The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - 02

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.

---

CHAPTER IV.

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, and 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 hookey, 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 warn’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 woods 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 as 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 warn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed 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 clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board 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 stile 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 shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody. I was at
Judge Thatcher’s 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, nuther.
I want you to take it; I want to give it to you—the six
thousand and 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:

“Oho-o! 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 it, and left.

Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist,
which had been 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 nohow, 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 would 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, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a
hair-ball. Well, I knowed a 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:

“Yo’ ole father doan’ know yit what he’s a-gwyne
to do. Sometimes he spec he’ll go ’way, en den agin he
spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is to res’ easy en
let de ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hoverin’
roun’ ’bout him. One uv ’em is white en shiny, en
t’other one is black. De white one gits him to go right a little
while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can’t
tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las’. But you is
all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo’ life,
en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you
gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.
Dey’s two gals flyin’ ’bout you in yo’ life.
One uv ’em’s light en t’other one is dark. One is
rich en t’other is po’. You’s gwyne to marry de po’
one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep ’way fum
de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk, ’kase it’s
down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap his
own self!

---

CHAPTER V.

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was.
I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much.
I reckoned 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 warn’t scared of him worth bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled
and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like
he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers. There warn’t no color in his face, where
his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a
white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl—a
tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes—just
rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other 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 set 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 clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me
all over. By and by he says:

“Starchy clothes—very. 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 o’ your lip,” says he.
"You’ve put on considerable many frills since I 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’n 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 hifalut’n foolishness, hey?—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 looky here—you
drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a
boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n
what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school
again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t
write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn’t
before they died. I can’t; and here you’re
a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it—you
hear? Say, lemme hear you read.”

I took up a book and begun 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 looky here; you stop that putting 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 yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and
says:

“What’s this?”

“It’s something they give me for learning my lessons good.”

He tore it up, and says:

“I’ll give you something better—I’ll give you a
cowhide.”

He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:

“Ain’t you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed;
and bedclothes; and a look’n’-glass; and a piece of carpet on
the floor—and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the
tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet I’ll take some o’
these frills out o’ you before I’m done with you. Why, there
ain’t no end to your airs—they say you’re rich. Hey?—how’s
that?”

“They lie—that’s how.”

“Looky here—mind how you talk to me; I’m a-standing
about all I can stand now—so don’t gimme no sass. I’ve
been in town two days, and I hain’t heard nothing but about you bein’
rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That’s
why I come. You git me that money to-morrow—I want it.”

“I hain’t got no money.”

“It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it. You
git it. I want it.”

“I hain’t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge
Thatcher; 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 hain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to—”

“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
down town to get some whisky; 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 putting on frills and trying 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
bullyragged 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
druther 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’d
cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn’t raise some money
for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took
it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and
carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most
midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had 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 was a-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 was a-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;
pap 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 says:

“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’s started in on a new life,
and’ll 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 afeard.”

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 some time he
got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a
stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back
again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again,
drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two
places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.
And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take
soundings 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.

---

CHAPTER VI.

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 outrun 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. That law
trial was a slow business—appeared like they warn’t ever going
to get started on it; so every now and then I’d borrow two or three
dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every
time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain
around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was
just suited—this kind of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow’s 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
mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody
and there warn’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 nights. He had a gun which he had stole, 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 whisky, and fetched it home and
got drunk and had a good time, and licked 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 pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t long after
that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it—all but the
cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and
fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and
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 widow’s, 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 to
it again because pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good
times up in the woods there, take it all around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t
stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too,
and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days.
It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drownded, 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 warn’t a window to it big enough for a dog to get
through. I couldn’t get up the chimbly; it was too narrow.
The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap 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