ADVENTURES
OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
By
Mark Twain
NOTICE
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 Ordnance.
EXPLANATORY
IN
this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro
dialect;
the extremest form of the backwoods 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, and 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.
ADVENTURES
OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to fifty years ago
CHAPTER
I.
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 never
seen
anybody but lied 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 apiece--all gold. It was an
awful sight of money when
it
was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he
took it and put it out at
interest,
and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece 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 sivilize 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-hogshead again,
and
was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer
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 the 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
victuals,
though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--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 kind of
swaps
around, and the things go better.
After
supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers,
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 in 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 is just the
way with some people. They
get
down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was
a-bothering
about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody,
being
gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault 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 middling hard for about an hour, and then
the
widow made her ease up. I couldn't 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; 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, and she went on and told me all about the good
place. She said all a 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 it 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 set 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, who-whooing
about
somebody that was dead, and a whippowill 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
down-hearted
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 of my hair with a thread to
keep
witches away. But I hadn't no
confidence. You do that when you've
lost
a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the
door,
but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad
luck
when you'd killed a spider.
I
set down again, a-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 away 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 a stirring. I set still and
listened. Directly I could
just
barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I,
"me-yow!
me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and
scrambled
out of the window on to 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.
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