Civilizing Huck.—Miss Watson.—Tom Sawyer Waits.
CHAPTER II.
The Boys Escape Jim.—Torn Sawyer’s Gang.—Deep-laid Plans.
CHAPTER III.
A Good Going-over.—Grace Triumphant.—“One of Tom Sawyers’s Lies”.
CHAPTER IV.
Huck and the Judge.—Superstition.
CHAPTER V.
Huck’s Father.—The Fond Parent.—Reform.
CHAPTER VI.
He Went for Judge Thatcher.—Huck Decided to Leave.—Political
Economy.—Thrashing Around.
CHAPTER VII.
Laying for Him.—Locked in the Cabin.—Sinking the Body.—Resting.
CHAPTER VIII.
Sleeping in the Woods.—Raising the Dead.—Exploring the Island.—Finding
Jim.—Jim’s Escape.—Signs.—Balum.
CHAPTER IX.
The Cave.—The Floating House.
CHAPTER X.
The Find.—Old Hank Bunker.—In Disguise.
CHAPTER XI.
Huck and the Woman.—The Search.—Prevarication.—Going to Goshen.
CHAPTER XII.
Slow Navigation.—Borrowing Things.—Boarding the Wreck.—The
Plotters.—Hunting for the Boat.
CHAPTER XIII.
Escaping from the Wreck.—The Watchman.—Sinking.
CHAPTER XIV.
A General Good Time.—The Harem.—French.
CHAPTER XV.
Huck Loses the Raft.—In the Fog.—Huck Finds the Raft.—Trash.
CHAPTER XVI.
Expectation.—A White Lie.—Floating Currency.—Running by Cairo.—Swimming
Ashore.
CHAPTER XVII.
An Evening Call.—The Farm in Arkansaw.—Interior Decorations.—Stephen
Dowling Bots.—Poetical Effusions.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Col. Grangerford.—Aristocracy.—Feuds.—The Testament.—Recovering the
Raft.—The Wood—pile.—Pork and Cabbage.
CHAPTER XIX.
Tying Up Day—times.—An Astronomical Theory.—Running a Temperance
Revival.—The Duke of Bridgewater.—The Troubles of Royalty.
CHAPTER XX.
Huck Explains.—Laying Out a Campaign.—Working the Camp—meeting.—A
Pirate at the Camp—meeting.—The Duke as a Printer.
CHAPTER XXI.
Sword Exercise.—Hamlet’s Soliloquy.—They Loafed Around Town.—A Lazy
Town.—Old Boggs.—Dead.
CHAPTER XXII.
Sherburn.—Attending the Circus.—Intoxication in the Ring.—The Thrilling
Tragedy.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Sold.—Royal Comparisons.—Jim Gets Home-sick.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Jim in Royal Robes.—They Take a Passenger.—Getting Information.—Family
Grief.
CHAPTER XXV.
Is It Them?—Singing the “Doxologer.”—Awful Square—Funeral Orgies.—A Bad
Investment .
CHAPTER XXVI.
A Pious King.—The King’s Clergy.—She Asked His Pardon.—Hiding in the
Room.—Huck Takes the Money.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Funeral.—Satisfying Curiosity.—Suspicious of Huck,—Quick Sales and
Small.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Trip to England.—“The Brute!”—Mary Jane Decides to Leave.—Huck
Parting with Mary Jane.—Mumps.—The Opposition Line.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Contested Relationship.—The King Explains the Loss.—A Question of
Handwriting.—Digging up the Corpse.—Huck Escapes.
CHAPTER XXX.
The King Went for Him.—A Royal Row.—Powerful Mellow.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Ominous Plans.—News from Jim.—Old Recollections.—A Sheep
Story.—Valuable Information.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Still and Sunday—like.—Mistaken Identity.—Up a Stump.—In a Dilemma.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A Nigger Stealer.—Southern Hospitality.—A Pretty Long Blessing.—Tar and
Feathers.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Hut by the Ash Hopper.—Outrageous.—Climbing the Lightning
Rod.—Troubled with Witches.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Escaping Properly.—Dark Schemes.—Discrimination in Stealing.—A Deep
Hole.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Lightning Rod.—His Level Best.—A Bequest to Posterity.—A High
Figure.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Last Shirt.—Mooning Around.—Sailing Orders.—The Witch Pie.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The Coat of Arms.—A Skilled Superintendent.—Unpleasant Glory.—A Tearful
Subject.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Rats.—Lively Bed—fellows.—The Straw Dummy.
CHAPTER XL.
Fishing.—The Vigilance Committee.—A Lively Run.—Jim Advises a Doctor.
CHAPTER XLI.
The Doctor.—Uncle Silas.—Sister Hotchkiss.—Aunt Sally in Trouble.
CHAPTER XLII.
Tom Sawyer Wounded.—The Doctor’s Story.—Tom Confesses.—Aunt Polly
Arrives.—Hand Out Them Letters.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
Out of Bondage.—Paying the Captive.—Yours Truly, Huck Finn.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Widows
Moses and the “Bulrushers”
Miss Watson
Huck Stealing Away
They Tip-toed Along
Jim
Tom Sawyer’s Band of Robbers
Huck Creeps into his Window
Miss Watson’s Lecture
The Robbers Dispersed
Rubbing the Lamp
! ! ! !
Judge Thatcher surprised
Jim Listening
“Pap”
Huck and his Father
Reforming the Drunkard
Falling from Grace
Getting out of the Way
Solid Comfort
Thinking it Over
Raising a Howl
“Git Up”
The Shanty
Shooting the Pig
Taking a Rest
In the Woods
Watching the Boat
Discovering the Camp Fire
Jim and the Ghost
Misto Bradish’s Nigger
Exploring the Cave
In the Cave
Jim sees a Dead Man
They Found Eight Dollars
Jim and the Snake
Old Hank Bunker
“A Fair Fit”
“Come In”
“Him and another Man”
She puts up a Snack
“Hump Yourself”
On the Raft
He sometimes Lifted a Chicken
“Please don’t, Bill”
“It ain’t Good Morals”
“Oh! Lordy, Lordy!”
In a Fix
“Hello, What’s Up?”
The Wreck
We turned in and Slept
Turning over the Truck
Solomon and his Million Wives
The story of “Sollermun”
“We Would Sell the Raft”
Among the Snags
Asleep on the Raft
“Something being Raftsman”
“Boy, that’s a Lie”
“Here I is, Huck”
Climbing up the Bank
“Who’s There?”
“Buck”
“It made Her look Spidery”
“They got him out and emptied Him”
The House
Col. Grangerford
Young Harney Shepherdson
Miss Charlotte
“And asked me if I Liked Her”
“Behind the Wood-pile”
Hiding Day-times
“And Dogs a-Coming”
“By rights I am a Duke!”
“I am the Late Dauphin”
Tail Piece
On the Raft
The King as Juliet
“Courting on the Sly”
“A Pirate for Thirty Years”
Another little Job
Practizing
Hamlet’s Soliloquy
“Gimme a Chaw”
A Little Monthly Drunk
The Death of Boggs
Sherburn steps out
A Dead Head
He shed Seventeen Suits
Tragedy
Their Pockets Bulged
Henry the Eighth in Boston Harbor
Harmless
Adolphus
He fairly emptied that Young Fellow
“Alas, our Poor Brother”
“You Bet it is”
Leaking
Making up the “Deffisit”
Going for him
The Doctor
The Bag of Money
The Cubby
Supper with the Hare-Lip
Honest Injun
The Duke looks under the Bed
Huck takes the Money
A Crack in the Dining-room Door
The Undertaker
“He had a Rat!”
“Was you in my Room?”
Jawing
In Trouble
Indignation
How to Find Them
He Wrote
Hannah with the Mumps
The Auction
The True Brothers
The Doctor leads Huck
The Duke Wrote
“Gentlemen, Gentlemen!”
“Jim Lit Out”
The King shakes Huck
The Duke went for Him
Spanish Moss
“Who Nailed Him?”
Thinking
He gave him Ten Cents
Striking for the Back Country
Still and Sunday-like
She hugged him tight
“Who do you reckon it is?”
“It was Tom Sawyer”
“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”
A pretty long Blessing
Traveling By Rail
Vittles
A Simple Job
Witches
Getting Wood
One of the Best Authorities
The Breakfast-Horn
Smouching the Knives
Going down the Lightning-Rod
Stealing spoons
Tom advises a Witch Pie
The Rubbage-Pile
“Missus, dey’s a Sheet Gone”
In a Tearing Way
One of his Ancestors
Jim’s Coat of Arms
A Tough Job
Buttons on their Tails
Irrigation
Keeping off Dull Times
Sawdust Diet
Trouble is Brewing
Fishing
Every one had a Gun
Tom caught on a Splinter
Jim advises a Doctor
The Doctor
Uncle Silas in Danger
Old Mrs. Hotchkiss
Aunt Sally talks to Huck
Tom Sawyer wounded
The Doctor speaks for Jim
Tom rose square up in Bed
“Hand out them Letters”
Out of Bondage
Tom’s Liberality
Yours Truly
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.
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.