don't weigh much anyway bob's been carved up some with the bowie and tom has been hurt once or twice has anybody been killed this year buck yes we got one and they got one about three months ago my cousin bud 14 year old was riding through the woods on to the side of the river and didn't have no weapon with him which was blamed foolishness and in a lonesome place he hears a horse coming behind him and sees old baldy shepherdson alinking after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair are flying in the wind instead of jumping off and taking to the brush but loud he could outrun him so they had it nip and tuck for five mile or more the old man again and all the time so last bud seen it weren't any use so he stopped and faced round so as to have the bullet holes in front you know and the old man he rode up and shot him down but he didn't get much chance to enjoy his luck but inside of a week our folks laid him out i reckon that old man was a coward buck i reckon he weren't a coward not by a blame sight there ain't a coward amongst them shepherdsons not a one and there ain't no cowards amongst the granger fours either why that old man kept up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three granger fours and come out winner they was all a horseback he lit off his horse and got behind a little wood pile and kept his horse before him to stop the bullets but the granger fours stayed on their horses and capped around the old man and peppered away at him and he peppered away at them him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled but the granger fours had to be fetched home and one of them was dead and another died the next day no sir if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool away any time amongst them shepherdsons because they don't breed any of that kind next sunday we all went to church about three mile everybody a horseback the men took their guns along so did buck and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall the shepherdsons done the same it was pretty ordinary preaching all about brotherly love and such like tiresomeness but everybody said it was a good sermon and they all talked it over going home and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and free for real destination and I don't know what all that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest sundays I had run across yet about an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around some in their chairs and some in their rooms and it got to be pretty dull buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass and the sun sound asleep I went up to our room and judged I would take a nap myself I found that sweet miss Sophia standing in her door which was next to ours and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft and asked me if I liked her and I said I did and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell anybody and I said I would then she said she'd forgot her testament and left it in the seat at church between two other books and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her and not say nothing to nobody I said I would so I slid out and slipped off up the road and there weren't anybody at the church except maybe a hog or two for there weren't any lock on the door and hogs likes a punchy on floor in summertime because it's cool if you notice most folks don't go to church only when they've got to but a hog is different says out of myself something's up it ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament so I give it a shake and out drops a little piece of paper with half past two wrote on it with a pencil I ran sacked it but couldn't find anything else I couldn't make anything out of that so I put the paper in the book again and when I got home and upstairs there was miss Sophia in her door waiting for me she pulled me in and shut the door then she looked in the testament till she found the paper and as soon as she read it she looked glad and before her body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze and said I was the best boy in the world and not to tell anybody she was mighty red in the face for a minute and her eyes lighted up and it made a powerful pretty I was a good deal astonished but when I got my breath I asked her what the paper was about and she asked me if I had read it and I said no and she asked me if I could read writing and I told her no only course hand and then she said the paper warn't anything but a bookmark to keep her place and I might go and play now I went off down the river studying over this thing and pretty soon I noticed that my nigger was following along behind when we was out of sight of the house he looked back in around a second and then comes a running and says ma's dodge if you come down to the swamp I'll show you a whole stack of water moccasins thinks I that's mighty curious he said that yesterday he ought to know a body don't love water moccasins enough to go around hunting for them what is he up to anyway so I says all right try to head I followed a half a mile then he struck out over the swamp and waited ankle deep as much as another half mile we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines and he says you shove right in down just a few steps ma's dodge that's where there is I see the before I don't care to see him no more then he slopped right along and went away and pretty soon the trees hit him I poked into the place of ways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines and found a man laying there asleep and by jinx it was my old gym I waked him up and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again but it weren't he nearly cried he was so glad but he weren't surprised said he swam along behind me that night and heard me yell every time but that's an answer because he didn't want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again says he I got hurt a little and couldn't swim fast so I was a considerable ways behind you towards the last when you landed I reckoned I could catch up with you on the land without having to shout at you but when I see that house I begin to go slow eyes off too far to hear what they say to you I was afraid of the dog and when it is all quiet again I know you's in the house so I struck out for the woods to wait for day early in the morning some of the niggers come along going to the fields and they took me and showed me this place where the dogs can track me on accounts of the water and they brings me truck to eat every night and tells me how you's are getting along why didn't you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner Jim well to want no use disturb you hook till we could do something but we's all right now I've been a buying pots and pans and vitals as I got a chance and a patching up the raft nights when what raft Jim our old raft you mean to say our old ref warrant smashed all the flinders no she won she was tore up a good deal one end to her was but there weren't no great harm done only our traps was most all lost if we hadn't died so deep and swum so far underwater and tonight hadn't been so dark and we weren't so scared and been such pumpkin heads as to say in this we deceived the raft but it's just as well we didn't because now she's all fixed up again most as good as new and we's got a lot of new stuff in the place of what is lost why how did you get hold of the raft again Jim did you catch her how I grind to catch her and I out in the woods no some of the niggers found her catched on a snag along here in the bin and they hid her in our creek amongst the willows and there was so much to join about which on them she belonged to the most that I come to hear about it put as soon so I ups and settles the trouble by telling them she don't belong to none of them but to you and me and I ask him if they want to grab a young gentleman's property and get a hiding for it then I give him ten cents a piece and they was might a well satisfied and wished some old rafts to come along and make them rich again they's might a good to me these niggers is and whatever I want them to do for me I don't have to ask them twice honey that jack's a good nigger and put it smart yes he is he ain't never told me you was here told me to come and he'd show me a lot of water moccasins if anything happens he ain't mixed up in it he can say he never seen us together and it'll be the truth I don't want to talk much about the next day I reckon I'll cut it pretty short I wake up about dawn and wasn't going to turn over and go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was didn't seem to be anybody stirring that weren't usual next I noticed that buck was up and gone well I gets up by wondering and goes downstairs nobody around everything is still as a mouse just the same outside thinks I what does it mean down by the wood pile I comes across my jacket says what's it all about says he don't you know ma's judge no says I I don't well then miss Sophia's runoff did she has she runoff in tonight sometime nobody don't know just when runoff to get married to that young horny shepherds and you know at least the way he's so they spec the family found it out about half an hour ago maybe a little more and I tell you there weren't no time lost such another hurrying up guns and horses you never see the women folk has gone for to stir up the relations and oh ma saw and the boys took the guns and rolled up the river road for to try to catch that young man and kill him before he can get across the river with miss Sophia I reckon there's going to be matter of times buck went off without waking me up well I reckon he did day one going to mix you up in it ma's buck he loaded up his gun and loud he going to fetch home with Sheperson or bust well there'll be plenty of them there and I reckon he'll fetch one of them if he gets a chance I took up the river road as hard as I could put by and by I began to hear guns a good ways off when I come inside the log store in the wood pile where the steamboat lands I worked along under the trees and brushed till I got to a good place and then I climbed up into the fox of a cottonwood that was out of reach and watched there was a wood rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree and first I was going to hide behind that but maybe it was lucky I didn't there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open space before the log store cussing and yelling and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood rank alongside of the steamboat landed but they couldn't come it every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the wood pile he got shot at the two boys were squatting back to back behind the pile so they could watch both ways by and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling they started riding toward the shore then up gets one of the boys draws a steady bead over the wood rank and drops one of out of his saddle all the men jumped off their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store and that minute the two boys started on the run they got halfway to the tree I was in before the men noticed then the men see them and jumped on their horses and took out after them they gained on the boys but it didn't do no good the boys had too good a start they got to the wood pile that was in front of my tree and slipped in behind it and so they had to bulge on the men again one of the boys was buck and the other was a slim young chap about 19 years old the men ripped around a while and then rode away as soon as they was out of sight I sung out to buck and told him he didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first he was awful surprised he told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men came in sight again said they was up to some devilman or other wouldn't be going long I wished I was out of that tree but I didn't come down buck began to cry and rip and loud that him and his cousin Joe that was the other young chap wouldn't make up for this day yet he said his father and his two brothers was killed and two or three of the enemy said the shepherds laid for them in ambush buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations the shepherds was too strong for them I asked him what was become of young horny and miss Sophia he said they got across the river and was safe I was glad of that but the way buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill horny that day he shot at him I ain't never heard anything like it all of a sudden bang bang bang goes three or four guns the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses the boys jump for the river both of them hurt and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out kill them kill them it made me so sick I most fell out of the tree I ain't going to tell all that happened it would make me sick again if I was to do that I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things I ain't ever going to get shot at him lots of times I dream about them I stayed in the tree till it began to get dark afraid to come down sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods and twice I see little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns so I reckon the trouble was still going on I was mighty downhearted so I made up my mind I wouldn't ever go near that house again because I reckoned I was to blame somehow I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss Sophia was to meet horny somewheres at half past two and run off and I judged I ought to tell her father about that paper and the curious way she acted and then maybe he would have locked her up in this awful mess would never happen when I got down out of the tree I crept along down the riverbank a piece and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water and tugged at them till I got them ashore then I covered up their faces and got away as quick as I could I cried a little when I was covering up Buck's face for he was mighty good to me he was dark now I never went near the house but struck through the woods and made for the swamp Jim weren't on his island so I trapped off in a hurry for the creek and crowded through the willows red hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country the raft was gone my souls but I was scared I couldn't get my breath for most a minute then I raised a yell a voice not 25 foot for me says good land is that you honey don't make no noise it was Jim's voice nothing ever sounded so good before I run along the bank of peace and got a board and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me he was so glad to see me he says law's bless you child I was right down shows you dead again jack's been here he says he reckoned you've been shot because you didn't come home no more so I just this minute started the raft down towards the mouth of the creek so as to be ready for the shove off and leave soon as jack comes again and tells me for certain you is dead lawsy I'm mighty glad to get you back again honey I says all right that's mighty good they won't find me and they'll think I've been killed and floated down the river there's something up there that'll help them think so so don't you lose no time Jim but shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there out in the middle of the Mississippi then we hung up our signal lantern and judged that we was free and safe once more I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday so Jim got out some corn dodgers and buttermilk and pork and cabbage and greens and there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds and so was Jim to get away from the swamp we said there weren't no home like a raft after all other places do seem so cramped up and smothery but a raft don't you feel by a free and easy and comfortable on a raft end of chapter 18 chapter 19 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this labor box recording is in the public domain chapter 19 tying up day times an astronomical theory running a temperance revival the duke of bridge water the troubles of royalty two or three days and nights went by I reckon I might say they swam by they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely here is the way we put in the time it was a monstrous big river down there sometimes a mile and a half wide we run nights and laid up and hid day times soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up nearly always in the dead water under a toehead and then cut young cotton woods and willows and hid to raft with them then we set out the lines next we slid into the river and had a swim so as to freshen up and cool off then we sat down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep and watch the daylight come not a sound anywhere's perfectly still just like the whole world was asleep only sometimes the bullfrogs are cluttering maybe the first thing to see looking away over the water was a kind of dull line that was the woods on the other side you couldn't make nothing else out then a pale place in the sky then more paleness spreading around then the river softened up away off and weren't black anymore but great you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away trading scowls and such things and long black streaks raps sometimes you could hear a sweep creaking or a jumbled up voices it was so still and sounds come so far and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there and a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way and you see the mist curl up off the water and the east reddens up and the river and you make out a long cabin in the edge of the woods way on the bank on the other side of the river being a woodyard likely and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywhere's then the nice breeze springs up and comes fanning you from over there so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers but sometimes not that way because they've left dead fish lying around garrison such and they do get pretty rank and next you got the full day and everything smiling in the sun and the songbirds just going it a little smoke couldn't be noticed now so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river and kind of lays along and by and by lays off to sleep wake up by and by and look to see what done it and maybe see a steamboat coughing along upstream so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern wheel or side wheel then for about an hour that wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see just solemn lonesomeness next you see a raft sliding by way off yonder and maybe a glute on its chopping because they're almost always doing it on a raft you'd see the axe flashing come down you don't hear nothing you see the axe go up again and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the kachunk it had to all that time to come over the water so we would put in the day lazing around listening to the stillness once there was a thick fog and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin cans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing heard them playing but we couldn't see no sign of them it made you feel crawly it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air jim says he believed it was spirits but i says no spirits wouldn't say dern the dern fog soon as it was night out we shoved when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone and let her float whatever the current wanted her to go then we lit the pipes and dangled our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of things we was always naked day and night whenever the mosquitoes would let us the new clothes bucks folks made for me was too good to be comfortable and besides i didn't go much on clothes know how sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time yonder was the banks and the islands across the water and maybe a spark which was a candle in a cabin window and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two on a raft or a scow you know and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts it's lovely to live on a raft we had the sky up there all speckled with stars and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened jim he allowed they was made but i allowed they happened i judged it would have took too long to make so many jim said the moon could have laid them well that looked kind of reasonable so i didn't say nothing against it because i've seen a frog lay most as many so of course it could be done we used to watch the stars that fell too and see them streak down jim allowed they got spoiled and was hoe out of the nest once or twice a night we would see a steamboat slip it along in the dark and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimblies and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty then she would turn the corner and her lights would wink out and her pow wow shut off and leave the river still again and by and by her waves would get to us a long time after she was gone and juggled her after a bit and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long except maybe frogs or something after midnight the people on shore went to bed and then for two or three hours the shores was black no more sparks in the cabin windows these sparks was our clock the first one that showed again meant morning was coming so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away one morning about daybreak i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore it was only 200 yards and paddle about a mile up a creek amongst the cypress woods to see if i could get some berries just as i was passing the place were kind of a cow path across the creek here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it i thought i was a goner for whenever anybody was after anybody i judged it was me or maybe jim i was about to dig out from there in a hurry but they was pretty close to be then and sung out and begged me to save their lives said they hadn't been doing nothing there was being chased for it said there was men and dogs are coming they wanted to jump right in but i says don't you do it i don't hear the dogs and horses yet you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the creek a little ways then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in that'll throw the dogs off the scent they done it and soon as they was aboard i let out for our toe head and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men way off shouting we heard them come along towards the creek but couldn't see them they had to stop and fool around a while then as we got further and further away all the time we couldn't hardly hear them at all by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river everything was quiet and we paddled over to the toehead and hid in the cotton woods and was safe one of these fellows was about 70 upwards and had a bald head and very gray whiskers he had an old battered up slouch hat on and a greasy blue woolen shirt and ragged old blue jeans bridges stuffed into his boot tops and home knit galuses no he only had one he had a long tail blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm and both of them had big fat ratty-looking carpet bags the other fellow was about 30 and dressed about as ornery after breakfast we all laid off and talked and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn't know one another what got you into trouble says the bald head to tie the chap well i've been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth and it does take it off too and generally the enamel along with it but i stayed about one night longer than i ought to and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town and you told me they were coming and begged me to help you to get off so i told you i was expecting trouble myself and would scatter out with you that's the whole yarn what's urine well i've been running a little temperance revival there about a week and was the pet of the women folks big and little for i was making it mind warm on the rummies i tell you and taking as much as five or six dollars a night 10 cents a head children and niggas free and business are growing all the time when somehow or another a little report got around last night that i had a way of putting in my time with a private jug on the sly a nigger rousted me out this morning and told me the people was gathering on the quiet with their dogs and horses and they'd be along pretty soon and give me about half an hour start and then run me down if they could if they got me they tall and feather me and ride me on a rail sure i didn't want to wait for no breakfast i weren't hungry oh man said the young one i reckon we might double team it together what do you think i ain't undisposed what's your line mainly your printer by trade to do a little in patent medicines theater actor tragedy you know take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance teach singing geography school for a change sling a lecture sometimes oh i do lots of things most anything that comes handy so it ain't work what's your leg i've done considerable in the doctor and way in my time laying on a hands is my best hope for cancer and paralysis and such things and i can tell a fortune pretty good when i've got somebody along to find out the facts for me preaching's my line too and working camp meetings and missionary and around nobody never said anything for a while then the young man hope sigh and says alas what are you alas and about says the ball head to think i should have lived to be leading such a life and be degraded down into such company and he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag during your skin ain't the company good enough for you says the ball head pretty pertin upish yes it is good enough for me it's as good as i deserve for who fetched me so low when i was so high i did myself i don't blame you gentlemen far from it i don't blame anybody i deserve it all let the cold world do its worst one thing i know there's a grave somewhere for me the world may go on just as it's always done and take everything from me loved ones property everything but it can't take that someday i'll lie down in it and forget it all and my poor broken heart will be at rest he went on a wiping dry to your poor broken heart says the ball head what are you heaving your poor broken heart at us for we ain't done nothing no i know you haven't i ain't blaming you gentlemen i brought myself down yes i did it myself it's right i should suffer perfectly right i don't make any moan brought you down from where where was you brought down from ah you would not believe me the world never believes let it pass tis no matter the secret of my birth the secret of your birth do you mean to say gentlemen says the young man very solemn i will reveal it to you for i feel i may have confidence in you by right i am a duke jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that and i reckon mine did too then the ball had man says no you can't mean it yes my great grandfather eldest son of the duke of bridge water fled to this country about the end of the last century to breed the pure air of freedom married here and died leaving a son his own father dying about the same time the second son of the late duke sees the titles and estates the infant real duke was ignored i am the linear descendant of that infant i am the rightful duke of bridge water and here i am full on torn from my high estate hunted of men despised by the cold world ragged worn heartbroken and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft jim pitied him ever so much and so did i we tried to comfort him but he said it weren't much use he couldn't be much comforted said if we was a mind to acknowledge him that would do him more good than most anything else so we said we would if he would tell us how he said we ought to bow when we spoke to him and say your grace or my lord or your lordship and he wouldn't mind if we called him plain bridge water which he said was a title anyway and not a name and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner and do any little thing for him he wanted done well that was all easy so he done it all through dinner jim stood around and waited on him and says will y'all grace have some oh this or some oh that and so on and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him but the old man got pretty solid by and by and didn't have much to say and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that pettin that was going on around that duke he seemed to have something on his bind so along in the afternoon he says look here bilge water he says i'm nation sorry for you but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that no no you ain't you ain't the only person that's been snaked down wrongfully out in a high place alas no you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth and by james he begins to cry hold what do you mean bilge water can i trust you says the old man still sort of sobbing to the bitter death he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it and says that secret of your being speak bilge water i am the late doffin you bet jim and me stared this time then the duke says you are what yes my friend it is too true your eyes is looking at this very moment at the poor disappeared doffin louis the 17th son of louis the 16th and mary and twinette you at your age no you mean you're the late charlamagne you must be six or seven hundred years old at the very least trouble has done it bilge water trouble has done it trouble has bronzed these gray hairs and this premature balditude yes gentlemen you see before you in blue jeans and misery the wonder and exiled trampled on and suffering rightful king of france well he cried and took on so that me and jim didn't know hardly what to do we were so sorry and so glad and proud we got him with us too so we sat in like we done before with the duke and tried to comfort him but he said it weren't no use nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights and got down on one knee to speak to him and always called him your majesty and waited on him first at meals and didn't set down in his presence till he asked him so jim and me set the majesty and him and doing this and that and tethered for him and standing up till he told us we might set down this done him heaps of good and so he got cheerful and comfortable but the duke kind of saw it on him and didn't look a bit satisfied but the way things was going still the king acted real friendly towards him said the duke's great grandfather and all the other dukes of bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to the palace considerable but the duke stayed huffy a good while till by and by the king says like is not we got to be together at blamed long time on this hair raft bilgewater and so what's the use of your being sour it'll only make things aren't comfortable it ain't my fault i weren't born a duke it ain't your fault you aren't born a king so what's the use to worry make the best of things the way you find them says i that's my motto this ain't no bad thing that we stuck here plenty grub at an easy life come give us your hand duke and let's all be friends the duke done it and jim and me was pretty glad to see it it took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it because it would have been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft for what you want above all things on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind towards the others it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars weren't no kings nor dukes at all but just low down humbugs and frauds but i never said nothing never let on kept it to myself it's the best way then you don't have no quarrels and don't get into no trouble if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes i hadn't no objections long as it would keep peace in the family and it weren't no use to tell jim so i didn't tell him if i never learned nothing else out of pap i learned that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way end of chapter 19 chapter 20 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 20 huck explains laying out a campaign working the camp meeting a pirate at the camp meeting the duke as a printer they asked us considerable many questions wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for and laid by in the daytime instead of running was jim a runaway nigger says i goodness sakes would a runaway nigger run south no they allowed he wouldn't i had to account for things some way so i says my folks was living in pot county in missouri where i was born and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike pa he allowed he'd break up and go down and live with uncle ben who's got a little one horse place on the river 44 mile below orleans pa was pretty poor and had some debts so when he'd squared up there weren't nothing left but 16 dollars in our nigger jim that weren't enough to take us 1400 mile deck passage nor no other way well when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day he catch this piece of a raft so we reckon we go down to orleans on it pa's luck didn't hold out a steamboat run over the farry corner of the raft one night and we all went overboard and over under the wheel jim and me come up all right but pa was drunk and ike was only four years old so they never come up no more well the next day or two we had considerable trouble because people was always coming out and skips and trying to take jim away from me saying they believed he was a runaway nigger we don't run daytime's no more now nights they don't bother us the duke says leave me alone to a cipher out away so we can run in the daytime if we want to i'll think the thing over i'll invent a plan that'll fix it we let it alone for today because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight it might be healthy towards night it began to darken up and look like rain the heat lightening was squirting around low down in the sky and the leaves was beginning to shiver it was going to be pretty ugly it was easy to see that so the duke and the king went overhauling our wigwam to see what the beds was like my bed was a straw tick better in gyms which was a corn shuck tick there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick and they poke into you and hurt and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves it makes such a rustling that you wake up well the duke allowed he would take my bed but the king allowed he wouldn't he says i should have reckoned the difference in rank would have suggested it to you that a corn shuck bed weren't just fitting for me to sleep on your grace will take the shuck bed yourself jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute being afraid there was going to be some sort of trouble amongst them so we was pretty glad when the duke says tears my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit i yield i submit tears my fate i'm alone in the world let me suffer i can bear it we got away as soon as it was good and dark the king told us to stand well out toward the middle of the river and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town we come inside of a little bunch of lights by and by that was the town you know and slid by about a half mile out all right when we was three quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern and about ten o'clock it come on terrain and blow and thunder and lightening like everything so the king told us both to stay on watch till the weather got better then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night it was my watch below till twelve but i wouldn't have turned in anyway if i had a bed because the body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week and not by a long side my soul's how the wind did scream along and every second or two they'd come a glare that lit up the whitecaps for a half a mile around and you see the islands looking dusty through the rain and the trees thrashing around in the wind then comes koak boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away and quit and then rip comes another flash and another suck doggler the waves most washed me off the raft sometimes but i hadn't any clothes on and didn't mind we didn't have no trouble about snags the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them i had the middle watch you know uh but i was pretty sleepy by that time so jim said he would stand the first half of it for me he was always mighty good that way jim was i crawled into the wig warm but the king and duke had their legs sprawled around so there weren't no show for me so i laid outside i didn't mind the rain because it was warm and the waves weren't running so high now i bought two they come up again though and jim was going to call me but he changed his mind because he reckoned they weren't high enough you had to do any harm but he was mistaken about that for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard he'd most killed jim laughing he was the easiest nigga to laugh that ever was anyway i took the watch and jim he laid down and snored away and by and by the storm led up for good and all and the first cabin light that showed i roused him out and we slid the raft into hide and quarters for the day the king got out an old rat at decker cards after breakfast and him and the duke played seven up a while five cents a game then they got tired of it and allow they would lay out a campaign as they called it the duke went down into his carpet bag and fetched out a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud one bill said the celebrated dr armand d montalbain of paris would lecture on the science of phrenology at such and such a place on the blank day of blank at 10 cents admission and furnished charts of character at 25 cents apiece the duke said that was him in another bill he was the world-renowned shakespearian tragedy and garrick the younger of druy lane london in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things like finding water and gold with a divining rod dissipating witch spells and so on by and by he says but the historic muse is the darling have you ever tried the board's royalty no says the king you shall then before your three days older fallen grandeur says the duke the first good town to come to will hire a haul and do the sword fight and Richard the third and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet how does that strike you i'm in up to the hub for anything that will pay bills water but you see i don't know nothing about play acting and ain't never seen much of it i was too small when pap used to have him at the palace do you reckon you can learn me easy all right i'm just freezing for something fresh anyway less commence right away so the duke told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was and said he was going to be Romeo so the king would be Juliet but if Juliet such a young gal duke my peeled head and my white whiskers is going to look on common odd on her maybe no don't you worry these country jakes won't ever think of that besides you know you'll be in costume and that makes all the difference in the world Juliet's in a balcony enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap hear all the costumes for the parts he got out two or three curtain calico suits which he said was a medieval arm of for Richard the third and tether chap and the long white cotton night shirt and a ruffled nightcap to match the king was satisfied so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread equal way prancing around and acting at the same time to show how it had got to be done then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart there was a little one horse town about three mile down the bend and after dinner the duke said he had siphoned out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangerous and for Jim so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing the king allowed he would go to and see if he couldn't strike something we was out of coffee so Jim said i better go along with him in the canoe and get some when we got there there wasn't nobody stirring streets empty and perfectly dead and still like sunday we found a sick nigger sunning himself in the backyard and he said everybody that weren't too young or too sick or too old was going to camp meeting about two mile back in the woods the king got the directions and allowed he go and work that camp meeting for all it was worth and i might go to the duke said what he was after was a printing office we found it a little bit of a concern up over a carpenter shop a carpenter's and printers all going to the meeting and no door is locked it was a dirty littered up place and had ink marks and hand bills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them all over the walls the duke shut his coat and said he was all right now so me and the king lit out for the camp meeting we got that about half an hour fairly dripping before it was a most awful hot day there was as much as a thousand people they are from 20 mile around the woods was full of teams and wagons hitched everywhere's feeding out of their wagon troughs and stomping to keep off flies there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell and piles of watermelons and green corn and such like truck the preaching was going on under the same kind of sheds only they was bigger and held crowds of people the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs they didn't have no backs the preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds the women had on sun bonnets and some had Lindsay Woolsey frocks some gingham ones and a few of the young ones had on calico some of the young men was barefooted and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a toe linen shirt some of the old women was knitting and some of the young folks was courting on the sly the first shed we come to the preacher was lining out of him he lined out two lines everybody sung it and it was kind of grand to hear it there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way then he lined out two more for them to sing and so on the people woke up more and more and saw louder and louder and towards the end some began to groan and some begun to shout then the preacher began to preach and begun in earnest to and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other and then a lean and down over the front of it with his arms and his body going all the time and shouting his words out with all his might and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open and kind of pass it around this way in that shouting it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness look upon it and live and people would shout out glory amen and so he went on and the people groaning and crying and saying amen oh come to the mourners bench calm black with sin amen come sick and sore amen come lame and halt and blind amen come poor and needy sunk in shame amen come all that's worn and soiled and suffering come with the broken spirit come with a contrite heart coming your rags and sin and dirt the waters that cleanse is free the door of heaven stands open oh into it and be at rest amen glory glory hallelujah and so on you couldn't make out what the preacher said anymore on account of the shouting and crying folks got up everywhere's in the crowd and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners bench with the tears running down their faces and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw like crazy and wild well the first I know the king got it going and you could hear him over everybody and next he went a charge enough on to the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people and he done it he told him he was a pirate been a pirate for 30 years out in the indian ocean and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight and he was home now to take out some fresh men and thank the goodness he'd been robbed last night and put a shore off a steamboat without a cent and he was glad of it it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him because he was a changed man now and happy for the first time in his life and poor as he was he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path for he could do it better than anybody else being acquainted with all the pirate crews in that ocean and though it would take him a long time to get there without money he would get there anyway and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him don't you thank me don't you give me no credit it all belongs to them dear people in poke field camp meeting natural brothers and benefactors of the race and that dear preacher there the truest friend of pirate ever had and then he busted into tears and so did everybody then somebody sings out take up a collection for him take up a collection well i have a dozen made a jump to do it but somebody sings out let him pass the hat around then everybody said it the preacher too so the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there and every little while the prettiest kind of girls with tears running down their cheeks would often ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by and he always done it and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times and he was invited to stay a week and everybody wanted him to live in their houses and said they think it was an honor but he said as this was the last day of the camp meeting he couldn't do no good and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates when we got back to the raft and come to count up he found he had collected eighty seven dollars and seventy five cents and then he had fetched away a three gallon jug of whiskey too that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods the king said take it all around it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionary in line he said it weren't no use talking heathens don't amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp meeting with the duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well till the king come to show up but after that he didn't think so so much he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that print office horse bills and took the money four dollars and he got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance so they done it the price of the paper was two dollars a year but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar a piece on condition of them paying him in advance they was going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it and was going to run it for cash he set up a little piece of poetry which he made himself out of his own head three verses kind of sweet and saddish the name of it was yes crush cold whirl this breaking heart and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn't charge nothing for it well he took in nine dollars and a half and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for because it was for us it was a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder and two hundred dollar reward under it the reading was all about Jim and just described him to a dot it said he run away from st. jock's plantation forty mile below new orleans last winter and likely went north and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses now says the Duke after tonight we can run in the daytime if we want to whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot with the rope and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river and we're too poor to travel on a steamboat so we got this little raft on credit from our friends that are going down to get the reward handcuffs and change would look still better on Jim but it wouldn't go so well with the story of us being poor too much like jewelry ropes are the correct thing we must preserve the unities as we say on the boards we all said the Duke was pretty smart and there couldn't be no trouble about running day times we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the pow wow we reckoned the Duke's work in the print office was going to make in that little town then we could boom right along if we wanted to we laid low and kept still and never showed out till nearly ten o'clock then we slid by pretty wide away from the town and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it when Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning he says huck does you reckon we go on to run across any more kings on this trip no says I I reckon not well says he that's all right then I don't mind one or two kings but that's enough this one's powerful drunk and the Duke ain't much better I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French so he could hear what it was like but he said he had been in this country so long and had so much trouble he forgot it end of chapter 20 chapter 21 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 21 sword exercise Hamlet's soliloquy they loafed around town a lazy town old bogs dead it was after sun up now but we went right on and didn't tie up the king and the Duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty but after they jumped overboard and took a swim it chipper them up a good deal after breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches and let his legs dangle in the water so as to be comfortable and let his pipe and went to get in his Romeo and Juliet by heart when he had got it pretty good him and the Duke begun to practice it together the Duke had to learn him over and over again how to say ever speech and he made him sigh and put his hand on his heart and after a while he said he done it pretty well only he says you mustn't bellow out Romeo that way like a bull you must say it's soft and sick and languishy so Romeo that is the idea for Juliet a dear sweet mere child of a girl you know and she doesn't bray like a jackass well next they got out a couple of long swords that the Duke made out of oak lays and begun to practice the sword fight the Duke called himself Richard the third and the way they laid on and plants around the raft was grand to see but by and by the king tripped and fell overboard and after that they took a rest and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they had in other times along the river after dinner the Duke says well cap it we'll want to make this a first-class show you know so I guess we'll add a little more to it we want a little something to answer on course with anyway what's on course bilgewater the Duke told him and then he says I'll answer by doing the Highland flaying all the sailors hornpipe and you well let me see oh I've got it you can do Hamlet soliloquy Hamlet switch Hamlet soliloquy you know the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare ah it sublime sublime always fetches the house I haven't got it in the book I've only got one volume but I reckon I can piece it out from memory I'll just walk up and down a minute and see if I can call it back from the recollections vaults so he went to marching up and down thinking and frown and horrible never now and then then he would hoist up his eyebrows next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan next he would sigh and next he led on to drop a tear it was beautiful to see him by and by he got it he told us to give attention then he strikes a most noble attitude with one leg shoved forwards and his arms stretched away up in his head tilted back looking up at the sky and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth and after that all through his speech he howled and spread around and swelled up his chest and just knocked the spots out of any act and ever I see before this is the speech I learned it easy enough while he was learning it to the king to be or not to be that is the bad bodkin that makes calamity of so long life for who would fordells bear till burning wood do come to duncinane but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep great mages a second course and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune then fly to others that we know not of there's the respect must give us pause wake duncin with thy knocking our would thou colt'st for who would bear the whip since gone's the time the oppressors wrong the proud man's contumely the law's delay and the quietest which his pangs might take in the dead waste and middle of the night when church yards yawn in customary suits of solemn black but that the undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns breathe force contagion on the world and thus the native hue of resolution like the poor cat of the adage is sickly over with care and all the clouds that loud over our house tops with disregard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action tis a consummation devoutly to be wished but soft you the fair Ophelia hope not thy ponderous and marble jaws but get thee to a nunnery go well the old man he lied that speech and he might as soon got it so he could do it first rate it seemed like he was just born for it and when he had his hand in and was excited it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rare it behind when he was getting it off the first chance we got the Duke he had some showbills printed and after that for two or three days as we floated along the raft was a most uncommon lively place but there weren't nothing but sword fighting and rehearsing as the Duke called it going on all the time one morning when we was pretty well down the state of Arkansas we come inside of a little one horse town in a big bend so we tied up about three quarters of a mile above it in the mouth of a creek which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees and all of us but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show we struck it my lucky there was going to be a circus there that afternoon and the country people was already beginning to come in and all kinds of old shackley wagons and on horses the circus would leave before night so our show would have a pretty good chance the Duke he hired the courthouse and we went around and stuck up our bills they read like this shake spear revival wonderful attraction for one not only the world-renowned tragedians david garrick the younger of drury lane theater london and edmund king the elder of the royal haymarket theater white chapel putting lane piccadilly london and the royal continental theaters in their sublime shakespearean spectacle entitled the balcony scene and romeo and juliette romeo mr garrick juliette mr keen assisted by the whole strength of the company new costumes new scenery new appointments also the thrill and mastery and blood kirtland broadsword conflict in richard the third richard the third mr garrick richmond mr keen also by special request hamlet's immortal soliloquy by the illustrious king done by him 300 consecutive knights in paris for one night only on account of imperative european engagements admission 25 cents children as servants 10 cents then we went loafing around the town the stores and houses was most all old shackley dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted but they were set up three or four foot above ground on stilts so as to be out of each other water when the river was overflowed the houses had little gardens around them but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but gymson weeds and sunflowers and ash piles and old curled up boots and shoes and pieces of bottles and rags and played out tinware the fences was made of different kinds of boards nailed on at different times and they leaned every which way and had gates that didn't generally have but one hinge a leather one some of the fences had been whitewashed some time or other but the duke said it was in columbus's time like enough there was generally hogs in the garden and people driving them out all the stores was along one street they had white domestic awnings in front and the country people hitched their horses to the haunted posts there was empty dry goods boxes under the awnings and loafers roosted on them all day long whittling them with their ball-o knives and charned backer and gaping and yawning and stretching a mind-honoring lot they generally had on yellow straw hat most as wide as an umbrella but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats they called one another bill and buck and hank and joe and andy and talk lazy and trolley and use considerable many cuss words there was as many as one loaf of leaning up against every awning post and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets except when he fetched them out to lend a charred tobacco or scratch what a body was here amongst them all the time was gimme a charred backer hank and i ain't got but one char left ask bill maybe bill he gives them a char maybe he lies and says he ain't got none some of them condolophas never has a sit in the world nor a charred tobacco of their own they get all their charm by borrowing they say to a fella i wish you lend me a char jack i just this minute give ben thompson the last char i had which is a lie pretty much every time it don't fool nobody but a stranger but jack ain't no stranger so he says you give him a char did you so did your sister's cat's grandmother you pay me back the charge you've already barred off in me leif buckner did i loan you one or two ton of it and won't charge you no back interest another well i did pay you back some of it once yes you did about six chas you borrowed store tobacco and paid back niggerhead store tobacco is flat black plug but these fellows mostly chose the natural leave twisted when they borrow a char they don't generally cut it off with a knife but set the plug in between their teeth and gnaw with their teeth and to get the plug with their hands till they get it in two then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks more and full at it when it's handed back and says sarcastic here gimme the char you take the plug all the streets and lanes was just mud there weren't nothing else but mud mud and blackest tar and nine about a foot deep in some places and two or three inches deep in all the places the hogs loafed and grunted around everywhere's you'd see a muddy sigh when the litter of pigs come lazing along the street and wallop herself right down in the way where folks had to walk around her and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs were built in her and look as happy as if she was on salary and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out hi so boy sickam teague and away the sound would go squealing most horrible with a dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more coming and then you'd see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise then they'd settle back again till there was a dogfight there couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over like a dogfight unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death on the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank and they was bowed and bent and about ready to tumble in people had moved out of them the bank was caved in away under one corner of some others and that corner was hanging over people lived in them yet but it was dangerous because sometimes a stripper land is wide as the house caves in at a time sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer such a town as that has to be always moving back and back and back because the river is always gnawing at it the near it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets and more coming all the time families fetch their dinners with them from the country and eat them in the wagons there was considerable whiskey drinking going on and i seen three fights buying by somebody sings out here comes old bogs in from the country for his little old monthly drunk here he comes boys all the loafers look glad i reckon that they was used to having fun out of bogs one of them says wonder who he's a guan to char up this time if he'd have char up all the men he's been a guan to char up in the last 20 years he'd have a considerable reputation now another one says i wished old bogs had threatened me because then i'd know i weren't going to die for a thousand yeah bogs comes a tearing along on his horse whooping and yelling like an engine and singing out clear the track there i'm on the wall path and the price of coffins is a guan arise he was drunk and weaving about in his saddle he was over 50 year old and had a very red face everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him and he sassed back and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns but he couldn't wait now because he come to town to kill old colonel charburn and his motto was meet first and spoon riddles to top off on he see me and wrote up and says where are you from boy are you prepared to die then he wrote on i was scared but a man says he don't mean nothing he's always a carrion on like that when he's drunk he's the best naturedist old fool in arkansas never hurt nobody drunk nor sober bogs wrote up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the on and yells come out here shall burn come out and meet the man you swindled you're the hound i'm after and i'm a guan i have you too and so he went on calling sure burn everything he could lay his tongue to and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on buying by a proud looking man about 55 and he was a heap the best dressed man in that town to steps out of the store and the crowd drop is back on each side to let him come he says to bogs might calm and slow he says i'm tired of this but i'll endure it till one o'clock till one o'clock mind no longer if you open your mouth against me only once after that time you can't travel so far but i will find you then he turns and goes in the crowd looking mind is sober nobody's stirred and there weren't no more laughing bogs rode off black garden sure burn as loud as he could yell all down the street pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store still keeping it up some men crowded around him and tried to get him shut up but he wouldn't they told him it would be one o'clock in about 15 minutes so he must go home he must go right away but it didn't do no good he cussed away with all his mind and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it and pretty soon away he went a raging down the street again with his gray hair flying everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober but it warrant no use up the street he would tear again and give shellburn another cussing by and by somebody says go for his daughter quick go for his daughter sometimes he'll listen to her if anybody can persuade him she can so somebody started on a run i walked down streets away he's stopped in about five or ten minutes here comes bogs again but not on his horse he was a reeling across the street toward me bareheaded with a friend on both sides of him a hold to his arms and hurrying him along he was quiet and looked uneasy and he weren't hanging back any but he was doing some of the hurrying himself somebody sings out bogs i looked over there to see who said it and it was that colonel sherburn he was standing perfectly still in the street and had a pistol raised in his right hand not aiming it but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky the same second i see a young girl coming on the run and two men with her bogs and the men turned round to see who called him and when they see the pistol the men jumped one side and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level both barrels cocked bogs throws up both his hands and says oh lord don't shoot bang goes the first shot and he staggers back clawing at the air bang goes the second one and he tumbles backwards on to the ground heavy and solid with his arm spread out that young girl screamed out and comes rushing and down she throws herself on her father crying and saying oh he's killed him he's killed him the crowd close up around them and shoulder and and jam one another with their neck stretched trying to see and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting back back give him air give him air colonel sure burn he tossed his pistol on to the ground and turned around on his heels and walked off they took bogs to a little drugstore the crowds pressing around just the same in the whole town following and i rushed and got a good place at the window where i was close to him and could see in they laid him on the floor and put one large bible under his head and opened another one and spread it on his breast but they tore open his shirt first and i seen where one of the bullets went in he made about a dozen long gasps his breath lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath and letting it down again when he breathed out and after that he laid still he was dead then they pulled his daughter away from him screaming and crying and took her off she was about 16 and very sweet and gentle looking but awful pale and scared well pretty soon the whole town was there squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look but people that had the places wouldn't give them up and folks behind them were saying all the time say now you've looked enough you fellows take right and take fair for you to stay there all the time and never give nobody a chance other folks has their rights as well you know there was considerable drawing back so i slid out thinking maybe there was going to be trouble the streets was full and everybody was excited everybody that's seen the shooting was telling how it happened there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows stretching their necks and listening one long lanky man with long hair and a big white fur stove pipe hat on the back of his head and a crooked handle cane marked out the places on the ground where balk stood and where sherburne stood and the people following him around from one place to another and watching everything he done and bobbing their heads to show they understood and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburne had stood frowning and having his hat brimmed down over his eyes and sang out bogs and then fetched his cane down slow to a level and says bang staggered backwards says bang again and fell down flat on his back the people that had seen the things that he done it perfect said it was just exactly the way it all happened then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him well by and by somebody said sherburne ought to be lynched in about a minute everybody was saying it's a way they went mad and yelling and snatching down every clothesline they came to to do the hanging with end of chapter 21 chapter 22 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 22 sherburne attending the circus intoxication in the ring the thrilling tragedy they swarmed up towards sherburne's house a whooping and raging like engines and everything had to clear the way or get run over and trampled to mush and it was awful to see children was healing it ahead of the mob screaming and trying to get out of the way and every window along the road was full of women's heads and there was nigger boys in every tree and bucks and winches looking over every fence and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skeet out of back out of reach lots of the women and children was crying and taking on scared most to death they swarmed up in front of sherburne's palings as thick as they could jam together and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise it was a little 20-foot yard some sung out tear down the fence tear down the fence then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing and down she goes and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave just then sherburne steps out onto the roof of his little front porch with a double barrel gun in his hand and takes his stand perfectly calm and deliberate not saying a word the racket stopped and the wave sucked back sherburne never said a word just stood there looking down the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable sherburne run his eyes slow along the crowd and wherever it struck the people tried a little to out gaze him but they couldn't they dropped their eyes and look sneaky then pretty soon sherburne sort of laughed not the pleasant kind but the kind that makes you feel like when you're eating bread that's got sand in it then he says slow and scornful the idea of you lynching anybody it's amusing the idea of you thinking you had plucked enough to lynch a man because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast out women that come along here did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man why a man safe in the hands of 10 000 of your kind as long as this daytime and you're not behind him do i know you i know you clear through i was born and raised in the south and i've lived in the north so i know the average all around the average man's a coward in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it in the south one man all by himself has stopped the stage full of men in the daytime and robbed a lot your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people whereas you're just as brave and no braver why don't your juries hang murderers because they're afraid the men's friends will shoot them in the back in the dark and it's just what they would do so they're always a quit and then a man goes in the night with a hundred masked cowards it is back and lynches the rascal your mistake is that you didn't bring a man with you that's one mistake and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks you brought part of a man buck harkness there and if you hadn't had him to start you you'd have taken it out in blowing you didn't want to come the average man don't like trouble and danger you don't like trouble and danger but if only half a man like buck harkness there shelves lynch him lynch him you're afraid to back down afraid you'll be found out to be what you are cowards and so you raise a yell and hang yourselves onto that half a man's coat tail and come raging up here swearing what big things you're going to do the pitifulest thing out is a mob that's what an army is a mob they don't fight with courage that's born in them but with courage that's borrowed from their mass and from their offices but a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole if any real lynch is going to be done it will be done in the dark southern fashion and when they come they'll bring their masks and fetch a man along now leave and take your half a man with you tossing his gun across his left arm and cocking it when he says this the crowd washed back sudden and then broke all apart and were tearing off every which way and buck harkness he healed it after them looking tolerable cheap i could have stayed if i wanted to but i didn't want to i went to the circus and loafed around the backside till the watchman went by and then dived in under the tent i had my 20 dollar gold piece and some other money but i reckoned i'd better save it because there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it away from home and amongst strangers that way you can't be too careful i ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way but there ain't no use in wasting it on them it was a real bullet circus it was the splendid sight that ever was when they all came riding in two and two a gentleman and a lady side by side the men just in their drawers and under shirts and no shoes nor stirrups and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable there must have been 20 of them and every lady with a lovely complexion and perfectly beautiful and looking just like a gang of real sure enough queens and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars and just littered with diamonds it was a powerful fine sight i never see anything so lovely and then one by one they got up and stood and went a weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight with their heads bobbing and skimming along a way up there under the tent roof and every lady's rose leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips and she looking like the most loveliest parasol and then faster and faster they went all of them dancing first one foot out in the air and then the other the horse is leaning more and more and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole cracking his whip and shouting hi hi and the clown cracking jokes behind him and by and by all hands dropped the reins and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms and then how the horses did leap over and hump themselves and so one after another they all skipped off into the ring and made the sweetest bow i ever see and then scampered out and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild well all through the circus they done the most astonishing things and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people the ringmaster couldn't even say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things the body ever said and how he ever could think of so many of them and so sudden and so pat was what i couldn't no way understand why i couldn't have thought of them in a year and by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring said he wanted to ride said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was they argued and tried to keep him out but he wouldn't listen and the whole show came to a standstill then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him and that made him mad and he began to rip and tear so that stirred up the people and a lot of men began to pile down off the benches and swamp towards the ring saying knock him down throw him out and one or two women begun to scream so then the ringmaster he made a little speech and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse so everybody laughed said all right and the man got on the minute he was on the horse began to rip and tear and jump and cavort around with two circus men hanging on to his bridal trying to hold him and the drunk man hanging on to his neck and his heels flying in the air every jump and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears rolled down and at last sure enough all the circus men could do the horse broke loose and the way he went like the very nation round and round the ring with that sought laying down on him and hanging to his neck with first one leg hanging most of the ground on one side then to the one on the other side and the people just crazy it weren't funny to me though i was all of a tremble to see his danger but pretty soon he struggled up a straddle and grabbed the bridal uh reeling this way and that in the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridal and stood and the horse are going like a house of fire too he just stood up there a sailing round as easy and comfortable as if he weren't ever drunk in his life then he began to pull off his clothes and slain them he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air and altogether he shed 17 suits and then when he was slim and handsome and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly humming finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off to the dressing room and everybody just a howling with pleasure and astonishment then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see i reckon why it was one of his own men he had got up that joke all out of his own head and never let on to nobody well i felt sheepish enough to be took in so but i wouldn't have been in that ringmaster's place not for a thousand dollars i don't know there may be bully of circuses than what that one was but i never struck them yet anyways it was plenty good enough for me and wherever i run across it it can have all my custom every time well that night we had our show but there weren't only 12 people there just enough to pay expenses and they laughed all the time and that made the duke mad and everybody left anyway before the show was over but one boy which was asleep so the duke said these Arkansas lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare what they wanted was low comedy and maybe something rather worse than low comedy he reckoned he said he would size their style so next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint and draw it off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village the bill said at the courthouse for three nights only the world-renowned tragedians david garrick the younger and edmund king the elder of the london and continental theaters in their thrilling tragedy of the king's camel leopard or the royal none such admission fifty cents then at the bottom was the biggest line of all which said ladies and children not admitted there he says if that line don't fetch him i don't know arkansas end of chapter 22 chapter 23 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 23 sold royal comparisons jim gets homesick well all day him and the king was hard at it rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights and that night the house was jam full of men in no time when the place couldn't hold no more the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech and praised up this tragedy and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was and so he went on a bragging about the tragedy and about edmund king the elder which was to play the main principle part in it and at last when he got everybody's expectations up high enough he rolled up the curtain and the next minute the king come up prancing out on all fours naked and he was painted all over ring streaked and striped all sorts of colors as splendid as a rainbow and but never mind the rest of his outfit it was just wild but it was awful funny the people most killed themselves laughing and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes they roared and clapped and starved and he hard till he come back and done it all over again and after that they made him do it another time well it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut then the duke he lets the curtain down and bows to the people and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more on account of press and london engagements where the seats is all sold out already for it in dreary lane then he makes them another bow and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them he will be deeply obliged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it 20 people sings out what is it all over is that all the duke says yes then there was a fine time everybody sings out sold and rose up mad and was it going for that stage and then tragedians but a big fine looking man jumps up on the bench and shouts hold on just the word gentlemen they stopped to listen we are sold might have badly sold but we don't want to be the laughing stock of this whole town i reckon and never hit a last of this thing as long as we live no what we want is to go out there quiet and talk this show up and sell the rest of the town then we'll all be in the same boat ain't that sensible you bet it is the judge is right everybody sings out all right then not a word about any cell go along home and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was house was jammed again that night and we sold this crowd the same way when me and the king of the duke got home to the raft we all had supper and buy and buy about midnight they made jim and me back around and floated down the middle of the river and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town the third night the house was crammed again but there weren't newcomers this time but people that was at the show the other two nights i stood by the duke at the door and i see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging or something muffled up under his coat and i see it warrant no perfumery neither not by a long sight i smelled sickly eggs by the barrel and rotten cabbages and such things and if i know the signs of a dead cat being around and i bet i do there was 64 of them went in i shoved in there for a minute but it was too various for me i couldn't stand it well when the place couldn't hold no more people the duke he gave a fellow a quarter and told him to tend the door for him for a minute then he started around for the stage door i after him but the minute we turn the corner and was in the dark he says walk fast now till you get away from the houses and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you i done it and he done the same we struck the raft at the same time and in less than two seconds we was gliding downstream all dark and still and edging towards the middle of the river nobody's saying a word i reckon the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience but nothing of the sort pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam and says well how'd the old thing pan out this time duke he hadn't been uptown at all we never showed a light till we was about 10 mile below the village then we lit up and had a supper and the king and the duke freddy left their bones loose over the way they served them people the duke says greenhorns flatheads i knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in and i knew they lay for us the third night and consider it was their turn now well it is their turn and i'd give us something to know how much they'd take for it i would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity they can turn it into a picnic if they want to they brought plenty provisions them rap scallions took in four hundred and sixty five dollars in that three nights i never see money hauled in by the wagon load like that before by and by when they was asleep and storing jim says don't you surprise you do we dim kings carry his own hook no i says it don't why don't it hook well you don't because it's in the breed i reckon they're all alike but hook these kings they own his regular rap scallions that's just what they is these regular rap scallions well that's just what i'm saying all kings is mostly rap scallions as far as i can make out is that so you read about them once you'll see look at henry the eighth this is a sunday school superintendent to him and look at charles second and louis 14 and louis 15 and james second and edwards second and richard third and forty more besides all them sax and hip torquise that used to rip around so in the old times and raise kane my you ought to see no henry the eighth when he was in bloom he was a blossom he used to marry a new wife every day and chop off her head next morning and he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs fetch up nell gwin he says they fetch her up next morning chop off her head and they chop it off fetch up jane sure he says and up she comes next morning chop off her head and they chop it off ring up fair rosamund fair rosamund answers the bell next morning chop off her head and he made every one of them tell him a tale every night and he kept that up till he hogged a thousand and one tales that way and then he put them all in a book and called it doomsday book which was a good name and stated the case you don't know kings jim but i know them and this old rip of iron is one of the cleanest i've struck in history well henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country how does he go at it give notice give the country a show no all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in boston harbour overboard and wax out a declaration of independence and there's them to come on that was his style he never give anybody a chance he has suspicions of his father the duke of wellington well what did he do ask him to show up no drown did him in a butt of mc like a cat suppose people left money lying around where he was what did he do he colored it suppose he contracted to do a thing and you paid him and didn't sit down there and see that he done it what did he do he always done the other thing suppose he opened his mouth what then if he didn't shut it up powerful quick he lose a lot every time that's the kind of a bug Henry was and if we'd have had him along instead of our kings he'd have fooled that town of heap worse than iron done i don't say that irons is lambs because they ain't when you come right down to the cold facts but they ain't nothing to that old ram anyway all i say is kings is kings and you got to make allowances take them all around they're a mighty ornery lot it's the way they're raised but just one do smell so like the nation hook well they all do that gem we can't help the way a king smells history don't tell no way now the duke he's a tolerable likely man in some ways yes say duke's different but not very different this one's a middle and hard lot for a duke when he's drunk there ain't no nearsighted man could tell him from a king well anyways i don't think of a no more out of hook these is all i can stand it's the way i feel to gem but we've got them on our hands and we've got to remember what they are and make allowances sometimes i wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings what was the use to tell jim these weren't real kings and dukes it wouldn't have done no good and besides it was just as i said you couldn't tell them from the real kind i went to sleep and jim didn't call me when it was my turn he often done that when i wake up just a daybreak he was sitting there with his head down but twix his knees morning and morning to himself i didn't take notice nor let on i knowed what it was about he was thinking about his wife and his children away up yonder and he was low and homesick because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life and i do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for therein it don't seem natural but i reckon it's so he was often moaning and mourning that way nights when he judged i was asleep and saying polly little is a bit polly little johnny this mighty hard aspect i ain't ever going to see you no more no more he was a mighty good nigger jim was but this time i somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones and by and by he says what makes me feel so bad this time is because i hear something over yonder on the bank like a whack a slam while ago and in mind me at the time i treat my little lizabeth so honoured she weren't only about four-year-old and she took the scarlet fever and had a powerful rough spell but she got well and one day she was a standing round and our sister i says shut the door she never done it just stood there kind of smiling at me it made me mad and i says again might allowed i says don't you hear me shut the door she just stood the same way kind of smiling up i was a violin i says i'll let me make you mine and with that i fetch our slap side of the head that's on her sprawling then i went into the other room and it's gone about 10 minutes and when i come back there was that dough a standing open yet and that child standing most right in it looking down and mourning and the tears running down my but i was mad i was a grind for the child but just then it was a dough that opened inwards just in long come to end and slam it to behind the child couple lamb and my land the child never move my breath most hop out of me and i feel so so i don't know how i feel i crope out all the trembling and crope around and open the door easy and slow poke my head in behind the child soft and still and all of a sudden i say pow just as loud as i could yell she never budge oh huck i bust out of crying and grab her up in my arms and say oh the poor little thing the lord got almighty forgive poor old jim because he never wanted to forgive himself as long as he lived oh she was plumbed deep and dumb huck plumbed deep and dumb and i'm going to treat her so end of chapter 23 chapter 24 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this leery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 24 jim in royal robes they take a passenger getting information family grief next day to our night we laid up under a little willow towhead out in the middle where there was a village on each side of the river and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns jim he spoke to the duke and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours because he got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope you see when we left him all alone we had to tie him because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger you know so the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day and he'd cypher out some way to get around it he was uncommon bright the duke was and he soon struck it he dressed jim up in king lear's outfit it was a long curtain calico gown and a white horse hair wig and whiskers and then he took his theater paint and painted jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead dull solid blue like a man that's been drowned in nine days blamed if he weren't the horribleest looking outrage i ever see then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so sick a-rab but harmless when not out of his head and he nailed that shingle to a lath and stood the lath up four or five feet in front of the wigwam jim was satisfied he said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound the duke told him to make himself free and easy and if anybody ever come meddling around he must hop out of the wigwam and carry on a little and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone which was sound enough judgment but you take the average man and he wouldn't wait for him to howl why he didn't look like he was dead he looked considerable more than that these rap scallions wanted to try the none such again because there was so much money in it but they judged it wouldn't be safe because maybe the news might have worked along down by this time they couldn't hit no project that suited exactly so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up something on the arkansas village and the king he allowed he would drop over to tuther village without any plan but just trust the providence lead him the profitable way meaning the devil i reckon we had all bought store clothes where we stopped last and now the king put his and on and he told me to put mine on i'd done it of course the king's duds was all black and he did look real swell and starchy i never know how clothes could change a body before why before he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was but now when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark and maybe was old leviticus himself jim cleaned up the canoe and i got my paddle ready there was a big steamboat lying at the shore away up under the point about three mile above the town been there a couple of hours taken on freight says the king seeing how i'm dressed i reckon maybe i better arrive down from st louis or cincinetti or some other big place go for the steamboat huckleberry will come down to the village on her i didn't have to be ordered twice to go take a steamboat ride i fetched the store a half mile above the village and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water pretty soon we come to a nice innocent looking young country jake sitting on a log swabbing to sweat off his face for it was powerful warm weather and he had a couple of big carpet bags by him run her nose inshore says the king i done it where are you bound for young man for the steamboat going to orleans get aboard says the king hold on a minute my servant will help you with them bags jump out and help the gentleman at office meaning me i see i done so and then we all three started on again the young chap was mighty thankful said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather he asked the king where he was going and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning and now he was going up a few miles to see an old friend on a farm up there the young fellow says when i first see you i says to myself it's mr wilks sure and he come modding here getting here in time but then i says again no i reckon it ain't him or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river you ain't him are you no my name is bludgett alexander bludgett a reverent alexander bludgett i suppose i must say as i am one of the lord's poor servants but still i'm just as able to be sorry for mr wilks for not arriving in time all the same if he's missed anything by it which i hope he hasn't well he don't miss any property by it because he'll get that all right but he's missing his brother peter die which he may in mind nobody can tell us to that but his brother would give anything in the world to see him before he died never talked about nothing else all these three weeks hadn't seen him since they was boys together and hadn't ever seen his brother william at all that's the deep and dumb one will you may know more than 30 35 peter and jarge were the only ones that come out here jarge was the married brother him and his wife both died last year havi and williams the only ones that's left now and as i was saying they haven't got here in time did anybody send a word oh yes a mother to a go when peter was first took because peter said then that he sort of felt like he weren't going to get well this time you see he was pretty old and jarge's girls was way too young to be much company for him except mary jane the red headed one and so he was kinder alone some after jarge and his wife died and didn't seem to care much to live he most desperately wanted to see harvey and william too for that matter because he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will he left a letter behind for harvey and said he told in it where his money was hid and how he wanted the rest of his property divided up so jarge's girls would be all right for jarge didn't leave nothing and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to why do you reckon harvey don't come where does he live oh he lives in england sheffield preachers there had never been in this country he hasn't had any too much time and besides he might not got the letter at all you know too bad too bad he couldn't live to see his brothers poor soul you're going to orleans you say yes but that ain't only a part of it i'm going in a ship next wednesday for rio g narrow where my uncle lives it's a pretty long journey but it'll be lovely wish i was going is mary jane the oldest how old is the others mary jane's 19 susan's 15 and joanna's about 14 that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hair lip poor things to be left alone in the cold world so well they could be worse off oh peter had friends and they ain't going to let them come to no harm there's hopson the baptist preacher and deacon lot hovy and ben rucker and abner shackleforth and levy bell the lawyer and dr robinson and their wives and the widow barley and well there's lots of them but these are the ones that peter was thick of swift and used to write about sometimes when he wrote home so harvey'll know where to look for friends when he gets here well the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fella blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town and all about the wilkises and about peter's business which was a tanner and about jarges which was a carpenter and about harvey's which was a dissenting minister and so on and so on then he says what did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for because she's a big orleans boat and i was afraid she might stop here when they're deep they won't stop for a hail a Cincinnati boat will but this is a st louis one was peter wilkes well off oh yeah it's pretty well off he had houses and land and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hit up summers when did you say he died i didn't but it was last night funerals tomorrow likely yes about the middle of the day well it's all terrible sad but we've all got to go one time or another so what we want to do is to be prepared then we're all right yes sir it's the best way ma used to always say that when we struck the boat she was about done loading and pretty soon she got off the king never said nothing about going aboard so i lost my ride after all when the boat was gone the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place and then he got ashore and says now hustle back right off and fetch the duke up here and the new carpet bags and if he's going over to the other side go over there and get him and tell him to get himself up regardless shovel on now i see what he was up to but i never said nothing of course when i got back with the duke we hit the canoe and then they sat down on a log and the king told him everything just like the young fellow had said it every last word of it and all the time he was doing it he tried to talk like an englishman and he done pretty well too for a slouch i can't imitate him and so i ain't going to try to but he really done it pretty good then he says how are you on the deep and dumb bilge water the duke said leave him alone for that said he played a deep and dumb person on the histrionic boards so then they waited for the steamboat about the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along but they didn't come from high enough up the river but at last there was a big one and they hailed her she sent out her y'all and we went to board and she was from Cincinnati and when they found out we only wanted to go four or five mile they was booming mad and gave us a cussing and said they wouldn't land us but the king was calm he says if a gentleman can afford to pay a dollar a mile of peace to be put on and off in the y'all a steamboat can afford to carry him can't it so they softened down and said it was all right and when we got to the village they y'all just assure about two dozen men flocked down when they see the y'all are coming and with the king says can any of you gentlemen tell me where Mr. Peter Wilkes lives they give a glance at one another and nodded their heads as much to say why did i tell you then one of them says kind of soft and gentle i'm sorry sir but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yesterday evening sudden as winking the ornery old critter went and smashed and fell up against the man and put his chin on his shoulder and cried down his back it says alas alas our poor brother gone and we never got to see him oh oh it is too too hard then he turns around blubbering and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands and blamed if he didn't drop a satchel bag and bust out of crying if they weren't the beatingest lot them two frauds that i ever struck well the men gathered around and sympathized with him and said all sorts of kind thanks to them carried their carpet bags up the hill for them and let them lean on them and cry and told the king all about his brother's last moments and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke and both of them took on about that dead tenor like they lost the twelve disciples well if i ever struck anything like it i'm a nigger it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race end of chapter 24 chapter 25 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slibri vox recording is in the public domain chapter 25 is it them singing the dox soliger awful square funeral orgies a bad investment the news was all over town in two minutes and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way some of them putting on their coats as they come pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd in the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march the windows and do yards was full and every minute somebody would say over a fence is it them and somebody trotting along with the gang would enter back and say you bet it is when we got to the house the street in front of it was packed and the three girls was standing in the door mary jane was redheaded but that don't make no difference she was most awful beautiful and her face in her eyes was all lit up like glories she was so glad her uncles was come the king he spread his arms and mary jane she jumped for them and the hairlip jumped for the duke and there they had it everybody most least ways women cried for joy to see them beat again at last and have such good times then the king he hunched the duke private i see him do it and then he looked around and see the coffin over in the corner on two chairs so then him and the duke with a hand across each other's shoulder and to the hand to their eyes walked slow and solemn over there everybody dropping back to give them room and all the talk and noise stopping people saying shh and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads so you could have heard a pinfall and when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin and took one sight and then they bust out crying so you could have heard them in orleans most and then they put their arms around each other's necks and hung their chins over each other's shoulders and then for three minutes or maybe four i never see two men leak the way they done and mind you everybody was doing the same and the place was that damp i never see anything like it then one of them got on one side of the coffin and tell on to the side and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin and let on to pray all to themselves well when they come to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it and everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud the four girls too and every woman nearly went up to the girl without saying a word and kiss them solemn on the forehead and then put their hand on their head and looked up towards the sky with tears running down and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing and give the next woman a show i never see anything so disgusting i never see anything so disgusting well by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little and works himself up and slobbers out of speech all full of tears and flap doodle about it's being a source trial for him and his poor brother to lose the deceased and their miss seeing deceased alive after a long journey of four thousand mile but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these hold the tears and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart because out of their mouths they can't words being too weak and cold and all that kind of rotten slush till it was just sickening and he blubbers out of pious goody goody amen and turns himself loose and goes to cry in fit to bust and the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the dock solider and everybody joined in with all their might and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out music is a good thing and after all that soul butter and hogwash i never see it freshen up thing so and sound so honest and bully then the king begins to work his jaw again and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening and helps set up with the ashes of the deceased and says if his poor brother lying yonder could speak he knows who he would name for they was names that was very dear to him and mentioned often in his letters and so he will name the same to it this follows viz reverent mr. hopson and deacon lot hovy and mr. ben rucker and abner shackle forth and leave our bell and dr. robinson and their wives and the widow barley reverent hopson and dr. robinson was down to the end of the town hunting together that is i mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to tell the world and the preacher was piting him right lawyer bell was a way up in louisville on business but the rest was on hand and so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him and then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing but just kept a smiling and bobbing their heads like a parcel of sap heads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said go go go go go all the time like a baby that can't talk so the king he blathered along and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town by his name and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town or to george's family or to peter and he always let on that peter wrote him the things but that was a lie he got ever blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat then mary jane she fetched the letter her father left behind and the king he read it aloud and cried over it it gave the dwelling house and three thousand dollars gold to the girls and it gave the tanyard which was doing a good business along with some other houses and land worth about seven thousand and three thousand dollars in gold to harvey and william and told where the six thousand cash was hit down seller so these two frauds said they'd go and fresh it up and have everything square and above board and told me to come with the candle we shot the seller door behind us and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor and it was a lovely sight all them yaller boys my the way the king's eyes did shine he slaps the duke on the shoulder and says oh wait this bully on knowing nothing no no i reckon not why bully it beats the nuns like you don't it the duke allowed it did they pawed the yaller boys and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor and the king says it ain't no use talking being brothers to a rich dead man and represented as the fern heirs that's got left in the line for you and me bilge this year comes a trust into providence it's the best way in the long run i've tried them all and there ain't no better way most everybody would have been satisfied with the pile and took it on trust but no they must count it so they count it and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short says the king turn him i wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars they worried over that a while and ransacked all around for it then the duke says well he was a pretty sick man and likely he made a mistake i reckon that's the way of it the best ways to let it go and keep still about it we can spare it oh shucks yes we can spare it i don't care nothing about that it's the count i'm thinking about we want to be awful square and open and aboveboard here you know we want to lug this here money upstairs and count it before everybody then there ain't nothing suspicious but when the dead man says they six thousand dollars you know we don't want to hold on says the duke let's make up the deficit and he began to haul out yeller boys out of his pocket it's a most amazing good idea duke you have got a rattling clever head on you says the king blessed if the old nun such ain't a helping us out again and he began to haul out yeller jackets and stack them up it most busted them but they made up the six thousand clean and clear say says the duke i got another idea let's go upstairs and count this money and then take and give it to the girls good land duke let me hug you it's the most dazzling idea i'd ever man struck you have certainly got the most astonishing head i ever see oh this is the boss stodge there ain't no mistake about it let him fetch along their suspicions now if they want to this will lay them out when we got upstairs everybody gathered around the table and the king he counted it and stacked it up three hundred dollars in a pile twenty elegant little piles everybody looked hungry at it and licked their chops then they raked it into the bag again and i see the king began to swell himself up for another speech he says friends all my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them that's left behind in the veil of sorrows he has done generous by these yeah poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered and that's left fatherless and motherless yes and we that knowed him knows that he would have done more generous by him if he hadn't been a fear to wound in his dear william and me now wouldn't he there ain't no question about it in my mind well then what kind of brothers would it be that it stand in his way as such a time and what kind of uncles would it be that it rob yes rob such poor sweet lambs as these and he loves so at such a time if i know william and i think i do he well i'll just ask him he turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning and jumps for the king goo-gooing with all his might for joy and hugs him about fifteen times before before he lets up then the king says i knowed it i reckon that'll convince anybody the way he feels about it here mary jane susan joe anner take the money take it all it's a gift of him that lays yonder cold but joyful mary jane she went for him susan and the hairlip went for the duke and then such another hugging and kissing i never see it and everybody crowded up with tears in their eyes and most shook the hands off of them frauds saying all the time you dear good souls how lovely how could you well then put as soon all hands got to talking about the deceased again and how good he was and what a loss he was and all that and before long big iron jawed man worked himself in there from outside and stood listening and looking and not saying anything but nobody's saying anything to him either because the king was talking and they was all busy listening the king was saying in the middle of something he'd started in on they being particular friends that are deceased that's why they're invited here this evening but tomorrow we want all to come everybody for he respected everybody he liked everybody and so it's fitting that his funeral orgies should be public and so he went on mooning on and on liking to hear himself talk and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again till the duke he couldn't stand it no more so he writes on a little scrap of paper obsequies you old fool and folds it up and goes to goo gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him the king he reads it and puts it in his pocket and says poor william afflicted as he is his heart's all is right asked me to invite everybody to come to the funeral wants me to make them all welcome but he needed a word it was just what i was at then he weaves along again perfectly calm and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then just like he'd done before and when he'd done it the third time he says i say orgies not because it's the common term because it ain't obsequies being the common term but because orgies is the right term obsequies ain't used in england no more now it's gone out we say orgies now in england orgies is better because it means the thing you're after more exact it's a word that's made up out in the greek orgo outside open abroad and the hebrew jesem to plant cover-up hence inter so you see funeral orgies is an open ur public funeral he was the worst i ever struck well the iron jawed man he laughed right in his face everybody was shocked everybody says why doctor an abner shackle fort says why robinson hate you heard the news this is harvey wilkes the king he smiled eager and shoves out his flapper and says is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician i keep your hands off of me says the doctor you talk like an englishman don't you it's the worst imitation i ever heard you peter wilkes his brother you're a fraud that's what you are well how they took on they crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down tried to explain to him and tell him how harvey showed in 40 ways that he was harvey and know everybody by name and the names of the very dogs and begged and begged him not to hurt harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings and all that but it weren't no use he stormed right along and said any man that pretended to be an englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar the poor girls was hanging to the king and crying and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them he says i was your father's friend and i'm your friend and i warn you as a friend and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him the ignorant tramp with his idiotic greek hebrew as he calls it he is the thinnest kind of imposter has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres and you take them as proofs and are helped to fool yourself by these foolish friends here who ought to know better mary jane wilkes you know me for your friend and for your unselfish friend too now listen to me turn this pitiful rascal out i beg you to do it will you mary jane straightened herself up and my but she was handsome she says here is my answer she hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands and says take this six thousand dollars and invests for me and my sisters any way you want to and don't give us no receipt for it then she put her arm around the king on one side and susan and the hairlip done the same on the other everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud the doctor says all right i wash my hands of the matter but i warn you all that at times are coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day and the way he went all right doctor says the king kinder mocking him we'll try and get him to send for you which made them all laugh and they said it was a prime good hit end of chapter 25 chapter 26 of the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 26 a pious king the king's clergy she asked his pardon hiding in the room huck takes the money well when they was all gone the king he asks mary jane how they was off for spare rooms and she said she had one spare room which would do for uncle william and she'd give her own room to uncle harvey which was a little bigger and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot and up a garret was a little cubby with a palate in it the king said the cubby would do for his valid meaning me so mary jane took us up and she showed them their rooms which was plain but nice she said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in uncle harvey's way but he said they weren't the frocks was hung along the wall and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor there was an old hair trunk in one corner and a guitar box in another and all sorts of little knickknacks and gym cracks around like girls brisking up a room with king said it was all the more holy and more pleasanter for these fixings and so don't disturb them the duke's room was pretty small but plenty good enough and so was my cubby that night they had a big supper and all them men and women was there and i stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them and the niggers waited on the rest mary jane she sat at the head of the table with susan alongside of her and said how bad the biscuits was and how mean the preserves was and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was and all that kind of rot the way women always do for the force out compliments and the people all know everything was tip top and said so said how do you get biscuits to brown so nice and where for the land sake did you get these amazing pickles and all that kind of humbug talky talk just the way people always does it a supper you know and when it was all done me and the hair lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavens whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things the halib she got to pump in me about england and blessed if i didn't think the eyes was getting my defense sometimes she says did you ever see the king who william fourth well i bet i have he goes to our church i know he was dead years ago but i never let on so when i says he goes to our church she says what regular yes regular this pews right over opposite arin on to the side of the pulpit i thought he lived in london well he does where would he live but i thought you lived in sheffield i see i was up a stump i had to let on to get choked with the chicken bone so as to get time to think how to get down again then i says i mean he goes to our church regular when he's in sheffield that's only in the summertime when he comes there to take the sea baths why how you talk sheffield ain't on the sea well who said it was why you did i did another you did i didn't you did i never said nothing of the kind well what did you say then said he come to take the sea baths that's what i said well then how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea looky here i says did you ever see any congress water yes well did you have to go to congress to get it well i know well neither does william fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath how does he get it then gets it the way people down here gets congress water in barrels they're in the palace at sheffield they've got furnaces and he wants his water hot they can't buy all that amount of water away off there at the sea they haven't got no conveniences for it oh i see now you might have said that in the first place and saved time when she said that i see i was out of the woods again so i was comfortable and glad next she says do you go to church too yes regular where do you set why in our pew whose pew why aren't your uncle harvies isn't what does he want with the pew wants to sit in it what do you reckon he wanted with it why i thought he'd be in the pulpit wrought him i forgot he was a preacher i see i was up a stump again so i played another chicken bone and got another thing then i says blame it do you suppose there ain't one preacher to a church why what do they want with more what you preach before a king i never did see such a girl as you they don't have no less than 17 17 my land why i wouldn't set out such a string is that not if i never got the glory it must take him a week shocks they don't all of them preach the same day only one of them well then what does the rest of them do oh nothing much lull around past the plate and one thing or another but mainly they don't do nothing well then what are they for why they're for style don't you know nothing well i don't want to know no such foolishness as that how was serbents treated in england do they treat them better and we treat our niggers no a servant ain't nobody there they treat them worse than dogs don't they give them holidays the way we do christmas and new year's week and fourth of july oh just listen a body could tell you ain't never been to england by that why harrell why joanna they never see a holiday from years in to years in never go to the circus nor theater nor nigger shows nor no wares nor church nor church but you always went to church well i was gone up again i forgot i was the old man servant but next minute i world in on a kind of an explanation our valley was different from a common servant and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not and set with the family on account of its being the law but i didn't do it pretty good and when i got done i see she weren't satisfied she says honest engine now hey you've been telling me a lot of lies honest engine says i none of it at all none of it at all not a lie in it says i lay your hand on this book and say it i see it weren't nothing but a dictionary so i laid my hand on it and said it then she looked a little better satisfied and says well then i'll believe some of it but i hope the gracious if i believe the rest what is it you won't believe joe says mary jane stepping in with susan behind her it ain't right nor kind of you to talk so to him and him a stranger and so far from his people how would you like to be treated so that's always your way ma'am always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt i ain't done nothing to him he's told some stretchers i reckon and i said i wouldn't swallow at all and that's every bidding grain i did say i reckon he can stand a little thing like fat can't he i don't care whether it was a little or whether it was big he's here in our house and a stranger and it wasn't good of you to say it if he was in his place it would make you feel ashamed and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed why ma'am he said you don't make no difference what he said that ain't the thing the thing is for you to treat him kind and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks i says to myself this is a girl that i'm letting that old reptile rob her of her money then susan she waltzed in and if you'll believe me she did give her lip hark from the tomb society myself this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money then mary jane she took another inning and went in sweet and lovely again which was her way but when she got done there weren't hardly anything left poor hair lift so she hollered all right then says the other girls you just ask his pardon she done it too and she done it beautiful she done it so beautiful it was good to hear and i wish i could tell her a thousand lies so she could do it again i says to myself this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money and when she got through they all just laid themselves out to make me feel at home and know i was amongst friends i felt so honored and low down and mean that i says to myself my mind's made up i'll hive that money for them or bust so then i lit out for bed i said meaning some time or another when i got by myself i went to thinking the thing over i says to myself shall i go to that doctor private and blow on these frauds no hat won't do he might tell who told him then the king and duke would make it warm for me shall i go private and tell mary jane no i dassen't do it her face would give them a hint surely they've got the money and they'd slide right out and get away with it if she was to fetch in help i'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with i judge no there ain't no good way but one i got to steal that money somehow and i got to steal it some way that won't suspicion that i'd done it they've got a good thing here and they ain't going to leave till they've played this family in this town for all their worth so i'll find a chance time enough i'll steal it and hide it and buy and buy when i'm away down the river i'll write a letter and tell mary jane where it's hidden but i better hive it tonight if i can because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he left on he has he might scare them out of here yet so thanks i'll go and search them rooms upstairs the hall was dark but i found the duke's room and started to paw around it with my hands but i recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self so then i went to his room and began to paw around there but i see i couldn't do nothing without a candle and i dassen't like one of course so i judged i'd got to do the other thing lay for them and ease drop about that time i hears their footsteps coming and was going to skip under the bed i reached for it but it wasn't where i thought it would be but i touched the curtain that hid mary jane's frocks so i jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns and stood there perfectly still they come in and shut the door and the first thing to do done was to get down and look under the bed and then i was glad i hadn't found the bed when i wanted it and yet you know it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you're up to anything private they sets down then and the king says well what is it and cut it middle and short because it's better for us to be down there or whooping up the morning then to be up here giving them a chance to talk us over well this is it cap it i ain't easy i ain't comfortable the doctor lays on my mind i wanted to know your plans i've got an ocean and i think it's a sound one what is it duke that we better glide out of this before three in the morning and clip it down the river with what we've got especially seeing we got it so easy giving back to us flung out of our heads as you may say when of course we allowed to have to steal it back i'm for knocking off and lighting out that made me feel pretty bad about an hour or two ago it would have been a little different but now it made me feel bad and disappointed the king riffs out and says what and not sell out the rest of the property march off like a parcel of fools and leave eight or nine thousand dollars worth of property lying around just suffering to be scooped in and all good saleable stuff too the duke he grumbled said the bag of gold was enough and he didn't want to go no deeper didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had why are you talk says the king we shan't rob them of nothing at all but just this money the people that buys the property is the sufferers because as soon as it's found out that we don't own it which won't be long after we've slid the sale won't be valid and it'll all go back to the estate these young orphans will get their house back again and that's enough for them they're young and spry can easy earn a living they ain't gonna suffer why just think there's thousands and thousands that ain't not so well off bless you they ain't got nothing to complain of well the king he talked him blind so at last he gave in and said all right but said he believed it was blame foolishness to stay and that doctor hanging over them but the king says cost the doctor what do we care for him hey we got all the fools in town on our side ain't that a big enough majority in any town so they got ready to go downstairs again the duke says i don't think we put that money in a good place that cheered me up i'd begun to think i weren't going to get ahead of no kind to help me the king says why because marriage ain't gonna be in mourning from this out and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put them away and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it your heads level again duke says the king and he comes to fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where i was i stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still though quivery and i wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catch me and i tried to think what i'd better do if they did catch me but the king he got the bag before i could think more than about half a thought and he never suspicious i was around they took and shoved a bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather bed and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right now because the nigger only makes up the feather bed and don't turn over the straw tick only by twice a year so it warned in no danger of getting stole now but i know better i had it out of there before they was halfway down the stairs i groped along up to my cubby and hit it there till i could get a chance to do better i judged i better hide it outside of the house somewheres because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking i know that very well then i turned in with my clothes all on but i couldn't have gone to sleep if i wanted to i was in such a sweat to get through with the business by and by i hear the king and the duke come up so i rolled off my palate and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder and waited to see if anything was going to happen but nothing did so i held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun yet and then i slipped down the ladder end of chapter 26 chapter 27 of the adventures of huckleberry fen by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 27 the funeral satisfying curiosity suspicious of huck quick sales and small i crept to their doors and listened they were snoring so i tiptoed along and got downstairs all right there weren't a sound anywares i peeped through a crack of the dining room door and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs the door was open into the parlor where the corpse was laying and there was a handle in both rooms i passed along and the parlor door was open but i see there weren't nobody in there but the remainders of peter so i shoved on by but the front door was locked and the key wasn't there just then i heard somebody coming down the stairs back behind me i run into the parlor and took a swift look around and the only place i could see to hide the bag was in the coffin the lid was shoved along about a foot showing the dead man's face down in there with the wet cloth over it and his shroud on i tucked the money bag in under the lid just down beyond where his hands was crossed which made me creep they were so cold then i run back across the room and in behind the door the person coming in was mary jane she went to the coffin very soft and kneeled down and looked in then she put up her handkerchief and i see her begun to cry though i couldn't hear her and that back was to me i slid out and as i passed the dining room i thought i'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me so i looked through the crack and everything was all right they hadn't stirred i slipped up to bed feeling rather blue on account of the thing playing out that way after i had took so much trouble and run so much risk about it says i if it could stay where it is all right because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two i can write back to mary jane and she could dig him up again and get it but that ain't the thing that's going to happen the thing that's going to happen is the money will be found when they come to screw on the lid then the king will get it again and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smooch it from him of course i wanted to slide down and get it out of there but i doesn't try it every minute it was getting earlier now and pretty soon some of them watches would begin to stir and i might get catched catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of i don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that i says to myself when i got downstairs in the morning the paul was shut up and the watches was going there weren't nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe i watched their faces to see if anything had been happening but i couldn't tell towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs and then set all our chairs and rows and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the paul and the dining room was full i see the coffin lid was the way it was before but i doesn't go to look in under it with folks around then the people began to flock in and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin and for half an hour the people filed around slow in single rank and looked down at the dead man's face a minute and some dropped in a tear and it was all very still and solemn only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent and sobbing a little there weren't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at any other places except church when the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softly soothering ways putting on the last touches and getting people and things all ship shaping comfortable and making no more sound than a cat he never spoke he moved people around he squeezed in late ones he opened up passageways and done it with nods and signs with his hands then he took his place over against the wall he was the softest gladness stealthiest man i ever see and there weren't no more smile to him than there is to a ham they had borrowed a melodium a sick one and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it and it was pretty screechy and colicky and everybody joined in and sung and peter was the only one that had a good thing according to my notion then the reverent hopson opened up slow and solemn and begun to talk and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard it was only one dog but he made a most powerful racket and he kept it up right along the parson he had to stand there over the coffin and wait you couldn't hear yourself think it was right down awkward and nobody didn't seem to know what to do but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say don't you worry just depend on me then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall just his shoulders showing over the people's heads so he glided along and the pow wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time and at last when he had gone around two sides of the room he disappears down the cellar then in about two seconds we heard a whack and the dog he finished up with the most amazing howler to and then everything was dead still and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off in a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room and then he rose up and shaded his mouth with his hands and stretched his neck out toward the preacher over the people's heads and says in a kind of a coarse whisper he had a rat then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place you could see it was a great satisfaction to the people because naturally they wanted to know a little thing like that don't cost nothing and it's just the little things that make a man to be looked up to in light there weren't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was well the funeral sermon was very good but pies and long and tiresome and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbish and at last the job was through and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screwdriver I was in a sweat then and watched him pretty keen but he never meddled at all and just slid the lid along as soft as mush and screwed it down tight and fast so there I was I didn't know whether the money was in there or not so says I suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not suppose she dug him up and didn't find nothing what would she think of me blame it I says I might get hunted up and jailed I'd better lay low and keep dark and not right at all the things awful mixed up now trying to better it I've worsened it a hundred times and I wish the goodness I just let it alone deadfetch the whole business they buried him and we come back home and I went to wash and faces again I couldn't help it and I couldn't rest easy but nothing come of it the faces didn't tell me nothing the king he visited around in the evening and sweetened everybody up and made himself ever so friendly and he gave out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave home he was very sorry he was so pushed and so was everybody they wished he could stay longer but they said they could see it couldn't be done and he said of course him and William would take the girls home with him and that pleased everybody too because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations and it pleased the girls to tickle them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to they would be ready them poor things was that glad and happy had made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune well blamed if the king didn't build the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off sailed two days after the funeral but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to so the next day after the funeral along about noontime the girls joy got the first jolt a couple of nigger traders come along and the king sold them the niggers reasonable for three-day drafts as they called it and away they went the two sons up the river to Memphis and their mother down the river to Orleans I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief they cried around each other and took on so it most made me down sick to see it the girl said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town I can't ever get it out of my memory the side of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying I reckon I couldn't have stood it at all but would have had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't know the sale weren't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two the thing made a big stir in the town too and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way it injured the frauds some but the old fool he bulled right along spite of all the Duke could say or do and I tell you the Duke was powerful and easy next day was auction day about broad day in the morning the king and the Duke come up to the Garrett and woke me up and I see by that look that there was trouble the king says was you in my room right before last no your majesty which was the way I always called him with nobody but our gang weren't around was you in there yesterday or last night no your majesty honor right now no lies honor bright your majesty I'm telling you the truth I ain't been in near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the Duke and showed it to you the Duke says have you seen anybody else go in there no your grace not as I remember I believe stop and think I studied a while and see my chance then I says well I see the niggers go in there several times both of them gave a little jump and looked like they hadn't ever expected it and then like they had then the Duke says what all of them no least wise not all at once that is I don't think I ever see them all come out at once but just one time hello when was that it was the day we had the funeral in the morning it weren't early because I overslept I was just starting down the ladder and I see them well go on go on what did they do how they act they didn't do nothing and they didn't act anyway much as far as I could see they tiptoed away so I seen easy enough that they showed in there to do up your majesty's room or something supposing you was up and found you weren't up and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up if they hadn't already waked you up great guns this is a goat says the king and both of them look pretty sick and tolerably silly they stood there thinking and scratching their heads a minute and the Duke he bust into a kind of little raspy chuckle and says it does beat all how neat the niggas played their hand they let on to be sorry they was going out of this region and I believe they was sorry and so did you and so did everybody don't ever tell me anymore that a nigga ain't got any histrionic talent why the way they played that thing it would fool anybody in my opinion there's a fortune in them if I had capital at a theater I wouldn't want a better layout than that and here we've gone and sold them for a song yes and ain't privileged to sing the song yet say what is that song that draft in the bank for to be collected where would it be well that's all right then thank goodness says I kind of timid like is something going wrong the king worlds on me and rips out none are your business you keep your head shut and mind your own affairs if you got any long as you're in this town don't you forget that you hear then he says to the Duke we got to just swallow it and say nothing mom's the word for us as they started down the ladder the Duke he chuckles again it says quick sales and small profits it's a good business yes the king snarls around on him and says I was trying to do the best and sell them out quick if the profits has turned out to be none lacking considerable and none to carry is it my fault any more than it's urine well they'd be in this house yet and we wouldn't if I could have gotten my advice to listen to the king sassed back as much as was safe for him and then swapped around and lit into me again he'd give me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the niggas come out of his room acting that way and said any fool would have known something was up and then waltzed in and cussed himself a while and said it all coming him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again so they went off a join and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it all off onto the niggas and yet hadn't done the niggas no harm by it end of chapter 27 chapter 28 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 28 the trip to england the brute mary jane decides to leave huck parting with mary jane mumps the opposition line by and by it was getting uptime so I come down the ladder and started for downstairs but as I come to the girl's room the door was open and I see mary jane sitting by her old hair trunk which was open and she'd been packing things in it getting ready to go to england but she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap and had her face in her hands crying I felt awful bad to see it of course anybody would I went in there and says miss mary jane you can't bear to see people in trouble and I can't most always tell me about it so she'd done it and it was the niggas I just expected it she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her she didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there knowing the mother and the child weren't ever going to see each other no more and then busted out bitterer than ever and flung her hands up and says oh dear dear to think they ain't ever going to see each other anymore but they will and inside of two weeks and I know it says I laws it was out before I could think and before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again say it again say it again I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much and was in a close place I asked her to let me think a minute and she sat there very impatient and excited and handsome but looking kind of happy and eased up like a person that's had a tooth pulled out so I went to study in it out I says to myself I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many risks though I ain't had no experience and can't say for certain but it looks so to me anyway and yet there's a case where I'm blessed if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie I must lay it by in my mind and think it over some time or other it's so kind of strange and unregular I never see nothing like it well I says to myself at last I'm going to chance it I'll up and tell the truth this time though it does seem most like setting down on a keg of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to and I says Miss Merrick Jane is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days yes mr. Lothrops why never mind why yet if I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks here in this house and prove how I know it will you go to mr. Lothrops and stay four days four days she says I'll stay a year all right I says I don't want nothing more out of you than just your word I'd rather have it than another man's kiss the bible she smiled and reddened up very sweet and I says if you don't mind it I'll shut the door and bolt it then I'll come back and set down again and says don't you holler just set still and take it like a man I got to tell the truth and you want to brace up miss Mary because it's a bad kind and going to be hard to take but there ain't no help for it these uncles a year and ain't no uncles at all there are a couple of frauds regular dead beats there now we're over the worst of it you can stand the rest middle and easy it jolted her up like everything of course but I was over the show water now so I went right along her eyes ablaze and higher and higher all the time and told her every blame thing from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat clear through to where she flung herself all the kings breasts at the front door and he kissed her 16 or 17 times and then up she jumps with her face of fire like sunset and says the brute come don't waste a minute not a second we'll have them tarred and feathered and flung in the river says I certainly but do you mean before you go to mr. Lothrop's or oh she says what am I thinking about she says and set right down again don't mind what I said please don't you won't now will you laying a silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first I never thought I was so stirred up she says now go on and I won't do so anymore you tell me what to do and whatever you say I'll do it well I says it's a rough gang them two frauds and I'm fix so I got to travel with them a while longer whether I want to or not I'd rather not tell you why and if you want to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws and I'd be all right but that'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble well we got to save him ain't we of course well then we won't blow on them saying them words put a good idea in my head I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds get them jailed here and then leave but I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me so I didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late tonight I says Miss Mary Jane I'll tell you what we'll do and you won't have to stay at Mr. Lothrop so long another how far is it a little short of four miles right out in the country back here well that'll answer now you go along out there and lay low till nine or half past tonight and then get them to fetch you home again tell them you've thought of something if you get here before 11 put a candle in this window and if I don't turn up wait till 11 and then if I don't turn up it means I'm gone and out of the way and safe then you come out and spread the news around and get these beats jailed good she says I'll do it and if it happens so that I don't get away but get took up along with them you must say I told you the whole thing beforehand and you must stand by me all you can stand by you indeed I will they shan't touch a hair of your head she says and I see her nostril spreading her eyes snap when she said it too if I get away I shan't be here I says to prove these rap scallions ain't your uncles and I couldn't do it if I was here I could swear there was beats and bummers that's all though that's worth something well there's others can do that better than I can and there are people that ain't gonna be doubted as quick as I'd be I'll tell you how to find them give me a pencil and a piece of paper there royal none such bricks fill put it away and don't lose it when the court wants to find out something about these two let them send up to bricksville and say they've got them in that played the royal none such and ask for some witnesses and why you have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink miss mary and they'll come a violin too I judged we had got everything fixed about right now so I says just let the auction go right along and don't worry nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on account of the short notice and they ain't going out of this till they get that money and the way we fixed it the sale ain't going to count and they ain't going to get no money it's just like the way it was with the niggers it warrant no sale and the niggers will be back before long why they can't collect the money for the niggers yet they're in the worst kind of fix miss mary well she says I'll run down to breakfast now and then I'll start straight from Mr. Lothrop's dude that ain't the ticket miss mary jane I says by no matter of means go before breakfast why what did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for miss mary well I never thought and come to think I don't know what was it why it's because you ain't one of these leather faced people I don't want no better book than what your face is a body can sit down and read it off like course print do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning and never there there don't yes I'll go before breakfast I'll be glad to and leave my sisters with them yes never mind about them they've got to stand in a while yet they might suspicion something if all of you was to go I don't want you to see them nor your sisters nor nobody in this town if a neighbor was to ask you how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something no you go right along miss mary jane and I'll fix it with all of them I'll tell miss susan to give you a love to your uncles and say you went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change or to see a friend and you'll be back tonight or early in the morning going to see a friend is all right but I won't have my love given to them well then it shan't be it was well enough to tell her so no harm in it it was only a little thing to do and no trouble and it's the little things that smooth people's roads the most down here below it would make mary jane comfortable and it wouldn't cost nothing then I says there's one more thing that bag of money well they've got that and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it no you're out there they ain't got it why who's got it I wish I knowed but I don't I had it because I stole it from them and I stole it to give it to you and I know where I hid it but I'm afraid it ain't there no more I'm awful sorry miss mary jane I'm just as sorry as I can be but I've done the best I could I did honest I come now I'm getting caught and I had to shove it into the first place I come to and run and it weren't a good place oh stop blaming yourself it's too bad to do it and I won't allow it you couldn't help it it wasn't your fault where did you hide it I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again and I couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make us see that corpse lying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach so for a minute I didn't say nothing then I says I'd rather not tell you where I put it miss jane if you don't mind letting me off but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper and you can read it along the road to mr. Lothrop's if you want to do you reckon that'll do oh yes so I wrote I put it in the coffin it was there when you was crying there away in the night I was behind the door and I was might have sorry for you miss mary jane it made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night and them devils laying there right under her own roof shaming her and robbing her and when I folded it up and give it to her I see the water come into her eyes too and she shook me by the hand hard and says goodbye I'm going to do everything just as you told me and if I don't ever see you again I shan't ever forget you and I'll think of you many and many a time and I'll pray for you too and she was gone pray for me I reckoned if she knowed me she take a job that was more nearer her size but I bet she done it just the same she was just that kind she had to grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion there weren't no back down to her I judge you may say what you want to but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see in my opinion she was just full of sand it sounds like flattery but it ain't no flattery and when it comes to beauty and goodness too she lays over them all I ain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door no I ain't ever seen her since but I reckon I thought of her a many and a many a million times and her saying she would pray for me and if ever I thought it would do any good for me to pray for her blamed if I wouldn't have done it or bust well Mary Jane she lit out the back way I reckon because nobody see her go when I struck Susan and the hair lip I says what's the name of them people over on the other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes they says there's several but it's the proctors mainly that's the name I says I most forgot it well Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry one of them sick which one I don't know at least ways I kind of forget but I think it's sakes alive I hope it ain't Hannah I'm sorry to say I says but Hannah's the very one my goodness and she's so well only last week is she took bad it ain't no name for it they set up with her all night Miss Mary Jane said and they don't think she'll last many hours only think of that now what's the matter with her I couldn't think of anything reasonable right off that way so I says mumps mumps your granny they don't set up with people that's got the mumps they don't don't they you better bet they do with these mumps these mumps is different it's a new kind Miss Mary Jane said how's it a new kind because it's mixed up with other things what other things well measles and hooping cough and ursiplas and consumption and yaller agendas and brain fever and I don't know what all my land and they call it the mumps that's what Miss Mary Jane said well what in the notion do they call it the mumps for why because it is the mumps that's what it starts with well there ain't no sense in it a body might stump his toe and take poison and fall down the well and break his neck and bust his brains out and somebody come along and ask what killed him in some dumb skull up and say why he stumped his toe would there be any sense in that no and there ain't no sense in this another is it catching is it catching why how you talk is a harrow catching in the dark if you don't hitch on one tooth you're bound to on another ain't you and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along can you well these kind of mumps is a kind of harrow as you may say and it ain't no slouch of harrow another you come to get it hitched on good well it's awful i think says the hairlip i'll go to uncle harvey and oh yes i says i would of course i would i wouldn't lose no time well why wouldn't you just look at it a minute maybe you can see hate your uncle's oblige to get along home to england as fast as they can and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves you know they'll wait for you so far so good your uncle harvey's a preacher ain't he very well then is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk is he going to deceive a ship clerk so as to get them to let miss berry jingo aboard now you know he ain't what will he do then why he'll say it's a great pity but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can from my niece has been exposed to the dreadful chloribus and so it's my bound in duty to sit down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it but never mind if you think it's best to tell you uncle harvey shucks and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in england whilst we was waiting to find out whether mary jane's got it or not why you talk like a muggins well anyway you'd better tell some of the neighbors listen at that now you do beat all for natural stupidness can't you see that they go and tell they know way but just to not tell anybody at all well maybe you're right yes i judge you are right but i reckon we ought to tell uncle harvey she's gone out a while anyway so he won't be uneasy about her yes miss mary jane she wanted you to do that she says tell them to give uncle harvey and will you my love and a kiss and say i've run over the river to see mr mr what is the name of that rich family uncle peter used to think so much of i mean the one that why you must mean the apthorps ain't it of course bother them kind of names body can't never seem to remember them half the time somehow yes she said she had to run over for to ask the apthrops to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house because she allowed her uncle peter would rather they had it than anybody else and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come and then if she ain't too tired she's coming home and if she is she'll be home in the morning anyway she says don't say nothing about the proctors but only about the apthorps which will be perfectly true because she is going there to speak about their buying the house i know it because she told me so herself all right they said and cleared out to lay for their uncles and give them the love and kisses and tell them the message everything was all right now the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to england and the king of the duke would rather mary jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of dr robinson i felt pretty good i judged i had done it pretty neat i reckon tom sire could have done it no need of himself of course he would have thrown more style into it but i can't do that very handy not being brought up to it well they held the auction in the public square along towards the end of the afternoon and it's strong along and strong along and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonist up there alongside of the auctioneer and chipping in a little scripture now and then or little goody goody saying of some kind and the duke he was around googling for sympathy all he knowed how and just spreading himself generally but by and by the thing dragged through and everything was sold everything but a little old trifle and lot in the graveyard so they got to work that off i never see such a giraffe as the king for wanting to swallow everything well whilst they was at it a steamboat landed and in about two minutes up comes a crowd of hoping and yelling and laughing and carrying on and singing out here's your opposition line here's your two sets of heirs to old peter wilkes and you pays your money and you takes your choice end of chapter 28 chapter 29 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 29 contested relationship the king explains the loss a question of handwriting digging up the corpse huck escapes they was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along and a nice looking younger one with his right arm in a sling and my souls how the people yelled and laughed and kept it up but i didn't see no joke about it and i judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any i reckon they turned pale but no nary a pale did they turn the duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up but just went on a goo gooing around happy and satisfied like a jug that's googling out buttermilk and as far as the king he gazed and gazed down sorrowfully on them newcomers like to give him the stomach ache in his very heart to think that there could be such frauds and rascals in the world oh he'd done it admirable lots of the principal people gathered around the king to let him see they was on his side that old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death pretty soon he began to speak and i see straight off he pronounced like an englishman not the king's way though the king's was pretty good for an imitation i can't give the old gents words nor i can't imitate him but he turned around to the crowd and says about like this this is a surprise to me which i wasn't looking for and i'll acknowledge candid and frank i ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it for my brother and me has had misfortunes he's broke his arm and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake i am peter wilks his brother harvey and this is his brother william which can't hear nor speak and can't even make signs to him out too much now he's only got one hand to work with we are who we say we are and in a day or two when i get my baggage i can prove it but up till then i won't say nothing more but go to the hotel and wait so him and the new dummy started off and the king he laughs and breathes out broke his arm very likely ain't it and very convenient too for a fraud that's got to make signs and ain't learned how lost that baggage that's mighty good and mighty ingenious under the circumstances so he laughed again and so did everybody else except three or four or maybe half a dozen one of these was that doctor another one was a sharp-looking gentleman with a carpet bag of the old fashioned kind made out of carpet stuff that had just come off the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice and glanced into all the king now and then and not in their heads it was Levi bell the lawyer that was going up to lewisville and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listen to all the old gentleman said and was listening to the king now and when the king was gone this husky up and says say looky here if you are Harvey Wilkes when did you come to this town today before the funeral friend says the king but what time of day in the evening bought an hour or two before sundown how'd you come now come down on the susan powell from Cincinnati well then how'd you come to be up at the pint in the morning in a canoe i wasn't up at the pint in the morning it's a lie several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher preacher be hanged he's a fraud and a liar he was up at the pint that morning i live up there don't i well i was up there and he was up there i see him there he come in a canoe along with tim collins and a boy the doctor he up and says would you know the boy again if you was to see him hines i reckon i would but i don't know why you under he is now i know him perfectly easy it was me he pointed at the doctor says neighbors i don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not but if these two ain't frauds i am an idiot that's all i think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing come along hines come along the rest of you we'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with another couple and i reckon we'll find out something before we get through it was nuts for the crowd though maybe not for the king's friends so we all started it was about sundown the doctor he led me along by the hand and was plenty kind enough but he never let go my hand we all got in a big room in the hotel and lit up some candles and fetched in the new couple first the doctor says i don't wish to be too hard on these two men but i think they're frauds and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about if they have won't the complices get away with that bag of gold peter wilkes left it ain't unlikely if these men ain't frauds they won't object to send in for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right ain't that so everybody agreed to that so i judged they had our gang at a pretty tight place right at the out start but the king he only looks sorrowful and says gentlemen i wish the money was there for i ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair open out and out investigation of this miserable business but alas the money ain't there you can send and see if you want to where is it then well oh when my niece give it to me to keep for her i took and hid it inside of the straw tick of my bed not wishing to bank it for the few days we'd be here and considering the bed a safe place we not being used to niggers and supposing them honest like servants in england the niggers stole it the very next morning after i had went downstairs and when i sold them i hadn't missed the money yet so they got clean away my servant here can tell you about it gentlemen the doctor and several said shucks and i see nobody didn't altogether believe him one man asked me if i see the nigger steal it i said no but i see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away and i never thought nothing only i reckon they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them that was all they asked me then the doctor whirls on me and says are you english too i says yes and him and some others laughed and said this stuff well then they sailed in on the general investigation and there we had it up and down our in our out and nobody never said a word about supper nor even seemed to think about it so they kept it up and kept it up and it was the worst mixed up thing you ever see they made the king tell his yarn then they made the old gentleman tell his and anybody but a lot of prejudice chuckleheads would have seen that the old gentleman was spinning the truth and to other one lies and by and by they had me up to tell what i knowed the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye and i knowed enough to talk on the right side i began to tell about chef field and how we live there and all about the english wilks's and so on and i didn't get pretty fur till the doctor began to laugh and leave by bell the lawyer says sit down my boy i wouldn't strain myself if i was you i reckon you ain't used to lying it don't seem to come handy what you want is practice you do it pretty awkward i didn't get nothing for the compliment but i was glad to be let off anyway the doctor he starts to say something in turns and says if you'd been in town at first leave i bell the king broke in and reached out his hand and says why is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about the lawyer and him shook hands and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased and they talked right along a while and then got to one side and talk low and at last the lawyer speaks up and says that'll fix it i'll take the order and send it along with your brothers and then they'll know it's all right so they got some paper and a pen and the king he sat down and twisted his head to one side and charred his tongue and scrawled off something and then they gave the pen to the duke and then for the first time the duke looked sick but he took the pen and wrote so then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says you and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names the old gentleman wrote but nobody couldn't read it the lawyer looked powerful astonished and says well it beats me and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket and examined them and then examined the old man's writing and then them again and then says these old letters is from Harvey Wilkes and his these two handwriting and anybody could see they didn't write them the king and the duke looked sold and foolish i tell you to see how the lawyer had took them in and his this old gentleman's handwriting and anybody can tell easy enough he didn't write them fact is the scratches he makes ain't properly writing at all now here's some letters from the new old gentleman says if you please let me explain nobody can read my hand but my brother here so he copies for me it's his hand you've got there not mine well says the lawyer this is a state of things i've got some of william's letters too so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can he can't write with his left hand says the old gentleman if he could use his right hand you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too look at both please they're by the same hand the lawyer done it and says i believe it's so and if it ain't so there's a heap stronger resemblance that i'd noticed before anyway well well well i thought we was right on the track of a solution but it's gone to grass partly but anyway one thing is proved these two ain't either of them wilses and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke well what do you think that mule headed old fool wouldn't give in then indeed he wouldn't said it warrant no fair test said his brother william was the cusset as the joker in the world and hadn't tried to write he see william was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper and so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along till he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in and says i've thought of something is there anybody here that helped to lay out my bro helped to lay out the late peter wilkes for burying yes said somebody me and abt turner done it we're both here then the old gentleman turns towards the king and says perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick or he'd squished down like a bluff blank that the river has cut under it took him so sudden and mind you it was the thing that was calculated to make most anybody squashed to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man he whitened a little he couldn't help it and it was mighty still in there and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him says i to myself now he'll throw up the sponge there ain't no more use well did he a body can't hardly believe it but he didn't i reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out so they thin out and him and the dude could break loose and get away anyway he sat there and pretty soon he become to smile and says hmm it's a very tough question ain't it yes sir i can tell you what's tattooed on his breast it's just a small thin blue arrow that's what it is and if you don't look close you can't see it now what do you say hey well i never see anything like that old blister for clean out and out cheek the new old gentleman turns brisk towards abturner and his part and his eye lights up like he judged he got the king this time and says there you heard what he said was there any such mark on peter wilkes's breast both of them spoke up and says we didn't see no such mark good says the old gentleman now what you did see on his breast was a small dem p and a b which is an initial he dropped when he was young and a w with dashes between them so p dash b dash w and he marked them that way on a piece of paper come make that what you saw both of them spoke up again and says no we didn't we never seen any marks at all well everybody was in a state of mind now and they sing out the whole balance of them's frauds let's duck them let's drown them let's ride them on a rail and everybody was whooping at once and that was a rattling pow wow but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells and says gentlemen gentlemen hear me just a word just a single word if you please there's one way yet let's go and dig up the corpse and look that took them hooray they all shouted and was starting right off but the lawyer and the doctor sung out hold on hold on collar all these four men and the boy fetch them along too we'll do it they all shouted and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang i was scared now i'll tell you but there weren't no getting away you know they gripped us all and marched us right along straight for the graveyard which was a mile and a half down the river and the whole town at our heels for we made noise enough and it was only nine in the evening as we went by our house i wished i hadn't sent mirageen out of town because now if i could tip of the wink she lied out and saved me and blow on our deadbeats well we swarmed along down the river road just carrying on like wildcats and to make it more scary the sky was darking up and the lightning begun to wink and flitter and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves this was the most awful trouble and most dangerous some i ever was in and i was kind of stunned everything was going so different from what i had allowed for instead of being fixed so i could take my own time if i wanted to and see all the fun and have mirageen at my back to save me and set me free when the close fit come here was nothing in the world between me and sudden death but just them tattoo marks if they didn't find them i couldn't bear to think about it and yet somehow i couldn't think about nothing else it got darker and darker and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd to slip but that big husky had me by the wrist hinds and a body might as well try to give galire the slip he dragged me right along he was so excited and i had to run to keep up when they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow and when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern but they sailed in to dig in anyway by the flicker of the lightning and sent a man to the nearest house a half mile off to borrow one so they dug and dug like everything and he got awful dark and the rain started and the wind swished and swushed along and the lightning came brisker and brisker and the thunder boomed but then people took no notice of it they were so full of this business and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave and the next second the dark wiped it all out and you couldn't see nothing at all and last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid and then such another crowding and shoulder and and shoving as there was to scrounge in and get a sight you never see and in the dark that way it was awful hinds he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so and i reckon he cleaned for god i was in the world he was so excited and panting all of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare and somebody sings out by the living jingo here's the bag of gold on his breast hinds let out a whoop like everybody else and dropped my wrist and gave a big surge to bust his way in and get a look and the way i let out and shinned for the road in the dark they nobody can tell i had the road all to myself and i fairly flew least ways i had it all to myself except the solid dark and the now and then glares and the buzzing of the rain and the thrashing of the wind and the splitting of the thunder and sure as you were born i did clip it along when i struck the town i see there weren't nobody out in the storm so i never hunted for no back streets but humped it straight through the main one and when i began to get towards our house i aim my eye and set it no light there the house was dark which made me feel sorry and disappointed i didn't know why but at last just as i was sailing by flash comes the lighted mary jane's window and my heart swelled up sudden like the bust and the same second the house was all but behind me in the dark and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world she was the best girl i ever see and had the most sand the minute i was far enough above the town to see i could make the towhead i began to look sharp for a boat to borrow and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained i snatched it and shrugged it was a canoe and warrant fastened with nothing but a rope the towhead was a rattling big distance off away out there in the middle of the river but i didn't lose no time and when i struck the raft that last i was so fagged i would have just laid down to blow and gasp if i could afforded it but i didn't as i sprung aboard i sung out out with you jim and said a loose glory be to goodness we're shuttered him jim lit out and was a common for me with both arms spread he was so full of joy but when i glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and i went overboard backwards for i forgot he was old king lear and the drowned a-rab all in one and it most scared the livers and lights out of me but jim fished me out and was going to hug me and bless me and so on he was so glad i was back and we were shut up the king and the duke but i says not now have it for breakfast have it for breakfast cut loose and let her slide so in two seconds away we went a sliding down the river and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us i had to skip around a bit and jump up and crack my heels a few times i couldn't help it but about the third crack i noticed a sound that i know to mighty well and held my breath and listened and waited and sure enough when the next flash busted out over the river here they come just laying to their oars and making their skiv hum it was the king and the duke so i wilted right down on the planks then and give up and it was all i could do to keep from crying end of chapter 29 chapter 30 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this sleepry fox recording is in the public domain chapter 30 the king went for him a royal row powerful mellow when they got aboard the king went for me and shook me by the color and says trying to give us to slip was you you pup tired of our company a i says no your majesty we weren't uh please don't your majesty quick then tell us what was your idea or i'll shake the insides out of you honest i'll tell you everything just as it happened your majesty the man that had a hold to me was very good to me and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix and when they all took by surprise by finding the gold i made a rush for the coffin he lets go of me and whispers heal it now i'll hang it for sure and i let out it didn't seem no good for me to stay i couldn't do nothing and i didn't want to be hung if i could get away so i never stopped running till i found a canoe and when i got here i told jim to hurry are they catch me and hang me yet i said i wasn't fear you and the duke wasn't alive now and i was awful sorry and so was jim it was awful glad when we see you come and you may ask jim if i didn't jim said it was so and the king told him to shut up and said oh yes it's my the likely and shook me up again and said he reckoned he drowned me but the duke says let go the boy you old idiot would you have done any different did you inquire around for him when you got loose i don't remember it so the king let go of me and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it but the duke says you better blame side give yourself a good cussing for you're the one that's entitled to it most you ain't got a thing from the store that had any sense in it except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue outer mark that was bright it was right down bully and it was the thing that saved us for if it hadn't been for that they'd jailed us till englishman's baggage coming then the penitentiary you bet but that trick took him to the graveyard and the gold done us a still bigger kindness for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holds and made that rush to get a look we just slept in our cravats tonight cravats warranted to wear too longer than we need them they were still a minute thinking then the king says kind of absentminded like huh and we reckoned the niggas stole it that made me squirm yes says the duke kind of slow and deliberate and sarcastic we did after about half a minute the king draws out least ways i did the duke says the same way on the contrary i did the king kind of ruffles up and says looky here bilge water what are you referring to the duke says pretty brisk when it comes to that maybe you'll let me ask what was you referring to shucks says the king very sarcastic but i don't know maybe he was asleep and didn't know what you was about the duke bristles up now and says oh let up on this cussing nonsense do you take me for a blame fool don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin yes sir i know you do know because you done it yourself it's a lie and the duke went for him the king sings out take your hands off lick on my throat i take it all back the duke says well you just own up first that you did hide that money there intended to give me the slip one of these days and come back and dig it up and have it all to yourself wait just a minute duke answer me this one question honest and fair if you didn't put the money there i say it and i'll believe you and take back everything i said you oh scoundrel i didn't you know i didn't there now well then i'll believe you but answer me just this one more now don't get mad didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it duke never said nothing for a little bit then he says well i don't care if i did i didn't do it anyway but you not only had it in your mind to do it but you done it i wished i never die if i'd done it duke and that's honest i won't say i weren't going to because i was but you i mean somebody got in ahead of me it's a lie you done it and you got to say you done it or the king began to gurgle and then he gasps out enough i won't up i was very glad to hear him say that it made me feel much easier than what i was feeling before so the duke took his hands off and says if you ever deny it again i'll drown you it's well for you to sit here and blubber like a baby it's fitting for you after the way you've acted i never seen such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything and i trust in you all the time like you was my own father you ought to be ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddle on to a lot of poor niggers and you never said a word for him it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to believe that rubbish cuss you i can see now why you were so anxious to make up the deficit you wanted to get what money i'd got out of the nonsuch and one thing or another and scoop it all the king says timid and still a snuffling well duke it was you that said to make up the deficit it warned me dry up i don't want to hear no more out of you says the duke and now you see what you got by it they've got all that old money back and all of iron but a sheikler too besides going to bed and don't you deficit me no more deficit as long as you live so the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort and before long the duke tackled his bottle and so in about half an hour they was as thick as thieves again and the tighter they got the lovelier they got and went off a snoring in each other's arms they both got powerful mellow but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny but hide the money bag again that made me feel easy and satisfied of course when they got to snoring we had a long gavel and i told jim everything ender chapter 30 chapter 31 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 31 ominous plans news from jim old recollections a sheep story valuable information we'd ask and stop again at any town for days and days kept right along down the river we was down south in the warm weather now and a mud along ways from home we began to come to trees with spanish moss on them hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards it was the first i ever see it growing and it made the woods look solemn and dismal so now the frauds reckon they was out of danger and they began to work the villages again first they'd done a lecture on temperance but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on then in another village they started a dance in school but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does so the first prince they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town another time they tried to go at yellow cushion but they didn't yellow cute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out they tackled missionary and and mesmerizing and doctrine and telling fortunes and a little of everything but they couldn't seem to have no luck so at last they got just about dead broke and laid around the raft as she floated along thinking and thinking and never saying nothing by the half a day at a time and dreadful blue and desperate and at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time jim and me got on easy we didn't like the look of it we judged they was studying up some kind of worse devil tree than ever we turned it over and over and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store i was going into the counterfeit and money business or something so then we was pretty scared and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind well early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two miles below a little bit of a shabby village named pikesville and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid while he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind at the royal none such there yet house to rob you mean says i to myself and when you get through robin it you'll come back he and wonder what has become of me and jim in the raft and you have to take it out and wondering and he said if he weren't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right and we was to come along so we stayed where we was the duke he fretted and sweated around and was in a modest hour away he scolded us for everything and we couldn't seem to do nothing right he found fault with every little thing something was a brewing sure i was good and glad when midday come and no king we could have a change anyway and maybe a chance for the change on top of it so me and the duke went up to the village and hunted around there for the king and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery very tight and a lot of loafers bully ragging him for sport and he a cussing and a threatening with all his might and so tight he couldn't walk and he couldn't do nothing to them the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool and the king began to sass back and the minute they was fairly at it i lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs and spun down the river road like a deer for i see our chance and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again i got down there all out of breath but loaded with joy and sung out center loose jim we're all right now but there weren't no answer and nobody come out of the wigwam jim was gone i set up a shout and then another and then another one and run this way and that in the woods whooping and screeching but it weren't no use so jim was gone then i sat down and cried i couldn't help it but i couldn't sit still long pretty soon i went out on the road trying to think what i better do and i run across the boy walking and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so and he says yes whereabouts says i'm down to silas felps this place two miles below here he's a runaway nigger and they've got him was you looking for him you bet i ain't i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago and he said if i hollered he cut my livers out and told me to lay down and stay where i was and i've done it but been there ever since i feared to come out well he says you needn't be feared no more because they've got him he went off and down south summers it's a good job they got him well i reckon there's 200 dollars reward on him it's like picking money up out in the road it's like picking up money out in the road yes it is and i would have had it if i'd have been big enough i see him first who nailed him it was an old fella a stranger and he sold out his chance in him for 40 dollars because he's got to go up the river and can't wait think of that now you bet i'd wait if it was seven year that's me every time says i but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that if you'll sell it so cheap maybe there's something ain't straight about it but it is though straight as a string i see the handbill myself it tells all about him to a dot paints him like a picture and tells the plantation he's from below nerleens no so rebob ain't no trouble about that speculation you bet you say give me a char tobacco won't you i didn't have none so he left i went to the raft and sat down in the wig warm to think but i couldn't come to nothing i thought till i wore my head sore but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble after all this long journey and after all we'd done for them scoundrels here it was all come to nothing and everything all busted up and ruined because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick as that and make him a slave again all his life and among strangers too for forty dirty dollars once i said to myself it would be a thousand times better for jim to be a slave at home where his family was as long as he got to be a slave and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss wassen where he was but i soon give up that notion for two things she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her and so she'd sell him straight down the river again and if she didn't everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger and they'd make jim feel it all the time and so he'd feel honorary and disgraced and then think of me it would get all around that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom huh and if i was ever to see anybody from that town again i'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame that's just the way a person does a low down thing and then he don't want to take no consequences of it thinks as long as he can hide it it ain't no disgrace that was my fix exactly the more i studied about this the more my conscious went to grind in me and the more wicked and low down in ordinary i got the feeling and at last when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm and now is showing me there's one that's always on the lookout and ain't going to allow no such miserable things to go only just so far and no further i almost dropped in my tracks i was so scared well i tried the best i could to kind of soften it up somehow for myself by saying i was brung up wicked and so i weren't so much to blame but something inside me kept saying there was the sunday school and you could have gone to it and if you'd have done it they'd have learnt you there that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire it made me shiver and i about made up my mind to pray and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of boy i was and be better so i kneeled but the words wouldn't come why wouldn't they it weren't no use to try and hide it from him nor for me neither i knowed very well why they wouldn't come it was because my heart weren't right it was because i weren't square it was because i was playing double i was letting on to give up sin but away inside of me i was holding on to the biggest one of all i was trying to make my mouth say i would do the right thing and the clean thing and going right to that nigger's owner and tell where he was but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie and he noted you can't pray a lie i found that out so i was full of trouble full as i could be and didn't know what to do at last i had an idea and i says i'll go and write the letter and then see if i can pray why it was astonishing the way i felt there's a light as a feather right straight off and my trouble's gone so i got a piece of paper and a pencil all glad and excited and sat down and wrote miss watson your runaway nigger jim is down here two miles below pikesville and mr felps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send hook fin i felt good and all washed clean to sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life and i knowed i could pray now but i didn't do it straight off but laid the paper down and set their thinking thinking how good it was all this happened so and how near i come to being lost and going to hell and went on thinking and got the thinking over i tripped down the river and i see jim before me all the time in the day and in the night time sometimes moonlight sometimes storms and we are floating along talking and singing and laughing but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him but only the other kind i'd see him standing my watch on top of his and instead of calling me so i could go on sleeping and see how glad he was when i come back out of the fog and when i come to him again in the swamp up there where the feud was and such like times and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me and how good he always was and at last i struck the time i saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard and he was so grateful and said i was the best friend old jim ever had in the world and the only one he's got now and then i happened to look around and see that paper it was a close place i took it up and held it in my hand i was a trembling because i'd got to decide forever twix two things and i knowed it i studied a minute sort of holding my breath then says to myself all right then i'll go to hell and tore it up it was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said and i let them stay said and never thought no more about reforming i shoved the whole thing out of my head and said i would take up wickedness again which was in my line being brung up to it and the other warrant and for a starter i would go to work and steal jim out of slavery again and if i could think up anything worse i'd do that too because as long as i was in and in for good i might as well go to whole hog then i set the thinking over how to get at it and turned over some considerable many ways in my mind and at last fixed up a plan that suited me so then i took the barons of a woody island that was down the river apiece and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it and hit it there and then turned in i slept the night through and got up before it was light and had my breakfast and put on my store clothes and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle and took the canoe and clear for sure i landed below where i judged was felps's place and hid my bundle in the woods and then filled up the canoe with water and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her about a quarter of a mile below a little stream sawmill that was on the bank then i struck up the road and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it felps's sawmill and when i come to the farmhouses two or three hundred yards further along i keep my eyes peeled and didn't see nobody around though it was good daylight now but i didn't mind because i didn't want to see nobody just yet i only wanted to get the lay of the land according to my plan i was going to turn up there from the village not from below so i just took a look and shoved along straight for town well the very first man i see when i got there was the duke he was sticking up a bill for the royal none such three night performance like that of the time they had the cheek them frauds i was right on him before i could shirk he looked astonished and says hello where you come from then he says kind of glad and eager where's the raft got her in a good place i says why that's just what i was going to ask your grace then he didn't look so joyful and says what was your idea for asking me he says well i says when i see the king in that doggery yesterday i says to myself we can't get him home for hours till he's soberer so i went a loafing around town to put in the time and wait a man up and off and meet ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep and so i went along and when we was dragging him to the boat and the man left me a hold to the rope and went behind him to show him along he was too strong for me and jerk loose and run and we after him we didn't have no dog and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out we never got him till dark then we fixed him over and i started down for the raft when i got there and see it was gone i says to myself they've got into trouble and had to leave and they took my nigger which is the only nigger i've got in the world and now i'm in a strange country and ain't got no property no more no nothing and no way to make my living so i sat down and cried i slept in the woods all night what did become of the raft him and jim poor jim blamed if i know that is what's become of the raft that old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had mashed half dollars with him and got ever since for what he'd spent on whiskey when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone we said that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us and run off down the river i wouldn't shake my nigger would i the only nigger i had in the world and the only property we never thought of that fact is i reckon we come to consider him our nigger yes we did consider him so goodness knows we had trouble enough for him so when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke there weren't nothing for it but to try to roar on such another shake and i pegged along ever since dry as a powder horn where's that ten cents give it here i had considerable money so i'll give him ten cents but begged him to spend it for something to eat and give me some because it was all the money i had and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday he never said nothing the next minute he worlds on me and says do you reckon that nigger would blow on us we'd skin him if he done that how can he blow hatey runoff no that old fool sold him and never divided with me and the money's gone sold him i says and begun to cry why he was my nigger and that was my money where is he i want my nigger well you can't get your nigger that's all so dry up your blubbering looky here do you think you'd venture to blow on us blamed if i think i trust you why if you was to blow on us he stopped but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before i went on a whimpering and says i don't want to blow on nobody i ain't got no time to blow know how i got to turn out and find my nigger he looked kinder bothered and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm thinking and wrinkling up his forehead at last he says i'll tell you something we got to be here three days if you promise you won't blow and won't let the nigger blow i'll tell you where to find him so i promised and he says farmer by the name of silas then he stopped you see he started to tell me the truth but when he stopped that way and begun to study and think again i reckon he was changing his mind and so he was he wouldn't trust me he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days so pretty soon he says the man that bought him is named abram foster abram g foster and he lives 40 mile back here in the country on the road to Lafayette all right i says i can walk it in three days and i'll start this very afternoon no you won't you'll start now and don't you lose any time about it neither nor do any gablin on the way just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along and then you won't get into trouble with us do you hear that was the order i wanted and that was the one i played for i wanted to be left free to work out my plans so clear out he says and you can tell mr foster whatever you want to maybe you can get him to believe that jim is your nigger some id just don't require documents least ways i've heard there's such down south here and when you tell him the handbill and the rewards bogus maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting him out so go along and tell him anything you want to but mind you don't work your jar any between here and there so i left and struck for the back country i didn't look around but i kind of felt like he was watching me but i know what i would tire him out at that i went straight out in the country as much as a mile before i stopped then i double back through the woods towards phelps's i reckon i better start in on my plan straight off without fooling around because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away i didn't want no trouble with their kind i'd seen all i wanted to do with them and wanted to get entirely shut of them end of chapter 31 chapter 32 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 32 still and sunday-like mistaken identity up a stump in a dilemma when i got there it was all still and sunday-like and hot and sunshiney the hands was going to the fields and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful because you feel like it's spirits whispering spirits that's been dead ever so many years and you always think they're talking about you as a general thing it makes the body wish he was dead too and done with it all phelps's was one of those little one-horse cotton plantations and they all look alike a rail fence round or two acre yard a style made out of logs sought off and upended in steps like barrels of different lengths to climb over the fence with and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse some sickly grass patches in the big yard but mostly it was bare and smooth like an old hat with the nap rubbed off big double log house for the white folks huge logs with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar and these mud stripes been whitewashed some time or another round log kitchen with a big broad open but roofed passage joining it to the house log smokehouse back of the kitchen three little log nigger cabins in a row to the other side the smokehouse one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence and some outbuildings doubt a piece of the other side ash hopper and big kettle to buy all soap in by the little hut bench by the kitchen door with bucket of water and a gourd hound to sleep there in the sun more hounds to sleep around about about three shade trees away off in a corner some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch then the cotton fields begins and after the fields the woods i went around and clump over the back style of ash hopper and started for the kitchen when i got a little ways i heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again and then i knowed for certain i wished i was dead for that is the lonesome sound in the whole world i went right along and not fixing up any particular plan but trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come for i noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth if i left it alone when i got halfway first one hound and then another got up and went for me and of course i stopped and faced them and kept still and such another powwow was they made in a quarter of a minute i was kind of a hub of a wheel as you may say spokes made out of dogs circle a 15 of them packed together around me with their necks and noses stretched out toward me a barking and howling and more are coming you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywhere's a niggle woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand saying out be gone you teague you spot be gone soft and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling and then the rest followed and the next second half of them come back wagging their tails around me and making friends with me there ain't no harm in a hound no how and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys so without anything on but told and in shirts and they hung on to their mother's gown and peered out from behind her at me bashful the way they always do and here comes the white woman running from the house about 45 or 50 year old bareheaded and her spinning stick in her hand and behind her comes her little white children acting the same way the little niggers was doing she was smiling all over so she could hardly stand and says it's you at last ain't it i out with a yesam before i thought she grabbed me and hugged me tight and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook and the tears come in her eyes and run down over and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough and kept saying you don't look as much like your mother as i reckon you would but lost sake i don't care for that i'm so glad to see you dear dear it does seem like i could eat you up children it's your cousin tom tell him howdy but they ducked their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her so she run on lisa hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away or did you get your breakfast on the boat i said i had got it on the boat so then she started for the house leading me by the hand and the children tagging after when we got there she set me down in a split bottom chair and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me holding both of my hands and says now i can have a good look at you and laws of me i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time all these long years and it's come at last we've been expecting you a couple of days and more would kept you both get a ground yesam she don't say yesam say aunt sally where'd she get a ground i didn't rightly know what to say because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down but i go a good deal on instinct and my instinct said she would be coming up from down towards orleans that didn't help me much though for i didn't know the names of bars down that way i see i got to invent the bar or forget the name of the one we got a ground on or or now i struck an idea and fixed it out it weren't a grounding that didn't keep us back but a little we blowed out a cylinder good gracious anybody hurt know him kill the nigger well it's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt two years ago last christmas your uncle silas was coming up from darlene's on the old alley rook and she blowed out a cylinder head and crippled a man and i think he died afterwards he was a baptist your uncle silas know the family and baton ruse that knowed his people very well yes i remember now he did die mortification set in and they had to amputate him but it didn't save him yes it was mortification that was it he turned blue all over and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection they say he was a sight to look at your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you and he's gone again not more than an hour ago he'll be back any minute now you must have met him on the road didn't you oldest man with a no i didn't see nobody aunt sally the boat landed just a day light and i left my baggage on the worth boat and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country to put in the time and not get here too soon so i come down the back way who would you give the baggage to nobody why child it'll be stole not where i hid it i reckon it won't i says how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat it was kind of thin ice but i says the captain see me standing around and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore so he took me in the texas to the office's lunch and give me all i wanted i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good i had my mind on the children all the time i wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little and find out who i was but i couldn't get no show mrs felps kept it up and run on so pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back because she says but here we are running on this way and you hate told me a word about sis nor any of them now i'll rest my words a little and you start up your and you just tell me everything tell me all about them all everyone of them and how they are and what they're doing and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of well i see i was up a stump and up it good providence had stood by me this for all right but i was hard and tight of ground now i see it weren't a bit of you to try to go ahead i got to throw up my hand so i says to myself here's another place where i got to risk the truth i opened my mouth to begin but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed and says here he comes stick your head down lower there that'll do you can't be seen now now you don't let on your here i'll play a joke on him children don't you say a word i see i was in a fix now but it weren't no use to worry there weren't nothing to do but just hold still and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck i had one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in then the bed hit me mrs felps she jumps for him and says has he come no says her husband goodness gracious she says what in the world can have become of him i can't imagine says the old gentleman and i must say it makes me dreadful uneasy uneasy she says i'm ready to go distracted he must come and you missed him along the road i know it's so something tells me so why sally i couldn't miss him along the road you know that but oh dear dear what will sissy he must come you must have missed him he oh don't distress me anymore and i'm already distressed i don't know what in the world to make of it i'm at my wits end and i don't mind acknowledging that i'm right down scared but there's no hope that he come for he couldn't come and be missing sally it's terrible just terrible something's happened to the boat sure why silence looking on the up the road ain't that somebody coming he sprung to the window at the head of the bed and that gave mrs felps the chance she wanted she stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull and out i come and when he turned back from the window there she stood a beam and a smiling like a house of fire and i was standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside the old gentleman stared and said why who's that who do you reckon is i ain't no idea who is it it's tom soya by jings i most slumped through the floor but there weren't no time to swap knives the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook and kept on shaking and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry and how they both did fire up questions about said and marry in the rest of the tribe but if they was joyful it weren't nothing to what i was for it was like being born again i was so glad to find out who i was well they froze to me for two hours and at last when my chin was so tired i couldn't hardly go anymore i told them more about my family i mean the soya family that ever happened to any six soya families and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of white river and it took us three days to fix it which was all right and worked first rate because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it if i'd have called it a bolt head it would have done just as well now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side and pretty uncomfortable all up the other being tom soya was easy and comfortable and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by i hear steamboat coughing along down the river then i says to myself suppose tom soya comes down on that boat and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet well i couldn't have it that way and it wouldn't do it all i must go up the road and weigh liam so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage the old gentleman was for going along with me but i said no i could drive the horse myself and i'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me end of chapter 32 chapter 33 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 33 a nigger stealer southern hospitality a pretty long blessing tar and feathers so i started for town in the wagon and when i was halfway i see a wagon coming and sure enough it was tom soya and i stopped and waited till he come along i says hold on and it stopped alongside and his mouth opened up like a trunk and stayed so and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat and then says i ain't never done you no harm you know that so then what do you want to come back and haunt me for i says i hate come back i ain't been gone when he heard my voice that righted him up some but he weren't quite satisfied yet he says don't you play nothing on me because i wouldn't on you honest engine now you ain't a ghost honest engine i ain't i says well i i well that ought to settle it of course but i can't somehow seem to understand it no way looky here weren't you ever murdered at all no i weren't ever murdered at all i played it on them you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me so he done it and it satisfied him and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do and he wanted to know all about it right off because it was a grand adventure and mysterious and so it hit him where he lived but i said leave it alone till by and by and told his driver to wait and we drove off a little piece and i told him the kind of fix i was in and what did he reckon we better do he said let him alone a minute and don't disturb him so he thought and thought and pretty soon he says it's all right i've got it take my trunk in your wagon and let on its urine and you turn back and fool along slow so as to get to the house about the time you ought to and i'll go towards town to peace and take a fresh start and get there a quarter or half an hour after you you need and let on you know me at first i says all right but wait a minute there's one more thing a thing that nobody don't know but me and that is there's a nigga here that i'm trying to steal out of slavery and his name is jim oh miss watson's jim he says what why jim is he stopped and went to study and i says i know what you say you say is a dirty lowdown business but what if it is i'm lowdown and i'm gonna steal him and i want you to keep mum and not let on will you his eyes lit up and he says i'll help you steal him well i'll let go all holds then like i wish i it was the most astonishing speech i ever heard and i'm bound to say tom sawyer felt considerable in my estimation only i couldn't believe it tom sawyer a nigger stealer oh shucks i says you're joking i ain't joking either well then i says joking or no joking if you hear anything sad about a runaway nigger don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him and i don't know nothing about him then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way and i drove mine but of course i forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip the old gentleman was at the door and he says why this is wonderful whoever would have thought it was in that man to do it i wish we had time to and she ain't sweated a hair not a hair it's wonderful why i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now i wouldn't honest and yet i sold her for 15 before thought was all she was worth that's all he said he was the innocentest best old soul i ever see but it weren't surprising because he weren't only just a former he was a preacher too and had a little one horse log cabin down back at the plantation which he built it himself at his own expense for a church and schoolhouse and never charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too there was plenty of the former preachers like that and done the same way down south in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front style and aunt sally she see it through the window because it's only about 50 yards and says why there's somebody come i wonder who it is why i do believe it's a stranger jimmy that's one of the children run and tell lies to put on another plate for supper everybody made a rush for the front door because of course a stranger don't come every year and so he lays over the yellow fever for interest when he does come tom was over the style and starting for the house the wagon was spinning up the road for the village and we was all bunched in the front door tom had his store clothes on and an audience and that was always nuts for tom saw him in them circumstances it weren't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable he warned a boy to meekly along up that yard like a sheep no he come calm and important like the ram when he got in front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them and says mr archibald nickels i presume know my boy says the old gentleman i'm sorry to say to your driver has deceived you nickels places down a matter of three mile more come in come in tom he took a look back over his shoulder and says too late he's out of sight yes he's going my son and you must come in and eat your dinner with us and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nickels oh i can't make you so much trouble i wouldn't think of it i walk i don't mind the distance but we won't let you walk it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it come right in oh do says ansally it ain't a bit of trouble to us not a bit in the world you must stay it's a long dusty three mile and we can't let you walk and besides i've already told him to put on another plate when i see you coming so you mustn't disappoint us come right in and make yourself at home so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome and let himself be persuaded and come in and when he was in he said he was a stranger from hicksville ohio and his name was william thompson and he made another bow well he run on and on and on making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent and i was getting a little nervous and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape and at last still talking he reached over and kissed ansally right on the mouth and didn't settle back in his chair comfortable and was going on talking but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand and says you audacious puppy he looked kind of hurt and says i'm surprised at you ma'am you're why what do you reckon i am i've got a good notion to take and say what do you mean by kissing me he looked kind of humble and says i didn't mean nothing ma'am i didn't mean no harm i i thought you'd like it why you born fool she took up the spinning stick and it looked like it was all she could do to keep him giving him a crack with it what made you think i'd like it well i don't know only they they told me you would they told you i would whoever told you use another lunatic i never heard the beat of it who's they why everybody they all said so ma'am it was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him and she says who's everybody out with their names or they'll be an idiot short he got up and looked distressed and fumbled his hat and says i'm sorry i weren't expecting it they told me to they all told me to they said kiss her and said she'd like it they all said it every one of them but i'm sorry ma'am and i won't do it no more i won't honest you won't won't you well i should reckon you won't know i'm honest about it i won't ever do it again until you ask me till i ask you well i never see the beat of it my born days i'll let you be the mothooze of the numb skull of creation before i ever ask you or the likes of you well he says it does surprise me so i can't make it out somehow they said you would and i thought you would but he stopped and looked around slow like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres and fetched up on the old gentleman says didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her sir why no i i well no i believe i didn't then he looks on around the same way to me and says tom didn't you think aunt sally'd open her arms and say sit sire my land she says breaking in and jumping for him you impudent young rascal to fool a body so and was going to hug him but he fended her off and says no not till you've asked me first she didn't lose no time but asked him and hugged him and kissed him over and over again and then turned him over to the old man and he took what was left and after they got a little quiet again she says oh my dear me i never see such a surprise we weren't looking for you at all but only tom sis never wrote to me about anybody coming with him it's because it weren't intended for any of us to come but tom he says but i begged and begged and at the last minute she let me come to so coming down the river me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first and for me to buy and buy a tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger but it was a mistake aunt sally this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come no not impudent welps said you ought to have your jaws boxed i ain't been so put out since i don't know when but i don't care i don't mind the terms i'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here well to think of that performance i don't deny it i was most putrefied with the stonest but when you gave me that smack we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and there was things enough on that table for seven families and all hot too none of you a flabby tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it but it was worth it and it didn't cool it a bit neither the way i'd seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon and me and tom was on the lookout all the time but it weren't no use they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger and we was afraid to try to work up to it but a supper at night one of the little boys says pa may it tom and sit and me go to the show no says the old man i reckon there ain't gonna be any and you couldn't go if there was because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show and burton said he would tell the people so i reckon they drove the audacious loaf was out of town before this time so there it was but i couldn't help it tom and me was to sleep in the same room in bed so being tired we did good night and went up to bed right after supper and come out of the window and down the lightning rod and shoved for the town for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and duke a hint and so if i didn't hurry up and give them one they get into trouble sure on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered and how pap disappeared pretty quick and didn't come back no more and what a stir that was with jim runaway and i told tom all about our royal none such rap scallions and as much of the rap voyage as i had time to and as we struck into town and up through the middle of it it was as much as half after eight then here come a rage and rush of people with torches and an awful whooping and yelling and banging 10 pans and blowing horns and we jumped to one side and let them go by and as they went by i see they had the king and the duke a straddle of a rail that is i know it was the king and the duke though they was all over tar and feathers and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes well it made me sick to see it i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals it didn't seem like i could never feel any hardness against them any more in the world it was a dreadful thing to see human beings can be awful cruel to one another we see we was too late couldn't do no good we asked some stragglers about it and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent and laid low and kept dark to the poor old king was in the middle of his covartons on the stage then somebody gave a signal and the house rose up and went for them so we poked along back home and i weren't feeling so brash as i was before but kind of ornery and humble and to blame somehow though i hadn't done nothing but that's always the way it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong a person's conscience ain't got no sense and just goes for him anyway if i had a yotter dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does i would poison him it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides and yet ain't no good know how time saw him he says the same end of chapter 33 chapter 34 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark quain this labor box recording is in the public domain chapter 34 the hut by the ash hopper outrageous climbing the lightning rod trouble with witches we stopped talking and got to thinking by and by tom says looky here huck what fools we are not to think of it before i bet i know where jim is no where in that hut down by the ash hopper by looky here when we was at dinner didn't you see a niggaman go in there with some vitals yes what did you think the vitals was for for a dog so did i well it wasn't for a dog why because part of it was watermelon so it was i noticed it well it does beat all that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time well the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in and he locked it again when he came out he fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table same key i bet watermelon shows man lock shows prisoner and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation and where the people's also kind and good jim's the prisoner all right i'm glad we found it out detective fashion i wouldn't give shucks for any other way now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal jim and i will study out one two and we'll take the one we like best what a head for just a boy to have if i had time saw his head i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke nor mate of a steamboat nor clown in a circus nor nothing i can think of i went to thinking out a plan but only just to be doing something i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from pretty soon tom says ready yes i says all right bring it out my plan is this i says we can easily find out if it's jim in there then get up my canoe tomorrow night and fetch my raft over from the island then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's bridges after he goes to bed and shove off down the river on the raft with jim hiding day times and running nights the way me and jim used to do before wouldn't that plan work work why certainly it would work like rats are fighting but it's too blame simple there ain't nothing to it what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that it's as mild as goose milk why hook it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory i never said nothing because i weren't expecting nothing different but i knowed might well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it and it didn't he told me what it was and i see in a minute it was worth 15 a mine for style and would make jim just as free a man as mine would and maybe get us all killed besides so i was satisfied and said we would waltz in on it i needn't tell what it was here because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was i knowed he would be changing it around every which way as we went along and he even in new bullinesses whenever he got a chance and that is what he done well one thing was dead sure and that was that tom sawyer was in earnest and was actually gonna help steal that nigga out of slavery that was the thing that was too many for me he was a boy that was respectable and well-brung up and had a character to lose and folks at home that had characters and he was bright and not leatherheaded and knowing and not ignorant and not mean but kind and yet here he was without any more pride or rightness or feeling than a stoop to this business and make himself ashamed and his family ashamed before everybody i couldn't understand it no way at all it was outrageous and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so and so be his true friend and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself and i did start to tell him but he shut me up and says don't you reckon i know what i'm about don't i generally know what i'm about yes didn't i say i was going to help steal the nigga yes well then that's all he said and that's all i said it weren't no use to say anymore because when he said he'd do a thing he always done it but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing so i just let it go and never bothered no more about it if he was bound to have it so i couldn't help it when we got home the house was all dark and still so we went on down to the hut by the ash hopper for to examine it we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do they knowed us and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides and on the side i weren't acquainted with which was the north side we found a square window hole up tolerable high with just one stout board nailed across it i says here's the ticket this hole's big enough for jim to get through if we wrench off the board tom says it's as simple as tic-tac-toe three in a row and as easy as playing hooky i should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that huck fin well then i says i hauled it due to saw him out the way i'd done before i was murdered that time that's more like he said it's real mysterious and troublesome and good he says but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long there ain't no hurry let's keep on looking around betwixt the hut and the fence on the back side was a lean to that joined the hut at the eaves and was made out of plank it was as long as the hut but narrow only about six foot wide the door to it was at the south end and was padlocked tom he went to the soap kettle and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with so he took it and prized out one of the staples the chain fell down and we opened the door and went in and shut it and struck a match and see the shed was only built against a cabin and had no connection with it and there weren't no floor to the shed nor nothing in it but some old rusty plate out hose and spades and picks and a cripple plow the match went out and so did we and shoved in the staple again and the door was locked as good as ever tom was joyful he says now we're all right we'll dig him out it'll take about a week then we started for the house and i went in the back door you only have to pull a buckskin lat strength they don't fasten the doors but that weren't romantic enough for tom sawyer no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning rod but after he got up halfway about three times and missed fire and fell every time and the last time most busted his brains out he thought he'd got to give it up but after he was rested he allowed he would give a one more turn for luck and this time he made the trip in the morning we was up at break a day and down to the nigger cabinets to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jim if it was jim that was being fed the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields and jim's nigger was piling up a tin can with bread and meeting things and whilst the others was leaving he come from the house this nigger had a good nature chuckle-headed face and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread that was to keep the witches off he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights and making him see all kinds of strange things and hear all kinds of strange words and noises and he didn't believe he was ever wished so long before in his life he got so worked up and got to run it on so about his troubles he forgot all about what he'd been going to do so tom says who's the vitals for going to feed the dogs the nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face like when you heave a brick bat in the mud puddle and he says yes marr said a dog curious dog too does you want to go and look at him yes i hunched tom and whispered you going right in there in the daybreak that weren't the plan no it weren't but it's the plan now so drag him we went along but i didn't like it much when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything it was so dark but jim was there sure enough and could see us and he sings out why huck and goodland ain't that mr tom i just know how it would be i just expected it i didn't know nothing to do and if i had i couldn't have done it because that nigger busted in and says why the gracious sakes do he know you don't mean we could see pretty well now tom he looked at the nigger steady and kind of wonder and says does who know us why did see our wrong away nigger i don't reckon he does but what put that into your head what put it there didn't he just this minute sing out like he knows you tom says in a puzzled up kind of way well that's my curious who sung out when did he sing out why did he sing out and he turns to me perfectly calm and says did you hear anybody sing out of course there weren't nothing to be said but the one thing so i says no i ain't heard nobody say nothing then he turns to jim and looks him over like he never see him before and says did you sing out no sa says jim i ain't said nothing sa not a word no sa i ain't said a word did you ever see us before no sa not as i knows on so tom turns to the nigger which was looking wild and distressed and says kind of severe what do you reckon to the matter with you anyway what made you think somebody sung out oh it's the dad blame witches sa and i wished i was dead i do they's all is at it and they do most kill me they scares me so please don't tell nobody about sa oh more solace he'll scold me because he say there ain't no witches i just wish the goodness he was here now then what would he say i just bet he wouldn't find no way to get around it this time oh but it's all is just so people that's sought stay sought they won't look into nothing find it out for themselves and when you find it out and tell them about it they don't believe you tom give him a dime and said we wouldn't tell nobody and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with and then he looks at jim and says i wonder if uncle solace is gonna hang this nigger if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away i wouldn't give him up i'd hang him and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good he whispers to jim and says don't ever let on to know us and if you hear any digging going on nights it's us we're going to set you free jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it then the nigger come back and we said we'd come again sometime if the nigger wanted us to and he said he would most particularly if it was dark because the witches went for him mostly in the dark and it was good to have folks around then into chapter 34 chapter 35 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this libre vox recording is in the public domain chapter 35 escaping properly dark schemes discrimination in stealing a deep hole it would be most in our yet till breakfast so we left and struck down into the woods because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by and lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox fire and just makes a soft kind of glow when you lay them in a dark place we fixed an armful and hit it in the weeds and sat down at the rest and tom says kind of dissatisfied blame it this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan they ain't no watchman to be drugged now they're ought to be a watchman they ain't even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to and there's jim chained by one leg with a 10 foot chain to the leg of his bed why all you got to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain and uncle silas he trusts everybody sends the key to the pumpkin headed nigger and don't send nobody to watch the nigger jim would have got out of that window hole before this only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with the 10 foot chain on his leg why drat it hook it's the stupidest arrangement i ever seen you got to invent all the difficulties well well we can't help it we got to do the best we can with the materials we got anyhow there's one thing there's more honor and getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers when there weren't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them and you got to contrive them all out of your own head now look at just that one thing of the lantern when you come down to the cofax we simply got to let on that a lantern's risky while we could work with a torch like procession if we wanted to i believe now whilst i think of it we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get what do we want of a saw what do we want of it hey we got the saw the leg of jim's bed off so as to get the chain loose why you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off well if that ain't just like you hook finn you can get up the infant schooliest ways of going at a thing why ain't you ever read any books at all baron track nor castanova nor ben venuto chilini nor henry the fourth none of them heroes who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old matey way as that no the way all best authorities does is to saw the bed leg and two and leave it just so and swallow the solder so it can't be found and put some dirt and grease around the sod place of the very keenest cynical can't see no sign of it's being sawed i think the bed leg is perfectly sound and then the night you're ready fetch the leg a kick down she goes slip off your chain and there you are nothing to do but hit your rope ladder to the battlements shin down it break your leg in the moat because a rope ladder is 19 foot too short you know and there's your horses and your trusty vassals and they scoop you up and fling you across the saddle and away you go to your native leg dock or navar or whatever it is it's gaudy hook i wish there was a moat to this cabin if we get time tonight of the escape we'll dig one i says what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin but he never heard me he had forgotten me and everything else he had his chin in his hand thinking pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head then sighs again and says ah no it wouldn't do there ain't necessity enough for it for what i says why to saw jim's leg off he says good land i says why there ain't no necessity for it what would you want to saw his leg off for anyway well some of the best authorities has done it they couldn't get the chain off so they just cut their hand off and shoved and the leg would be better still but we got to let that go there ain't necessity enough in this case and besides jim's a nigger and wouldn't understand the reasons for it and how it's the custom in europe so we'll let it go but there's one thing he can have a rope ladder we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough and we can send it to him in a pie it's mostly done that way and i bet we're spies what tom saw how you talk i says jim may got no use for a rope ladder he has got used for it how you talk you better say you don't know nothing about it he's got to have a rope ladder they all do what in the nation can he do with it do with it he can hide it in his bed can't he that's what they all do and he's got to do huck you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular you want to be starting something fresh all the time suppose he don't do nothing with it ain't it there in his bed for a clue after he's gone and don't you reckon they'll want clues of course they will and you wouldn't leave them any that would be a pretty how to do wouldn't it i never heard of such a thing well i says if it's in the regulations and he's got to have it all right let him have it because i don't wish to go back on no regulations but there's one thing tom saw if we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope ladder we're gonna get into trouble with aunt sally just as sure as you're born now the way i look at it a hickory bark ladder don't cost nothing and don't waste nothing and it's just as good to load up a pie with and hide in a straw tick as any rag ladder you can start and as for jim he ain't had no experience and so he don't care what kind of a oh shucks huck finn if i was as ignorant as you i'd keep still that's what i'd do whoever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickory bark ladder why it's perfectly ridiculous well all right tom fix it your own way but if you'll take my advice you'll let me borrow a sheet off the clothesline he said that would do and that gave him another idea and he says borrow a shirt too what do we want of a shirt tom want it for jim to keep a journal on journal your granny jim can't write suppose he can't write he can make marks on the shirt can't eat if we make him a pin out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel hoop why tom we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one and quicker too prisoners don't have geese running around the dungeon keep to pull pins out of you muggins they always makes their pins out of the hardest toughest troublesomeest piece of old brass candle sticker or something like that that they can get their hands on and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out too because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall they wouldn't use a goose quill if they had it it ain't regular well then what do we make him the ink out of many makes it out of iron rust and tears but that's the common sort and women the best authorities use their own blood jim can do that and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window the iron mask always done that and it's a blame good way too jim ain't got no tin plates they feed him in a pan that ain't nothing we can get him some can't nobody read his plates that ain't got anything to do with it hook fin all he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out you don't have to be able to read it why half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate or anywhere else well then what's the sense in wasting the plates why blame it all it ain't the prisoners plates but it's somebody's plates ain't it well supposing it is what does the prisoner care who's he broke off there because we heard the breakfast horn blowing so we cleared out for the house along during the morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothesline and i found an old sack and put them in it and we went down and got the fox fire and put that into i called it borrowing because that's what pap always called it but tom said it weren't borrowing it was stealing he said we was representing prisoners and the prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it and nobody don't blame them for it either it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with tom said it's his right and so so long as we was representing a prisoner we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with he said if we weren't prisoners it would be a very different thing and nobody would have mean or an ordinary person would steal when he weren't a prisoner so we allowed we would steal everything that was that come handy and yet he made a modifus one day after that when i stole the watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for tom said that what he meant was we could steal anything we needed well i says i needed the watermelon but he says i didn't need it to get out of prison with that's where the difference was he said if i wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to jim to kill the cynical with it would have been all right so i'll let it go with that though i couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if i got to sit down and chop over a lot of gold leave distinctions like that every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon well as i was saying we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business and nobody inside around the yard then tom he carried the sack into the lean to whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch by and by he come out and we went and sat down on the wood pile to talk he says everything's all right now except tools and that's easy fixed tools i says yes tools for what why to dig with we ain't gonna gnaw him out are we ain't them old crippled pigs and things in there good enough to dig a dig out with i says he turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry and says huck thin did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with now i want to ask you if you got any reasonableness in you at all what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero why they might as well lend him the key and done with it picks and shovels why they wouldn't furnish him to a king well then i says if we don't want the picks and shovels what do we want a couple of case knives to dig the foundations out from under the cabin with yes confounded it's foolish time it don't make no difference how foolish it is it's the right way and it's the regular way and there ain't no other way that ever i heard of and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things they always dig out with a case knife and not through dirt mind you generally it's through solid rock and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks and forever and ever why you look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deep in the harbor of marcellus that dug himself out that way how long was he at it you reckon i don't know well guess i don't know a month and a half thirty seven year and he come out in china that's the kind i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock jim don't know nobody in china what's that got to do with it neither did that other fella but you're always wondering off on a side issue why can't you stick to the main point all right i don't care where he comes out so he comes out and jim don't either i reckon but there's one thing anyway jim is too old to be dug out with a case knife he won't last yes he will last two you don't reckon it's going to take 37 years to dig out through a dirt foundation do you how long will it take tom well we can't risk being as long as we ought to because it may take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new allens he'll hear jim ain't from there then his next move will be to advertise jim or something like that so we can't risk being as long digging him out as we ought to by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years but we can't things being so uncertain what i recommend is this that we really dig right in as quick as we can and after that we can let on to ourselves that we was at it 37 years then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm yes i reckon that'll be the best way now there are sense in that i says letting on don't cost nothing letting on ain't no trouble and if it's any object i don't mind letting on we was at it 150 years it wouldn't strain me none after i got my hand in so i'm mosey along now and smooch a couple of case knives smooch three he says we want one to make a saw out of tom if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it i says there's an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weather board and behind the smokehouse he looked kind of weary and discouraged like and says it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing huck run along and smooch the knives three of them so i've done it it into chapter 35 chapter 36 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this laborie box recording is in the public domain chapter 36 the lightning rod his level best a bequest to posterity a high figure as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean to and got out our pile of fox fire and went to work we cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log tom said he was right behind jim's bed now and we dig in under it and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole so we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight and then we was dog tired and our hands was blistered and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly at last i says this ain't no 37 year job this is a 38 year job tom saw her he never said nothing but he sighed and pretty soon he stopped digging and then for a good little while i know that he was thinking then he says it ain't no use huck it ain't a going to work if we was prisoners it would because then we'd have as many years as we wanted in no hurry and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while they was changing watches and so our hands wouldn't get blistered and we could keep it up right along year in and year out and do it right and the way it ought to be done but we can't fool along we got to rush we ain't got no time to spare if we was to put in another knot this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well we couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner well then what we're going to do tom i'll tell you it ain't right and it ain't moral and i wouldn't like it to get out but there ain't only just the one way we got to dig him out with the picks and let on its case knives now you're talking i says your head gets a leveler and leveler all the time tom soil i says picks is a thing moral or no moral and as for me i don't care shucks for the morality of it know how when i start into stealing nigger or a watermelon or a sunday school book i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done what i want is my nigger or what i want is my watermelon or what i want is my sunday school book and if it picks the handiest thing that's the thing i'm going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday school book out with and i don't give our dead rat what the authorities thinks about it another well he says there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this if it weren't so i wouldn't approve of it nor wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke because right is right and wrong is wrong and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant knows better it might answer for you to dig Jim out with the pick without any letting on because you don't know no better but it wouldn't for me because i do know better gimme a case knife he had his own but i handed him mine and he flung it down and says gimme a case knife i didn't know just what to do but then i thought i scratched around amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him and he took it and went to work and never said a word he was always just that particular full of principle so then i got a shovel and then we picked and shoveled turnabout and made the fur fly we stuck it about half an hour which was as long as we could stand it but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it when i got upstairs i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning rod but he couldn't come at his hand was so sore at last he says it ain't no use it can't be done what do you reckon i better do can't you think of no way yes i says but i reckon it ain't regular come up to staz and let on it's a lightning rod so he done it next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house for to make some pins for a gym out of and six tallow candles and i hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance and stole three ten plates tom says it wasn't enough but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim thrown out because they'd fall in the dog fennel and jimson weeds under the window hole then we could tote them back and he could use them over again so tom was satisfied then he says now the thing to study out is how to get the things to jim take them in through the hole i says when we get it done he only just looked scornful and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea and then he went to study and by and by he said he had suffered out two or three ways but there weren't no use to decide on any of them yet said we got to post jim first that night we went down the lightning rod a little after ten and took one of the candles along and listened under the window hole and heard jim snoring so we pitched it in and it didn't wake him then we whirled in with the pick and shovel and in about two hours and a half the job was done we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin and part around and found the candle and lit it and stood over jim a while and found him looking hearty and healthy and then we woke him up gentle and gradual he was so glad to see us he most cried and called us honey and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away and clearing out without losing any time but tom he showed him how unregular it would be and sat down and told him all about our plans and how we could alter them in a minute anytime there was an alarm and not to be the least afraid because we would see he got away sure so jim said it was all right and we sat there and talked over old times a while and then tom asked a lot of questions and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him and had sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat and both of them was kind as they could be tom says now i know how to fix it we'll send you some things by them i said don't do nothing other kind it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck but he never paid no attention to me went right on it was his way when he got his plan set so i told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope ladder pie and other large things by nat the nigger that fed him and he must be on the lookout and not be surprised and not let nat see him open them and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out and we would tie things to aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance and told him what there would be and what there was for and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood and all that he told him everything jim couldn't see no sense in the most of it but he allowed we was white folks and know better than him so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as tom said jim had plenty corn cob pipes and tobacco so we had a right down good sociable time then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed with hands that looked like they'd been charred tom was in high spirits he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it he said that in that way you could be strung out to as much as 80 year and would be the best time on record and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it in the morning we went out to the wood pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket then we went to the nigger cabins and while i got nat's notice off tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a cornpone that was in jim's pan and we went along with nat to see how it would work and it just worked noble when jim bit into it most mashed all his teeth out and there weren't ever anything could have worked better tom said so himself jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread you know but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first and whilst we was standing there in the dimmish light here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under jim's bed and they kept on piling until there was eleven of them and there weren't hardly room in there to get your breath by james we forgot to fasten that lean two door the nigger nat he only just hollered witches once and keeled over on the floor amongst the dogs and began to groan like he was dying tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat and the dogs went for it and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door and i know he'd fixed the other door too then he went to work on the nigger coaxing him and petting him and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again he raised up and blinked his eyes around and says maw said you say's i's a fool but if i didn't believe i see most a million dogs or devils or something i wish i may die right here in these tracks i did most surely maw said i felt them i felt them saw they was all over me dang fetch it i just wish i could get my hands on one of them witches just once only just once it's all i asked but mostly i wish they'd leave me alone i does tom says well i'll tell you what i think what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast time it's because they're hungry that's the reason you make them a witch pie that's the thing for you to do but my land maw said how's i going to make them a witch pie i don't know how to make it i ain't ever heard of such a thing before well then i'll have to make it myself will you do it honey will you i worship the ground under your foot i will all right i'll do it seeing it's you and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger but you got to be mighty careful when we come around you turn your back and then whatever we put in the pan don't you let on you see it at all and don't you look when jim unloads the pan something might happen i don't know what and above all don't you handle the witch things handle maw said what is you talking about i wouldn't lay the weight of a thing on them not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars i wouldn't end of chapter 36 chapter 37 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain list libre vox recording is in the public domain chapter 37 the last shirt mooning around sailing orders the witch pie that was all fixed so then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard where they keep the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles and wore our ten things and all such truck and scratched around and found an old ten wash pan and stopped up the holes as well as we could to bake the pie in and took it down cella and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apen pocket which was hanging on a chair and tether we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat which was on the bureau because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway niggers house this morning and then went to breakfast and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat pocket and aunt sally wasn't come yet so we had to wait a little while and when she come she was hot and red and cross and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing and then she went to sluice and out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with the thimble with the other and says i'll hunt it high and i'll hunt it low and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm and let a cry out of him the size of a war hoop and tom he turned kind of blue around the gills and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that and i would have sold out for half a price if there was a bitter but after that we was all right again it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold he says it's most uncommon curious i can't understand it i know perfectly well i took it off because because you ain't got but one on now listen to the man i know you took it off and know it by a better way than you'll will gather in memory too because it was on the clothes line yesterday i see it there myself but it's gone that's the long and the short of it and you'll just have to change to a red flannel one till i can get time to make a new one and it'll be the third i've made in two years i just keeps the body on the jump to keep you in shirts whatever you managed to do with them all is more than i can make out a body you think you would learn to take some sort of care of them at your time of life i know it's ali and i do try all i can but it ought to be all together my fault because you know i don't see them no i have nothing to do with them except when they're on me and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them off of me well it ain't your fault if you haven't silas you'd have done it if you could i reckon and the shirt ain't all that's gone another there's a spoon gone and that ain't all there was ten and now there's only nine the calf got the shirt i reckon but the calf never took the spoon that's certain why what else is going sally there's six candles gone that's what the rats could have got the candles i reckon they did i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it and if they weren't fools they'd sleep in your hair silas you never find it out but you can't lay the spoon on the rats in that i know well sally i'm in fault and i acknowledge it i've been remiss but i won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes oh i wouldn't hurry next year or two matilda angelina areamenta fulps whack came the thimble and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar bowl without fooling around any just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage and says mrs there's a sheet gone a sheet gone well for land sake i'll stop up them holes today says uncle salas looking sorrowful oh do shut up suppose the rats took the sheet where's it's gone liza clad of goodness i hate no notion miss sally she was on the clothesline yesterday but she done gone she ain't there no more now i reckon the world is coming to an end i never see the beat of it in all my born days a shirt and a sheet and a spoon and six can't miss us comes a young yaller wench there's a brass candlestick missing clear out of here you hussy or i'll take a skillet to you well she was just a violin i began to lay for a chance i reckon i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated she kept a raging right along running her insurrection all by herself and everybody else mind a meek and quiet and at last uncle salas looking kind of foolish fishes up that spoon out of his pocket she stopped with her mouth open and her hands up and asked for me i wished i was in jerusalem or somewhere else but not long because she says it's just as i expected so you had it in your pocket all the time and like it's not you got the other things there too how to get there i really don't know sally he says kind of apologizing or you know i would tell i was a study and over my text in act 17 before breakfast and i reckon i put it in there not noticing meaning to put my testament in and it must be so because my testament ain't in but i'll go and see and if the testament is where i had it i'll know i didn't put it in and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon and oh for the land's sake give a body a rest go along now the whole kitten body of you and don't come nine to me again till i've got back my peace of mind i'd have heard her if she said it to herself let alone speaking it out and i'd have got up and obeyed her if i'd have been dead as we was passing through the setting room the old man he took up his hat and the shingle nail fell out on the floor and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the male shelf and never said nothing and went out tom see him do it and remembered about the spoon and says well it ain't no use to send things by him no more he ain't reliable then he says but he done us a good turn with the spoon anyway without knowing it and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it stop up his rat holes there was a noble good lot of them down cellar and it took us a whole hour but we done the job tied and good and ship shape then we heard steps on the stairs and blowed out our light and hid and here comes the old man with the candle in one hand and the bundle of stuff and tether looking as absent minded as year before last he went a moon and around first to one rat hole and then another till he'd been to them all then he stood about five minutes picking tallow drip off his candle and thinking then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs saying well for the life of me i can't remember when i'd done it i could show her now that i weren't to blame on account of the rats but never mind let it go i reckon it wouldn't do no good and so he went on a mumbling upstairs and then we left he was a mighty nice old man and always is tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon but he said we got to have it so he took a thing when he had siphoted out he told me how we was to do it then we went and waited around the spoon basket till we see Aunt Sally coming and then tom went to counten the spoons and laying them out to one side and i slid one of them up my sleeve and tom says why ain't Sally there ain't but nine spoons yet she says go along to your play and don't bother me i know better i counted them myself well i've counted them twice and i can't make but nine she looked all out of patience but of course she couldn't count anybody would i declared the gracious there ain't but nine she says why what in the world plague take the things i'll count them again so i slipped back the one i had when she got done counting she says hang the troublesome rubbish there's ten now and she looked huffy and bothered both but tom says why auntie i don't think there's ten you numbskull didn't you see me count them i know but well i'll count them again so i smooched one and they come out nine same as the other time well she was in a tearing way just a trembling all over she was so mad but she counted and counted till she got that addled she started to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes and so three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley west and she said clear out and let her have some peace and if we come bothering around her again but twix that and dinner she'd skin us so we had the odd spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket while she was giving us our seal and orders and jim got it all right along with her shingle nail before noon we was very well satisfied with this business and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them anymore so we put the sheet back on the line that night and stole one out of a closet and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had anymore and she didn't care and weren't a going to bully rag the rest of her soul out about it and wouldn't count them again not to save her life she'd rather die first so we was all right now as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed up counting and as to the candlestick it weren't no consequence it would blow over by and by but that pie was a job we had no way to trouble with that pie we fixed it up a way down in the woods and cooked it there and we got it done at last and very satisfactory too but not all in one day and we had to use up three wash pans full of flour before we got through and we got burnt pretty much all over in places and eyes put out with the smoke because you see we didn't want nothing but a crust and we couldn't prop it up right and she would always cave in but of course we thought of the right way at last which was to cook the latter two in the pie so then we laid in with Jim the second night and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could have hung a person with we let on it took nine months to make it and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods but it wouldn't go into the pie being made of a whole sheet that way there was rope enough for 40 pies if we don't one of them and plenty left over for soup or sausage or anything you choose we could have had a whole dinner but we didn't need it all we needed was just enough for the pie and so we throw the rest away we didn't cook none of the pies in the wash pan afraid the solder would melt but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of because it belonged to one of his ancestors with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower all one of them early ships and was hit away up Garrett with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable not on account of being any account because they weren't on account of them being relics you know and we snaked her out private and took her down there but she failed on the first pies because we didn't know how but she come up smiling on the last one we took in line hope with dough and set her in the coals and loaded her up with rag rope and put on a dough roof and shut down the lid and put hot embers on top and stood off five foot with the long handle cool and comfortable and in 15 minutes she turned out a pie that was satisfaction to look at but the person that edit would want to fetch a couple of cags of toothpicks along for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about and lay him in enough stomach aid to last him till next time to not didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vitals and so Jim got everything all right and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hit the rope ladder inside his straw tick and as scratch some marks on a tin plate and throw it out of the window hole end of chapter 37 chapter 38 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 38 the coat of arms a skilled superintendent unpleasant glory a tearful subject making them pins was a distressed tough job and so was the saw and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall but he had to have it tom said he'd got to there weren't no case of a state prisoner not scrabble in his inscription to leave behind and his coat of arms look at lady jane gray he says look at gilford dunley look at old northumberland why hook suppose it is considerable trouble what you're going to do are you going to get around it jam's got to do his inscription and coat of arms they all do jim says why morse tom i ain't got no coat of harm i ain't got nothing but this whole shirt and you knows i got to keep the journal on that oh you don't understand jim a coat of arms is very different well i says jim's right anyway when he says he ain't got no coat of arms because he ain't i reckon i know that tom says but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this because he's going out right and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record so whilst me and jim filed away at the pins on a brick pad of peace jim by making his hand out of the brass and i'm making mine out of the spoon tom said to work to think out the coat of arms by and by he says he struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on he says on the escutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base a salt air Murray in the fests with the dog kuchant for common charge and under his foot a chain embattled for slavery with the chevron vert in a chief engrailed and three invected lines on a field as sure with the mom braille points rampant on a dance set invented crest a runaway nigger sable with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister and a couple of gules for supporters which is you and me motto my g r a fretta minor r a auto got it out of a book means the more haste the less speed gee well again says but what does the rest of it mean we ain't got no time to bother over that he says we got to dig in like all get out well anyway i says what's some of it what's a fess a fess a fess is you don't need to know what a fess is i'll show you how to make it when he gets to it shucks tom i says i think you might tell a person what's a bar sinister oh i don't know but he's got to have it all the nobility does was that was just his way if it didn't suit him to explain the thing to you he wouldn't do it you might pump it him a week and it wouldn't make no difference he got all that coat of arms business fixed so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work which was to plan out a mournful inscription said jim got to have one like they all done he made up a lot and wrote them out on a paper and read them off so one here a captive heart busted two here a poor prisoner four sucked by the world and friends fredded his sorrowful life three he a lonely heart broke and a worn spirit went to its rest after 37 years of solitary captivity four here homeless and friendless after 37 years of bitter captivity perished a noble stranger natural son of lewis xiv tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them and he most broke down when he got done he wouldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble onto the wall that was all so good but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble him all on jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail and he didn't know how to make letters besides but tom said he would block them out for him and that he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines then put it soon he says come to think the logs ain't going to do they don't have log walls in a dungeon we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock we'll fetch a rock jim said the rock was worse than the logs he said it would take him such a pys and long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out but tom said he would let me help him do it then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pins it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow and didn't give my hands no show to get with all of the saws and we didn't seem to make no headway hardly so tom says i know how to fix it we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions and we can just kill two birds with that same rock there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill and we'll smooch it and carve things on it and file out the pins and the saw on it too it weren't no slouch of an idea and it weren't no slouch of a grindstone mother but we allowed we tackle it it weren't quite midnight yet so we cleared out for the mill leaving jim at work we smooched the grindstone and set out to roll her home but it was a most nation tough job sometimes do what we could we couldn't keep her from falling over and she come mind and air mashing us every time tom said she was going to get one of us sure before we got through we got her halfway and then we was plumb played out and most drowned with sweat we see it warrant no use we got to go and fetch jim so we raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed leg and wrapped it round and round his neck and we crawled out through our hole and down there and jim and me laid that grindstone and walked her along like nothing and tom super intended he could out super intend any boy i ever see he knows how to do everything a hole was pretty big but it weren't big enough to get the grindstone through but jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough then tom marked out them things on it with a nail and set jim to work on them with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbish in the lean to for a hammer and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him and then he could go to bed and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed leg and was ready for bed ourselves but tom thought of something and says you got any spiders in here jim no sir thanks to goodness i hate morse tom all right we'll get you some but bless you honey i don't want none i's a fear of them i just assume have rattlesnakes around tom thought a minute or two and says it's a good idea and i reckon it's been done it must have been done it stands to reason yes it's a prime good idea where would you keep it keep what morse tom why a rattlesnake and the goodness gracious alive morse tom why if there was a rattlesnake to come in here i take a bus right out to that long wall i would with my head why jim you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little you could tame it tame it yes easy enough every animal is grateful for kindness and petting and they wouldn't think of hurting the person that pets them any book will tell you that you try that's all i ask just try for two or three days why you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you and sleep with you and won't stay away from you a minute and we'll let you wrap him around your neck and put his head in your mouth please morse tom don't talk so i can't stand it he'd let me shove my head in his mouth for a favor ain't it i lay here with a powerful long time for i asked him and more than i don't want him to sleep with me jim don't act so foolish a person has got to have some kind of a dumb pet and if a rattlesnake ain't ever been tried while there's more glory to be gained than you'll be in the first to ever try than any other way you could ever think of to save your life why morse tom i don't want no such a glory snake taken by jim's chin off then wears the glory no suh i don't want no such doings blame it can't you try i only want you to try you needn't keep it up if it don't work but the trouble all done if the snake bite me while i try and hit morse tom i was willing to tackle most anything that ain't unreasonable but if you and huck fetches the rattlesnake in here for me the team i was going to leave that short well then let it go let it go if you're so bullheaded about it we can get you some garter snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails and let on their rattlesnakes and i reckon that'll have to do i can stand in morse tom but blame if i couldn't get along without them i'll tell you that i never know before it was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner well it always is when it's done right you got any rats around here no suh i ain't see none well we'll get you some rats while morse tom i don't want no rats dace the dad blame his creatures to stir the body and rustle around over him and bite his feet when he's trying to sleep i ever see no suh give me garter snakes if i's got to have them but don't give me no rats i ain't got no use for them scarcely but jim you got to have them they all do so don't make no more fuss about it prisoners ain't ever without rats there ain't no instance of it and they train them and pet them and learn them tricks and they get to be as sociable as flies but you got to play music to them you got anything to play music on i ain't got nothing but a coarse comb and a piece of paper and a juice hop but i reckon they wouldn't take no stopping a juice harp yes they would they don't care what kind of music tis a juice hop's plenty good enough for a rat all animals like music in a prison they don't on it especially painful music and you can't get no other kind out of a juice hop it always interests them they come out to see what's the matter with you yes you're all right you're fixed very well you want to sit on your bed nights before you go to sleep and early in the mornings and play your juice harp play the last link is broken that's the thing that will scoop a rat quicker than anything else and when you played about two minutes you see all the rats and the snakes and spiders and things began to feel worried about you and come and they'll just fairly swarm over you and have a noble good time yes day will i reckon more time but what kind of time is jim having blessed if i can see the pint but i'll do it if i got to i reckon i better keep the animal satisfied and not have no trouble in the house tom waited to think it over and see if there wasn't nothing else and pretty soon he says oh there's one thing i forgot could you raise a flower here do you reckon i don't know but maybe i could mars time but it's tolerable dark in here and i ain't got no use for no flower know how and she'd be a powerful side of trouble well try it anyway some other prisoners has done it one of them big cattail looking mullin stalks would grow in here mars time i reckon but she wouldn't be worth half the trouble she costs don't you believe it we'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there and raise it and don't call it mullin call it pitchy ola that's his right name when it's in a prison and you want to water it with your tears why i got plenty spring water mars time you don't want spring water you want to water it with your tears it's the way they always do why mars time i can raise one of them mutton stalks twice with spring water while another man's starting one with tears that ain't the idea you got to do it with tears she'll die on my hands mars time she surely will because i don't scarcely ever cry so tom was stumped but he studied it over and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion he promised he'd go to the nigger cabins and drop one private in jim's coffee pot in the morning jim said he would just as soon have tobacco in his coffee and found so much fall with it and with the work and bother a raise in the mullin and jewish harp and the rats and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things on top of all the other work he had to do on pens and inscriptions and journals and things which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook that tom most lost all patience with him and said he was just loaded down with more guardian chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them and they was just about wasted on him so jim he was sorry and said he wouldn't behave so no more than being tom shoved off a bed end of chapter 38 chapter 39 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 39 rats lively bedfellows the straw dummy in the morning we went up to the village and brought a wire rat trap and fetched it down and unstopped the best rat hole and in about an hour we had 15 of the bulliest kind of ones and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed but while we was going for spiders little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elixander felps found it there and opened the door up to see if the rats would come out and they did and aunt sally she come in and when we got back she was standing on top of the bed raising cane and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her so she took and dusted us both with the hickory and we was as much as two hours catching another 15 or 16 draft that metal some cub and they weren't the likeliest another because the first hall was the pick of the flock i never see a likely a lot of rats but and what that first hall was we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders and bugs and frogs and caterpillars and one thing or another and we like to get a hornet's nest but we didn't the family was at home we didn't give it right up but stayed with them as long as we could because we allowed we tire them out or they tire us out and they done it then we got alley campaign and rubbed on the places and it was pretty near all right again but couldn't set down convenient and so we went for the snakes and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house snakes and put them in a bag and put it in our room and by that time it was supper time and a rattling good honest day's work and hungry oh no i reckon not and there weren't a blessed snake up there when we went back we didn't have tied the sack and they worked out somehow and left but it didn't matter much because they was still on the premises somewhere so we judged we could get some of them again no there weren't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell you'd see them dripping from the rafters in places every now and then and they generally landed in your platter down the back of your neck and most of the time where you didn't want them well they was handsome and striped and there weren't no harm in a million of them but that never made no difference to aunt sally she despised snakes be the breed what they might and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it and every time one of them flopped down on her it didn't make no difference what she was doing she would just lay that work down and light out i never see such a woman and you could hear her whooped jericho you wouldn't get her to take a hold of one of them with the tongs and if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was a fire she disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there had never been no snakes created well after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week and sally weren't over it yet she weren't near over it when she was sitting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings it was very curious but tom said all women was just so he said they was made that way for some reason or other we got a licking every time one of our snakes coming her way and she allowed these licking's warring nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them i didn't mind the licking's because they didn't amount to nothing but i'm minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot but we got them laid in and all the other things and you never see a cabinist blossom as jim's was when they'd all swarm off the music and go for him jim didn't like the spiders and the spiders didn't like jim and so they'd lay for him and make it mind and warm for him and he said that between the rats and the snakes in the grindstone there weren't no room in bed for him scarcely and when there was a body couldn't sleep it was so lively and it was always lively he said because they never all slept at one time but took turn about so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch so he always had one gang under him in his way or another gang having a circus over him and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over he said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again not for a salary well by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape the shirt was sent in early in a pie and every time a rat bit jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh the pens was made the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone the bed leg was sought in too and we had ed up the sawdust and they give us a most amazing stomach ache we reckoned we was all going to die but didn't it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see and tom said the same but as i was saying we'd all got the work done now at last and we was all pretty much fagged out too but mainly jim the old man had rode a couple of times to the plantation below our leans to come and get their runaway nigger but hadn't got no answer because there weren't no such plantation so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st louis and new allans papers and when he mentioned the st louis ones it gave me the cold shivers and i see we had no time to lose so tom said now for the unanimous lettuce what's them i says warnings to the people that something is up sometimes it's done one way sometimes another but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle when louis the 60th was going to light out of the tularees a serving girl done it it's a very good way and so is the unanimous lettuce we'll use them both and it's usual for the president's mother to change clothes with him and she stays in and he slides out in her clothes we'll do that too but looky here tom what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up let them find out for themselves it's their lookout yes i know but you can't depend on them it's the way they've acted from the very start left us to do everything they're so confided and muddied headed they don't take notice of nothing at all so if we don't give them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape will go off perfectly flat won't amount to nothing won't be nothing to it well as for me tom that's the way i'd like shocks he says and looks disgusted so i says but i ain't gonna make no complaint anyway that suits you suits me what are you going to do about the serving girl you'll be her you slide in in the middle of the night and hook that yellow girl's frock why tom that'll make trouble next morning because of course she probably ain't got any but that one i know but you don't want it but 15 minutes to carry the unanimous letter and shove it under the front door all right then i'll do it but i could carry it just as handy in my own talks you wouldn't look like a servant girl then would you no but there won't be nobody to see what i look like anyway that ain't got nothing to do with it the thing for us to do is just to do our duty and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not ain't you got no principle at all all right i ain't saying nothing i'm the servant girl who's jim's mother i'm his mother i'll hook a gown from aunt sally well then you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and jim leaves not much i'll stuff jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise and jim will take the nigger woman's gown off of me and wear it and we'll all evade together when a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion it's always so when a king escapes for instance and the same with a king's son it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one so tom wrote the unanimous letter and i smooched the outer winches frock that night and put it on and shoved it under the front door the way tom told me to it said beware trouble is brewing keep a sharp look out unknown friend next night we stuck a picture which tom drawed in blood of a scald and crossbones on the front door and next night another one of a coffin on the back door i never see a family in such a sweat they couldn't have been worse scared if the place had been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air if a door banged and sally she jumped and said ouch if anything fell she jumped and said ouch if you happen to touch her when she weren't noticing she'd done the same she couldn't face no way and be satisfied because she allowed there was something behind her every time so she was always a whirling around sudden and saying ouch and before she got two thirds around she'd whirl back again and say it again and she was afraid to go to bed but she dashed and set up so the thing was working very well tom said he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory he said it showed it was done right so he said now for the grand bulge so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready and was wondering what we better do with it because we heard them say it's supper they was going to have a nigger and watch it both doors all night tom he went down the lightning rod to spy around and the nigger at the back door was asleep so he stuck it in the back of his neck and came back the letter said don't betray me i wish to be your friend there is a desperate gang to cut throats from over in the indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger tonight and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them i am one of the gang but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again and will betray the hellish design they will sneak down from the norther it's along the fence at midnight exact with the false key and go in the niggers cabin to get him i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger but instead of that i will buy like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow it all thence while so they are getting his chains loose you slip there and lock them in and can kill them at your leisure don't do anything but just the way i am telling you if you do they will suspicion something and raise hoop jamboree who i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing unknown friend end of chapter 39 chapter 40 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 40 fishing the vigilance committee a lively run jim advises a doctor we was feeling pretty good after breakfast and took my canoe and went over the river of fishing with a lunch and had a good time and took a look at the raft and found her all right and got home late to supper and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they were standing on and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was and never let on a word about the new letter but didn't need to because we know as much about it as anybody did and soon as we was half upstairs and her back was turned we slid further sell our cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed and got up about half past 11 and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch but says where's the butter i laid out a hunk of it i says on a piece of cornpone well you left it laid out then it ain't here we can get along without it i says we can get along with it too he says just you slide down seller and fetch it and then mows you right down the lightning rod and come along i'll go and stuff the straw into jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise and be ready to buy like a sheep and shove as soon as you get there so he went out and down seller went i the hunk of butter big as a person's fist was where i had left it so i took up the slab of cornpone with it on and blowed out my light and started upstairs very stealthy and got up to the main floor all right but here comes aunt sally with a candle and i clapped the truck in my hat and clapped my hat on my head and the next set she see me and she says you been down seller yes i'm what you've been doing down there nothing nothing norm well then what possessed you to go down there this time of night i don't know them you don't know don't add to me that way tom i want to know what you've been doing down there i hate been doing a single thing and sally i hope the gracious if i have i reckon she'd let me go now and as a general thing she would but i suppose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that weren't yards stick straight so she says very decided you just march into that setting room and stay there till i come you've been up to something you know business do and i'll lay i'll find out what it is before i'm done with you so she went away and i opened the door and walked into the setting room my but there was a crowd there 15 farmers and every one of them had a gun i was most powerful sick and slumped to a chair and sat down they were sitting around some of them talking a little in a low voice and all of them fidgety and uneasy but trying to look like they weren't but i know there was because they was always taking off their hats and putting them on and scratching their heads and changing their seats and fumbling with their buttons i weren't easy myself but i didn't take my hat off all the same i did wish aunt sally would come and get done with me and lick me if she wanted to and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing and what a thunder in heart its nest we got ourselves into so we could stop fooling around straight off and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us at last she come and begun to ask me questions but i couldn't answer them straight i didn't know which end to me was up because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperados and say it weren't but a few minutes to midnight and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal and here was auntie packing away at the questions and me is shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared and the place was getting hotter and hotter and the butter began to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears and pretty soon one of them says i'm for going and getting in the cabin first and right now and catching them when they come i'm most dropped and the streak of butter coming trickling down my forehead and aunt sally she said and turned white as a sheet and says for land's sake what is the matter with the child he's got the brain fever as sure as you're born and they're oozing out and everybody runs to see and she snatches off my hat and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter and she grabbed me and hugged me and says oh what a turn you did give me i'm glad and grateful i am and ain't no worse for lux against us and it never rains but it pours and when i see that truck i thought we lost you for i'm knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if dear dear why didn't you tell me that was what you'd been down there for i wouldn't have cared not clear out the back and don't let me see no more of you till morning i was upstairs in a second and down the lightning rod and another one and shinin' through the dark for the lean to i couldn't hardly get my words out i was so anxious but i told tom as quick as i could we must jump for it now and not a minute to lose the house was full of men yonder with guns his eyes just blazed and he said no is that so ain't it bully walk if it was to do over again i bet i could fetch 200 if we could put it off till hurry hurry i says where's jim right at your elbow if you reach out your arm you can touch him he's dressed and everything's ready now we'll slide out and give the sheep signal but then we heard the tramp of men come into the door and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock and heard a man say i told you we'd be too soon they haven't come the door is locked hey i'll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for him in the dark and kill him when they come and the rest scatter around a piece and listen if you can hear him coming so when they come but couldn't see us in the dark and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed but we got on to all right and out through the hole swift but soft jim first me next and tom last which was according to tom's orders now we was in the lean to and heard trampons close by outside so we crept to the door and tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack but couldn't make out nothing it was so dark and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further and when he nudged us jim must glide out first and him last so he said his ear to the crack and listened and listened and listened and the steps all scraping around out there all the time and at last he nudged us and we slid out and stooped down not breathing and not making the least noise and slipped stealthily toward the fence and engine file and got to it all right and me and jim over it but tom's bridges catched fast on a splinter on the top rail and then we hear the steps coming so we had to pull loose which snapped a splinter and made a noise and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out who's that answer or I'll shoot but we didn't answer we just unfurled our heels and shoved then there was a rush and a bang bang bang and the bullets fairly whizzed around us we heard them sing out here they all they've broke for the river after them boys and turned loose the dogs so here they come full tilt we could hear them because they wore boots and yelled but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell we was in the path to the mill and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into the bush and let them go by and then dropped in behind them they had all the dogs shut up so they wouldn't scare off the robbers but by this time somebody had left them loose and here they come making pow wow enough for a million but there was our dogs so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up and when they see it want nobody but us and no excitement to offer them they only just set howdy into a right ahead toward the shouting and clattering and then we upstream again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied and hopped in and pulled for dear life toward the middle of the river but didn't make no more noise than we was obliged to then we struck out easy and comfortable for the island where my raft was and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank till we were so far away the sounds got dim and died out and when we stepped on to the raft i says now old jim you're a free man again and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more in a more good job it was hook it is planned beautiful and it is done beautiful and they ain't nobody can get up a plan that's more mixed up and splendid than what that one was we was all glad as we could be but tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg when me and jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before it was hurting him considerable and bleeding so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him but he says give me the rags i can do it myself don't stop now don't fool around here and the evasion boomed along so handsome man the sweeps and set loose boys we done it elegant deed we did i wish we'd have had a handling of louis the 16th there wouldn't have been no son of saint louis ascended heaven wrote down in his biography no son we'd have whooped him over the border that's what we did done with him had done it as slick as nothing at all too man the sweeps man the sweeps but me and jim was consulting and thinking and after we thought a minute i says say it jim so he says well then this is the way it looked to me huck if it was him that is being sought free and one of the boys was to get shot would he say go on and save me never mind about a doctor for to save this one is that like ma's time sire would he say that you bet he wouldn't well then is jim going to say it no sir i don't budge a step out in this place doubt a doctor not if it's fall to you i know he was white inside and i reckon he'd say what he did say so it was all right now and i told time i was a going for a doctor he raised considerable row about it but me and jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself but we wouldn't let him then he give us a piece of his mind but it didn't do no good so when he sees me getting the canoe ready he says well then if you're bound to i'll tell you the way to do when you get to the village shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast and make him swear to be silent as the grave and put a purse full of gold in his hand and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywhere's in the dock and then fetch him here in the canoe in a roundabout way amongst the islands and search him and take his chalk away from him and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again it's the way they all do so i said i would and left and jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor come until he was gone again end of chapter 40 chapter 41 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slibrivox recording is in the public domain chapter 41 the doctor uncle Silas sister hotchkiss aunt sally in trouble the doctor was an old man a very nice kind looking old man when i got him up i told him me and my brother was over on spanish island hunting yesterday afternoon and camped on a piece of a raft we found and about midnight he must have kicked his gun in his dreams for it went off and shot him in the leg and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it nor let anybody know because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks who is your folks he says the phelps is down yonder oh he says and after a minute he says how'd you say he got shot he had a dream i says and it shot him singular dream he says so he lit up his lantern and got his saddlebags and we started and when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of her says she was big enough for one but didn't look pretty safe for two i says oh you needn't be feared sir she carried the three of us easy enough what three why me and sit and the guns that's what i meant oh he says but he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her and shook his head and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one but they was all locked and chained so he took my canoe and said for me to wait till he come back or i can hunt around further or maybe i'd better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if i wanted to but i said i didn't so i told him just how to find the raft and then he started i struck an idea pretty soon i says to myself suppose he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail as the saying is suppose it takes him three or four days what are we going to do lay around there till he lets the cat out the bag no sir i know what i'll do i'll wait and when he comes back if he says he's got to go anymore i'll get down there too if i swim and we'll take and tie him and keep him and shove off down the river and when tom's done with him we'll give him what it's worth or all we got and let him get ashore so then i crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep and next time i waked up the sun was away up over my head i shot out and went for the doctor's house but they told me he'd gone away in the night sometime or other and weren't back yet well thanks i that looks powerful bad for tom and i'll dig out for the island right now so away i shoved and turned the corner and nearly ran my head into uncle silo's stomach he says why tom where you been all this time you rascal i ain't been nowhere's i said only just hunting for the runaway nigger me and said why wherever did you go he says your aunt's been mighty uneasy she needed i says because we was all right we followed the men and the dogs but they outrun us and we lost them but we thought we heard them on the water so we got a canoe and took out after him and crossed over but couldn't find nothing of him so we cruised along up shore till we got kind of tied and beat out and tied up the canoe and went to sleep and never waked up till about an hour ago then we paddled over here to hear the news and sids at the post office to see what he can hear i'm a branching out to get something to eat for us but then we're going home so then we went to the post office to get said but just as i suspicion he weren't there so the old man he got a letter out of the office and we waited a while longer but said didn't come so the old man said come along let's sit footed home or canoe it when he got done fooling around but we would ride i couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for Sid but he said there weren't no use in it and i must come along and let aunt sally see we was all right when we got home aunt sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both and hugged me and give me one of them lichens of her and that don't amount to shucks and said she served Sid the same when he come and the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers wives to dinner and such another clack a body never heard oh mrs hotchkiss was the worst her tongue was going all the time she says well sister felps i ransacked that air cabin over there and i believe the nigger was crazy i says to sister dremel didn't i sister dremel sigh he's crazy says i them's the very words i said you all heard me he's crazy says i everything shows it says i look at that air grindstone says i want to tell mead's any creatures in his right minds are going to scrabble all the crazy things onto a grindstone says i here's such and such a person busted his heart and here so-and-so pegged along for 37 year and all that natural son of louis somebody and such everlasting rubbish he's plumb crazy says i it's what i says in the first place it's what i says in the middle and it's what i says last and all the time the niggers crazy crazies and never could either says i and look at that air ladder made out of rags sister hotchkiss says oh mrs dremel what in the name of goodness could he ever wonder the very words i was saying no longer ago in this minute to sister other back and she'll tell you so herself she she look at that the air rag ladder she she and then i says look look at it says i what could he have wanted of it says i she she sister hotchiss she she but how in the nation they ever get that grindstone in there anyway and who dug that air hole and my very words brer penrod i was saying past that air assessor in molasses won't you i was the same the sister done left just this minute how did they get that grindstone in there says i without help mind you without help that's where it is don't tell me says i there was help says i and there was a plenty help too says i there's been a dozen of help in that nigger and i lay out skin every last nigger on this place but i'd find out who done it says i moreover says i a dozen says you far they couldn't have done everything that's been done look at them case knives saws and things hot teeth they must have been look at that bed legs sawed off with them a week's work for six men look at that nigger made out in the straw in the bed and look at you may well say it prayer higher tire i just was a saying to brefels his own self says he what do you think of it sister hotchiss says he think of what brefels says i think of that bed legs sawed off that away says he think of it says i i lay it never sawed itself off says i somebody sawed it off says i that's my opinion take it or leave it it may be no count says i but such as it's my opinion says i and if anybody can start a better one says i let him do it says i that's all our sister sister done left says i why dog my cats they must have been a house full of niggers in there ever not for four weeks to have done all that work sister felps look at that shirt every last inch of it keep it over with the secret african writing done with blood must have been a raft of them at it right along all the time almost why i give two dollars to have it read to me and as far as the niggers that wrote it allow i taken lash him till people to help him brother marbles well i reckon you think so if you'd have been in this house for a while back why they stole everything they could lay their hands on and we are watching all the time on you they stole that shirt right off the line and that's for that sheet they made the rag letter out of they ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that and flour and candles and candlesticks and spoons and the old woman pan at most a thousand things that i just remember now and my new calico dress and me and silas and my sit and tom on the constant watch day and night as i was telling you and not a one of us could catch hide nor hand nor sight nor sound to them and here at the last minute low and behold you they slides right in under our noses and fools us and not only fools us but the engine territory robbers too and actually gets away with that nigga safe and sound and that with 16 men and 22 dogs right on their very heels at the very time i tell you it just bangs anything i ever heard of why spirits couldn't have done better and been no smarter and i reckon they must have been spirits because you know our dogs and they know better well them dogs never even got on the track of one of them you explain that to me if you can any of you well it does beat laws alive i never so help me i wouldn't to be house thieves as well as goodness gracious aches i'd have been a fear to live in such a fray to live why i was that scared i'd ask it hard to go to bed or get up or lay down or sat down sister ridgeway why they'd steal the very why goodness sakes you can guess what kind of a fluster i was in by the time midnight come last night i hope the gracious if i weren't afraid they'd steal some of the family i was just to that pass i didn't have no reason and faculties no more it looks foolish enough now in the daytime but i says to myself there's my two poor boys asleep way upstairs in that lonesome room and i declare the goodness i was that uneasy that i crept up there and locked them in i did and anybody would because you know when you get scared that way and it keeps running on and getting worse and worse all the time and your wits get to addling and you get to doing all sorts of wild things and by and by you think to yourself supposing i was a boy i was a way up there and the door ain't locked and you she stopped looking kind of wondering and then she turns her head around slow and when her eye lit on me i got up and took a walk says i to myself i can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if i go out to one side and study over it a little so i done it but i doesn't go for or she to send for me and when it was late in the day the people all went and then i come in and told her the noise and shootin wait up me and said and to do it was locked and we wanted to see the fun so we went down the lightning rod and both of us got hurt a little and we didn't never want to try that no more and then i went on and told her all what i told uncle silas before and then she said she'd forgive us maybe it was all right enough anyway and about what a body might expect the boys for all boys were a pretty harem scare them a lot as free as she could see and so as long as no harm hadn't come of it she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still set a fretting over what was past and done so then she kissed me and patted me on the head and dropped into a kind of a brown study and pretty soon jumps up and says what laws of mercy is most night and said not come yet what has become of that boy i see my chance so i skips up and says i'll run right up the town and get him i says no you won't she says you stay right where you are ones enough to be lost at a time if he ain't here to supper your uncle will go well he want that supper so right after supper uncle went he come back about 10 a little bit uneasy hadn't run across tom's track aunt sally was a good deal uneasy but uncle silas he said there weren't no occasion to be boys will be boys he said and you'll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right so she had to be satisfied but she said she set up for him a while anyway and keep a light burning so he could see it and then when i went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle and tucked me in and mothered me so good i felt mean and like i couldn't look her in the face and she sat down on the bed and talked with me a long time and said what a splendid boy said was and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him and kept asking me every now and then if i reckoned he could have got lost or hurt or maybe drowned it and might be lying at this minute somewhere suffering or dead and she not by him to help him and so the tears would drip down silent and i would tell her that said was all right and would be home in the morning sure and she would squeeze my hand or maybe kiss me and tell me to say it again and keep on saying it because it done her good and she was in so much trouble and when she was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle and says the door ain't going to be locked tom and there's the window in the rod but you'll be good won't you and you won't go for my sake law knows i wanted to go bad enough to see about tom and was all intended to go but after that i wouldn't have went not for kingdoms but she was on my mind and tom was on my mind so i slept very restless and twice i went down the rod away in the night and slipped around front and see her sitting there by her candle in the window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them and i wish i could do something for her but i couldn't only to swear that i wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her anymore and the third time i waked up at dawn and slid down and she was there yet and her candle was most out and her old gray head was resting on her hand and she was asleep end of chapter 41 chapter 42 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 42 tom saw your wounded the doctor's story tom confesses aunt poly arrives hand out them letters the old man was uptown again before breakfast but couldn't get no track of tom and both of them sat at the table thinking and not saying nothing and looking mournful and their coffee getting cold and not eating anything and by and by the old man says did i give you the letter what letter the one i got yesterday out of the post office no you didn't give me no letter well i must have forgot it so he rummaged his pockets and then went off somewheres where he laid it down and fetched it and gave it to her and she says why it's from st. petersburg it's from sis i allowed another walk would do me good but i couldn't stir but before she could break it open she dropped it and run for she see something and so did i it was tom saw you on a mattress and that old doctor and jim in her calico dress with his hands tied behind him and a lot of people i hid the letter behind the first thing they come handy and rushed she flung herself at tom crying and says oh he's dead he's dead i know he's dead and tom he turned his head a little and muttered something or rather which showed he weren't in his right mind then she flung up her hands and said he's alive thank god that's enough and she snatched a kiss of him and flew for the house to get the bed ready and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else as fast as her tongue would go every jump of the way i followed the men to see what they was going to do with jim and the old doctor and uncle silas followed after tom into the house the men was very huffy and some of them wanted to hang jim for an example to all the other niggers there so they wouldn't be trying to run away like jim done and making such a raft of trouble and keeping the whole family scared most to death for days and nights but the other said don't do it it wouldn't answer at all he ate our nigger and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him sure so that cooled him down a little because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that ain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him they cost jim considerable though and give him a cuff or two side of the head once in a while but jim never said nothing and he never let on to know me and they took him to the same cabin and put his own clothes on him and chained him again and not to know bed leg this time but to a big staple drove into the bottom log and changed his hands too and both legs and said he weren't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this till his owner come or he was sold at auction because he didn't come in a certain length of time and filled up our hole and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night and the bulldog tied to the door in the daytime and about this time that it was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of general goodbye cussing and then the old doctor comes and takes a look and says don't be no rougher on him than you're a bleach too because he ain't a bad nigger when i got to where i found the boy i could see i couldn't cut the bullet out without some help and he warned in no condition for me to leave to go and get help and he got a little worse and a little worse and after a long time he went out of his head and wouldn't let me come and now him anymore and said if i chalked his rap he killed me and no into wild foolishness like that and i see i couldn't do anything at all with him and so i says i got to have help somehow and the minute i says it i'll cross this nigger from somewhere and says he'll help and he done it too and done it very well of course i judged he must be a runaway nigger and there i was and there i had to stick right straight along and all the rest of the day and all night it was a fix i tell you i had a couple of patients with the chills and of course i'd like to run up the town and see them but i dastard because the nigger might get away and then i'd be to blame and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail so there i had to stick plum until daylight this morning and i never see a nigger that was a better nurse not faithful and yet he was risking his freedom to do it and all tired out too and i see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately i like the nigger for that i'll tell you gentlemen a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars and kind treatment too i had everything i needed and the boy was doing as well there as he would have done at home better maybe because it was so quiet but there i was with both of them on my hands and there i had to stick till about dawn this morning then some men in a skiff come by and as good luck would have it the nigger was sitting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep so i motioned them in quiet and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about and we never had no trouble and the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep too we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on and told her over very nice and quiet and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start he ain't no bad nigger gentlemen that's what i think about him somebody says well it sounds very good doctor i'm a bleach to say then the other softened up a little too and i was might have thankful to that old doctor for doing jim that good turn and i was glad it was according to my judgment of him too because i thought he had a good heart in him and he was a good man the first time i see him then they all agreed that jim had acted very well and was deserving to have some notice took of it and reward so every one of them promised right out and hearty that they wouldn't cuss him no more then they come out and locked him up i hope they was going to say he could have one or two of the change took off because they was rotten heavy or could have meat and greens with his bread and water but they didn't think of it and i reckon it weren't best for me to mix in but i judged i'd get the doctor's yarn to aunt sally somehow or other as soon as i'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me explanations i mean how i forgot to mention about said being shot when i was telling how him and me put in that dreaded night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger but i had plenty time aunt sally she stuck to the sick room all day and all night and every time i see aqua silas mooning around i dodged him next morning i heard tom was a good deal better and they said aunt sally was going to get a nap so i slips to the sick room and if i found him awake i reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash but he was sleeping and sleeping very peaceful too and pale not five face the way he was when he come so i sat down and laid for him to wake in about half an hour aunt sally comes gliding in and there it was up a stump again she motioned me to be still and sat down by me and begun to whisper and said we could all be joyful now because all the symptoms was first rate and he'd been sleeping like that forever so long and looking better and peacefuler all the time and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind so we sat there watching and by and by he stirs a bit and opened his eyes very natural and takes a look and says hello what i'm at home how's that where's the raft it's all right i says and jim the same i says but couldn't say it pretty brash but he never noticed but says good splendid now we're all right and safe did you tell auntie i was going to say yes but she chipped in and says about what said why about the way the whole thing was done what whole thing why the whole thing there ain't but one how we set the runaway nigger free me and tom good land set the run what is the child talking about dear dear out of his head again no i ain't out of my head i know all what i'm talking about we did set him free me and tom we laid out to do it and we done it and we done it elegant too he got a start and she never checked him up just sat and stared and stared and let him clip along and i see it weren't no use for me to put in why auntie it cost us a power of work weeks of it hours and hours every night while you was all asleep and we had to steal candles and the sheet and the shirt and your dress and spoons and tin plates and case knives and the warming pan and the grindstone and flour oh and just no end of things and you can't think what work it was to make the saws and pens and inscriptions and one thing or another and you can't they have the fun it was and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things and unanimous letters from the robbers and get up and down the lightning rod and dig the hole into the cabin and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket mercy sakes and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on for a company for jim and then you kept time here so long with the butter in this hat that you had to come near spilling the whole business because the men come before we was out of the cabin and we had to rush and they hurt us and let drive at us and i got my share and we dodged out of the path and let them go by and with the dogs come they weren't interested in us but went for the most noise we got our canoe and made for the raft and was all safe and jim was a free man and we done it all by ourselves and wasn't it bully anti well i never heard the likes of it in all my barn days so it was you you little rap scallions that's been making all this trouble and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us almost to death i have a good notion as ever i had in my life to take it out of you this very minute to think here i've been night after night hey you just get well once you young scamp and i'll lay out tan the old harry out of both of you but um he was so proud and joyful he just couldn't hold in and his tongue just went it she are clipping in and spitting fire all along and both of them going it at once like a cat convention and she says well you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now for mind i tell you if i catch you meddling with him again meddling with who tom says dropping his smile and looking surprised with who why the runaway nigger of course who'd you reckon tom looks at me very grave and says tom didn't you just tell me he was all right hasn't he got away him says aunt sally the runaway nigger de he hasn't they've got him back safe and sound and he's in that cabin again on bread and water and loaded down with change till he's claimed or sold tom rose square up in the bed with his eye hot and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills and sings out to me they ain't no right to shut him up shove and don't you lose a minute turn him loose he ain't no slave he's as free as any critter that walks this earth what does the child mean mean every word i say and sally and if somebody don't go i'll go i've known him all his life and so his time there oh miss Watson died two months ago and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river and said so and she set him free in her will then what on earth did you want to set him free for seeing he was already free well that is the question i must say and just like women why i wanted the adventure of it and out of way to neck deep in blood to goodness alive and poly if she weren't standing right there just inside the door looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie i wish i may never and sally jumped for her and most hugged the head off of her and cried over and i found a good enough place for me under the bed for it was getting pretty sultry for us seemed to me and i peeped out and in a little while tom's aunt poly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at tom over her spectacles kind of grinding him into the earth you know and then she says yes you better turn your head away i would if i was you tom oh deary me says aunt sally is he changed so why that ain't tom it's said tom's tom's why where is tom he was here a minute ago you mean where's huck fin that's what you mean i reckon i ain't raised such a scamp as my time all these years not to know him when i see him that would be a pretty howdy do come out from under that bed huck fin so i done it but not feeling brash aunt sally she was one of the mixed uppest looking persons i ever see except one and that was uncle silas when he come in and they told it all to him it kind of made him drunk as you may say and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day and preached a prayer meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling reputation because the oldest man in the world couldn't have understood it so tom's aunt poly she told all about who i was and what and i had to up and tell how i was in such a tight place that when mrs felps took me for tom sawyer she chipped in and says oh go on and call me aunt sally i'm used to it now and take no need to change that when aunt sally took me for tom sawyer i had to stand it there weren't no other way and i knowed he wouldn't mind because it would be nuts for him being a mystery and he'd make an adventure out of it and be perfectly satisfied and so it turned out and he let on to be said and make things as soft as he could for me and his aunt poly she said tom was right about old miss watson setting jim free in her will and so sure enough tom sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and baba to set a free nigga free and i could never understand before until that minute and that talk how he could help a body set a nigga free with his bringing up well aunt poly she said that when aunt sally wrote to her that tom and said had come all right and safe she says to herself look at that now i might have expected it letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him so now i got to go in traipse all the way down the river 1100 mile and find out what that creatures up to this time as long as i couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it why i never heard nothing from you says aunt sally well i wonder why i wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by sit being here well i never got him sis aunt poly she turns around slow and severe and says you tom well what he says kind of pettish don't you want me you impudent thing hand out them letters what letters them letters i'd be bound if i have to take a hold of you i'll they're in the trunk there now and they're just the same as they was when i got them out of the office i ain't looked into them i ain't touched them but i know they'd make trouble and i thought if you weren't in no hurry i'd well you do need skinning there ain't no mistake about it and i wrote another one to tell you i was coming i suppose he know it come yesterday i ain't ready yet but it's all right i've got that one i wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't but i reckon maybe it was just a safe to not to so i never said nothing end of chapter 42 chapter 43 of the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain this libre vox recording is in the public domain chapter 43 the last out of bondage paying the captive yours truly huck finn the first time i catched tom private i asked him what was his idea time of the evasion what it was he planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before and he says what he had planned in his head from the start if we got jim out all safe was for us to run him down the river on the raft and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river and then tell him about his being free and take him back up home on a steamboat in style and pay him for his lost time and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band and then he would be a hero and so would we but i reckoned it was about as well the way it was we had jim out of the chains in no time and when aunt poly and uncle silas and aunt sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse tom they made a heap of fuss over him and fixed him up prime and give him all he wanted to eat at a good time and nothing to do and we had him up to the sick room and had a high talk and tom gave jim $40 for being a prisoner for us so patient and doing it up so good and jim was pleased most of the death and busted out and says dan i hope what i tell you what i tell you down jackson island i told you i got a harry bresson woods to sign on it and i told you i've been rich once and go on to be rich again and it's come true and here it is dad now don't talk to me signs is signs mind i tell you and i know just as well that i is going to be rich again as i stand in here this minute and then tom he talked along and talked along and says let's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit and go for howling adventures amongst the engines over in the territory for a couple of weeks or two and i says all right that suits me but i ain't got no money for to buy the outfit and i reckon i couldn't get none from home because it's likely pap's been back before now and got it all away from judge that you're and drunk it up no he hate tom says it's all there yet six thousand dollars and more and your pap hate ever been back since hadn't when i come away anyhow jim says kind of solemn he ain't coming back no mo hook i says why jim never mind why hook but he ain't coming back no mo but i kept at him and so at last he says don't you remember the house that was floating down the river and there was a man in there keep it up and i went in and unkeven him and didn't let you come in well then you can get your money when y'all wants it because that was him tom's most well now got his bullet around his neck on a watch card for a watch and is always seeing what time it is and so there ain't nothing more to write about and i am rotten glad of it because if i didn't know what trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't have tackled it and ain't going to no more but i reckon i got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest because aunt sally she's going to adopt me and civilize me and i can't stand it i've been there before the end yours truly hook fin end of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this book recorded by phil shenna fair january of 2017