ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN Chapter-3

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

CHAPTER III.

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

behave awhile 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 warn't so.  I tried it.

Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.  It warn'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, one day, 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 set 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 Winn get back the money he lost on pork?  Why can't the widow get

back her silver snuffbox that was stole?  Why can't Miss Watson fat up?

No, says I to my self, 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 any more, but just let it go.  Sometimes the

widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a

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 warn't no help for

him any more.  I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the

widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to

be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant,

and so kind of low-down and ornery.

Pap 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 whale 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 drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people

said.  They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just

his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like

pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been

in the water so long it warn'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 warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of

something.  I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his

back, but on his face.  So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a

woman dressed up in a 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 hived any of them.  Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he

called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and

powwow 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 blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was

the 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 "sumter"

mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard

of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called

it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.  He said we must slick up our

swords and guns, and get ready.  He never could go after even a

turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it,

though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them

till you rotted, and then they warn'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 warn't no

Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn'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 hollow; but we

never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a

rag doll, and Jo 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

di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer 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 warn'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 numskull.

"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 around as a church."

"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the

other crowd then?"

"How 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 a-ripping around and the smoke

a-rolling, and everything they're 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?"

"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.  They belong to whoever rubs the

lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says.  If he tells

them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full

of chewing-gum, or whatever you 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 they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping

the palace themselves 'stead 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 reckoned 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 till I sweat like

an Injun, calculating to build a 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 reckoned he believed in the A-rabs

and the elephants, but as for me I think different.  It had all the marks

of a Sunday-school.