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THE 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
*** 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 *** 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.