Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (good book club books .TXT) đ
- Author: Mark Twain
- Performer: 0142437174
Book online «Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (good book club books .TXT) đ». Author Mark Twain
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadnât robbed nobody, hadnât 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 âingots,â and he called the turnips and stuff âjulery,â 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 couldnât 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 âsumterâ mules, all loaded down with diâmonds, and they didnât 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 warnât worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didnât 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 warnât no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warnât no camels nor no elephants. It warnât 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 didnât see no diâmonds, 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 couldnât we see them, then? He said if I warnât 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.
âWhy,â said he, âa 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.â
âWell,â I says, âsâpose we got some genies to help usâcanât we lick the other crowd then?â
âHow you going to get them?â
âI donât know. How do they get them?â
âWhy, 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 theyâre told to do they up and do it. They donât think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with itâor any other man.â
âWho makes them tear around so?â
âWhy, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and theyâve got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of diâmonds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperorâs daughter from China for you to marry, theyâve got to do itâand theyâve got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: theyâve got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand.â
âWell,â says I, âI think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the palace themselves âstead of fooling them away like that. And whatâs moreâif 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.â
âHow you talk, Huck Finn. Why, youâd have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not.â
âWhat! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I would come; but I lay Iâd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.â
âShucks, it ainât no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You donât seem to know anything, somehowâperfect saphead.â
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 warnât no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyerâs 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 donât reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I donât 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 widowâs ways, too, and they warnât 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 warnât 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, âTake your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!â The widow put in a good word for me, but that warnât 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 wasnât 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 somebodyâs 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 hadnât come in, after standing around so. I couldnât 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 didnât 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 didnât see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcherâs as quick as I could get there. He said:
âWhy, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?â
âNo, sir,â I says; âis there some for me?â
âOh, yes, a half-yearly is in last nightâover 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 youâll spend it.â
âNo, sir,â I says, âI donât want to spend it. I donât want it at allânor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to youâthe six thousand and all.â
He looked surprised. He couldnât seem to make it out. He says:
âWhy, what can you mean, my boy?â
I says, âDonât you ask me no questions about it, please. Youâll take itâwonât you?â
He says:
âWell, Iâm puzzled. Is something the matter?â
âPlease take it,â says I, âand donât ask me nothingâthen I wonât have to tell no lies.â
He studied a while, and then he says:
âOho-o! I think I see. You want to sell all your property to meânot give it. Thatâs the correct idea.â
Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:
âThere; you see it says âfor a consideration.â That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Hereâs a dollar for you. Now you sign it.â
So I signed it, and left.
Miss Watsonâs 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 warnât no use; he said it wouldnât talk. He said sometimes it wouldnât
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