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Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
       Tom Sawyer's Comrade

Author: Mark Twain

Release Date: May 10, 2010 [EBook #32325]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN ***




Produced by James Adcock. Special thanks to The Internet
Archive: American Libraries.

Portrait of the Author

S. L. Clemens

S. L. Clemens

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

(TOM SAWYER'S COMRADE)

SCENE: The Mississippi Valley
TIME: Forty to Fifty Years Ago

BY Mark Twain

ILLUSTRATED

NEW EDITION FROM NEW PLATES

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

———

Books by

MARK TWAIN

ST. JOAN OF ARC
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
ROUGHING IT
THE GILDED AGE
A TRAMP ABROAD
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT THE COURT OF
KING ARTHUR
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
THE $30,000 BEQUEST
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
TOM SAWYER ABROAD
WHAT IS MAN?
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
ADAM'S DIARY
A DOG'S TALE
A DOUBLE-BARRELED DETECTIVE STORY
EDITORIAL WILD OATS
EVE'S DIARY
IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLY AND
OTHER ESSAYS
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
CAPT. STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN
A HORSE'S TALE
THE JUMPING FROG
THE £1,000,000 BANK-NOTE
TRAVELS AT HOME
TRAVELS IN HISTORY
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

———

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

[Established 1817]

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
———
Copyright, 1884. by Samuel L. Clemens
———
Copyright. 1896 and 1899. by Harper & Brothers
———
Copyright. 1912, by Clara Gabrilowitsch
———
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Notice

Explanatory

I. I Discover Moses and the Bulrushers

II. Our Gang's Dark Oath

III. We Ambuscade the A-rabs

IV. The Hair-ball Oracle

V. Pap Starts in on a New Life

VI. Pap Struggles with the Death Angel

VII. I Fool Pap and Get Away

VIII. I Spare Miss Watson's Jim

IX. The House of Death Floats By

X. What Comes of Handlin' Snake-skin

XI. They're After Us!

XII. "Better Let Blame Well Alone"

XIII. Honest Loot from the "Walter Scott"

XIV. Was Solomon Wise?

XV. Fooling Poor Old Jim

XVI. The Rattlesnake-skin Does Its Work

XVII. The Grangerfords Take Me In

XVIII. Why Harney Rode Away for His Hat

XIX. The Duke and the Dauphin Come Aboard

XX. What Royalty Did to Parkville

XXI. An Arkansaw Difficulty

XXII. Why the Lynching Bee Failed

XXIII. The Orneriness of Kings

XXIV. The King Turns Parson

XXV. All Full of Tears and Flapdoodle

XXVI. I Steal the King's Plunder

XXVII. Dead Peter has His Gold

XXVIII. Overreaching Don't Pay

XXIX. I Light Out in the Storm

XXX. The Gold Saves the Thieves

XXXI. You Can't Pray a Lie

XXXII. I Have a New Name

XXXIII. The Pitiful Ending of Royalty

XXXIV. We Cheer Up Jim

XXXV. Dark, Deep-laid Plans

XXXVI. Trying to Help Jim

XXXVII. Jim Gets His Witch-pie

XXXVIII. "Here a Captive Heart Busted"

XXXIX. Tom Writes Nonnamous Letters

XL. A Mixed-up and Splendid Rescue

XLI. "Must 'a' Been Sperits"

XLII. Why They Didn't Hang Jim

Chapter the Last. Nothing More to Write

ILLUSTRATIONS

———

Portrait of the Author—Frontispiece

Huckleberry Finn

"'Gimme a Chaw'"

Tom Advises a Witch Pie

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

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 downhearted and scared I did wish