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- Herausgeber: GAEditori
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel by the American writer Mark Twain first published in 1884; it is the ideal sequel to the previous The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and later followed by Tom Sawyer Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad. The first-person narrator is an orphaned boy, who at some point decides to escape from human civilization in the company of a black slave: they will make a long journey of 1800 km aboard a raft along the Mississippi River. The story begins in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, based on Hannibal, the royal city in Missouri where Twain spent part of his childhood on the banks of the great river. The setting is from the early 1840s, as the first steamship sailed along the Mississippi in 1835, some twenty years before the outbreak of the American Civil War.
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Mark Twain
Indice dei contenuti
Mark Twain
Printed in April 2022
Mark Twain
Adventures of 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 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.
CHAPTER II.
WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the
widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads.
When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting
in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening.
Then he says:
“Who dah?”
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between
us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that
there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on
my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with
the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you
are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in
upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:
“Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n. Well, I
know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it
agin.”
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I
dasn’t scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn’t know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went
on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was
itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn’t stand it more’n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun
to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon
comfortable again.
Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I warn’t in. Then
Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get
some more. I didn’t want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But
Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his
hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and
by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom
said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and
Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set
him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And
next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that,
every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode
him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t
hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about
it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he
was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the
kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such
things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout witches?” and
that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-
center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give
to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch
witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told
what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn’t
touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a
servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick
folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the
village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the
boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river
two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the
bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about
amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn’t
a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:
“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the
oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of
the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy
was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and
he mustn’t sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which
was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could use
that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have
his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned
again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of
his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then
Ben Rogers says:
“Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you going to do ’bout him?”
“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.
“Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never find him these days. He used to
lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain’t been seen in these parts for
a year or more.”
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said
every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and
square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody
was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a
way, and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:
“Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.”
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made
my mark on the paper.
“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of business of this Gang?”
“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.
“But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—”
“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; it’s burglary,” says Tom
Sawyer. "We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We are highwaymen.
We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and
take their watches and money.”
“Must we always kill the people?”
“Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the cave here, and
keep them till they’re ransomed.”
“Ransomed? What’s that?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course
that’s what we’ve got to do.”
“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”
“Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do
you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?”
“Oh, that’s all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these
fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them?—that’s the
thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?”
“Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead.”
“Now, that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too—eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.”
“How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”
“A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never
get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a
body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?”
“Because it ain’t in the books so—that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want
to do things regular, or don’t you?—that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you
reckon you can learn ’em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”
“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the
women, too?”
“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them
to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in
love with you, and never want to go home any more.”
“Well, if that’s the way I’m agreed, but I don’t take no stock in it. Mighty soon
we’ll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be
ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got
nothing to say.”
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t want to
be a robber any more.
So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad,
and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him five
cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob
somebody and kill some people.
Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to
begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday,
and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as
they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second
captain of the Gang, and so started home.
I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.
My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.
CHAPTER III.
WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t scold, but only 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 enough to let me
through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap’s gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.
Pap warn’t in a good humor—so he was his natural self. He said he was down
town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would
win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then
there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do
it. And he said people allowed there’d be another trial to get me away from him
and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this
time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then
the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think
of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and
after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called
them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his
cussing.
He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out,
and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they
couldn’t find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till he got that chance.
The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There
was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding,
besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of
the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the
gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I
wouldn’t stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night
times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man
nor the widow couldn’t ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and
leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full
of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked
me whether I was asleep or drownded.
I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was
cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and
went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all
night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam—he
was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for
the govment, this time he says:
“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law
a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him—a man’s own son, which
he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes,
just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin
to do suthin’ for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That ain’t all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property. Here’s what the law does: The
law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up’ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a
hog. They call that govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this.
Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I told ’em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ’em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never
come a-near it agin. Them’s the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin,
and then it ain’t rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’ stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one
of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There
was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man.
He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t
a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold
watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob
in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college,
and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the
wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out.
Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ’lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told
me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed
out. I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me;
and the country may rot for all me—I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to
see the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t
shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at
auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they
said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months,
and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There, now—that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole
months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted
free nigger, and—”
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking
him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along,
here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and
then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let
out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it
warn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his
toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.
He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his
best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it
on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two
drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would
be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself
