The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I
got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island
hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found,
and about midnight he must 'a' kicked his gun in his dreams, for it
went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there
and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because
we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks.

"Who is your folks?" he says.

"The Phelpses, down yonder."

"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says:

"How'd you say he got shot?"

"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him."

"Singular dream," he says.

So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But
when he see the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big
enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says:

"Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy
enough."

"What three?"

"Why, me and Sid, and--and--and _the guns_; that's what I mean."

"Oh," he says.

But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head,
and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they was
all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait
till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better
go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I
said I didn't; so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he
started.

I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix
that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is?
spos'n it takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?--lay
around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir; I know what
_I'll_ do. I'll wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go
any more I'll get down there, too, if I swim; and we'll take and tie
him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when Tom's done
with him we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let
him get ashore.

So then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time I
waked up the sun was away up over my head! I shot out and went for the
doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time
or other, and warn't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad
for Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved,
and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas's
stomach! He says:

"Why, _Tom!_ Where you been all this time, you rascal?"

"_I_ hain't been nowheres," I says, "only just hunting for the runaway
nigger--me and Sid."

"Why, where ever did you go?" he says. "Your aunt's been mighty
uneasy."

"She needn't," I says, "because we was all right. We followed the men
and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we
heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and
crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along
up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe
and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we
paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post-office to
see what he can hear, and I'm a-branching out to get something to eat
for us, and then we're going home."

So then we went to the post-office to get "Sid"; but just as I
suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of
the office, and we waited awhile longer, but Sid didn't come; so the
old man said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he
got done fooling around--but we would ride. I couldn't get him to let
me stay and wait for Sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and I
must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right.

When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and
cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern
that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he
come.

And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner;
and such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the
worst; her tongue was a-going all the time. She says:

"Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' I
b'lieve the nigger was crazy. I says to Sister Damrell--didn't I,
Sister Damrell?--s'I, he's crazy, s'I--them's the very words I said.
You all hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I. Look at
that-air grindstone, s'I; want to tell _me't_ any cretur 't's in his
right mind 's a goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a
grindstone? s'I. Here sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n'
here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all
that--natcherl son o' Louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage.
He's plumb crazy, s'I; it's what I says in the fust place, it's what I
says in the middle, 'n' it's what I says last 'n' all the time--the
nigger's crazy--crazy 's Nebokoodneezer, s'I."

"An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss," says
old Mrs. Damrell; "what in the name o' goodness _could_ he ever want
of--"

"The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to
Sister Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. Sh-she, look at
that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, look at it, s'I--what
_could_ he 'a' wanted of it, s'I. Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she--"

"But how in the nation'd they ever _git_ that grindstone _in_ there,
_anyway?_ 'n' who dug that-air _hole?_ 'n' who--"

"My very _words_, Brer Penrod! I was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o'
m'lasses, won't ye?--I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this
minute, how _did_ they git that grindstone in there? s'I. Without
_help,_ mind you--'thout _help! Thar's_ where 'tis. Don't tell _me,_
s'I; there _wuz_ help, s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a _plenty_ help, too, s'I;
ther's ben a _dozen_ a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every
last nigger on this place but _I'd_ find out who done it, s'I;
moreover, s'I--"

"A _dozen_ says you!--_forty_ couldn't 'a' done everything that's been
done. Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've
been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for
six men: look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look
at--"

"You may _well_ say it, Brer Hightower! It's jist as I was a-sayin' to
Brer Phelps, his own self. S'e, what do _you_ think of it, Sister
Hotchkiss? s'e. Think o' what, Brer Phelps? s'I. Think o' that bed-leg
sawed off that a way? s'e? _Think_ of it? s'I. I lay it never sawed
_itself_ off, s'I--somebody _sawed_ it, s'I; that's my opinion, take
it or leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's
my opinion, s'I, 'n' if anybody k'n start a better one, s'I, let him
_do_ it, s'I, that's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I--"

"Why, dog my cats, they must 'a' ben a house-full o' niggers in there
every night for four weeks to 'a' done all that work, Sister Phelps.
Look at that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret
African writ'n done with blood! Must 'a' ben a raft uv 'm at it right
along, all the time, amost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read
to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash
'm t'll--"

"People to _help_ him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you'd _think_
so if you'd 'a' been in this house for a while back. Why, they've
stole everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all
the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and
as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no
telling how many times they _didn't_ steal that; and flour, and
candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and
most a thousand things that I disremember now, and my new calico
dress; and me and Silas and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day
_and_ night, as I was a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch
hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last
minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and
fools us, and not only fools _us_ but the Injun Territory robbers too,
and actuly gets _away_ with that nigger safe and sound, and that with
sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very
time! I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever _heard_ of. Why,
_sperits_ couldn't 'a' done better and been no smarter. And I reckon
they must 'a' _been_ sperits--because, because, _you_ know our dogs,
and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the
_track_ of 'm once! You explain _that_ to me if you can!--_any_ of
you!"

"Well, it does beat--"

"Laws alive, I never--"

"So help me, I wouldn't 'a' be--"

"_House_-thieves as well as--"

"Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd 'a' ben afeard to _live_ in sich a--"

"Fraid to _live!_--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed,
or get up, or lay down, or _set_ down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd
steal the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a
fluster I was in by the time midnight come last night. I hope to
gracious if I warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! I was
just to that pass I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. It
looks foolish enough _now_, in the daytime; but I says to myself,
there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way upstairs in that lonesome room,
and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and
locked 'em in! I _did_. And anybody would. Because, you know, when you
get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and
worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to
doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to yourself,
spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked,
and you--" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned
her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and took a
walk.

Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that
room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little.
So I done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd 'a' sent for me. And when
it was late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and
told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door
was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the
lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never
want to try _that_ no more. And then I went on and told her all what I
told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe
it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of
boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could
see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she
better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she
had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. So then
she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a
brown-study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What _has_
become of that boy?"

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

"I'll run right up to town and get him," I says.

"No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher' you are; _one's_
enough to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle
'll go."

Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went.

He come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's
track. Aunt Sally was a good _deal_ uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said
there warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll
see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to
be satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him awhile anyway, and
keep a light burning so he could see it.

And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her
candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and
like I couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and
talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and
didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me
every now and then if I reckoned he could 'a' got lost, or hurt, or
maybe drownded, and might be laying at this minute somewheres
suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears
would drip down silent, and I would tell her that Sid was all right,
and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand,
or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it,
because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. And when she
was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and
says:

"The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and
the rod; but you'll be good, _won't_ you? And you won't go? For _my_
sake."

Laws knows I _wanted_ to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all
intending to go; but after that I wouldn't 'a' went, not for kingdoms.

But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very
restless. And twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped
around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window
with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I wished I
could do something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I
wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. And the third time I
waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle
was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she
was asleep.

The old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no
track of Tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not
saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold,
and not eating anything. And by and by the old man says:

"Did I give you the letter?"

"What letter?"

"The one I got yesterday out of the post-office."

"No, you didn't give me no letter."

"Well, I must 'a' forgot it."

So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had
laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says:

"Why, it's from St. Petersburg--it's from Sis."

I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn't stir. But
before she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see
something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old
doctor; and Jim, in _her_ calico dress, with his hands tied behind
him; and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that
come handy, and rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says:

"Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!"

And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other,
which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands,
and says:

"He's alive, thank God! And that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of
him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering
orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as
her tongue could go, every jump of the way.

I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the
old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men
was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to
all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run
away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a
whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others
said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and
his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled
them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious
for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very
ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their
satisfaction out of him.

They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side
the head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let
on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own
clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this
time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his
hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but
bread and water to eat after this till his owner come, or he was sold
at auction because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and
filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand
watch around about the cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the
door in the daytime; and about this time they was through with the job
and was tapering off with a kind of generl good-by cussing, and then
the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says:

"Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't
a bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut
the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me
to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little
worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let
me come a-nigh him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he'd kill
me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do
anything at all with him; so I says, I got to have _help_ somehow; and
the minute I says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says
he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I
judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there I _was!_ and there I had
to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night.
It was a fix, I tell you! I had a couple of patients with the chills,
and of course I'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but I
dasn't, because the nigger might get away, and then I'd be to blame;
and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. So there I had
to stick plumb until daylight this morning; and I never see a nigger
that was a better nuss or faithfuler, and yet he was risking his
freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and I see plain enough
he'd been worked main hard lately. I liked the nigger for that; I tell
you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars--and
kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing
as well there as he would 'a' done at home--better, maybe, because it
was so quiet; but there I _was_, with both of 'm on my hands, and
there I had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some men in a
skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was setting
by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so I
motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and
tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no
trouble. And the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we
muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice
and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word
from the start. He ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what I think
about him."

Somebody says:

"Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say."

Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful
to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was
according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good
heart in him and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they
all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have
some notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised,
right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more.

Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he
could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten
heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but
they didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best for me to mix
in, but I judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or
other as soon as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just
ahead of me--explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about
Sid being shot when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted
night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger.

But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick-room all day
and all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I
dodged him.

Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt
Sally was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick-room, and if I
found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that
would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and
pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I set down and
laid for him to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding
in, and there I was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still,
and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be
joyful now, because all the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been
sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuler
all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind.

So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his
eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:

"Hello!--why, I'm at _home!_ How's that? Where's the raft?"

"It's all right," I says.

"And _Jim?_"

"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never
noticed, but says:

"Good! Splendid! _Now_ we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says:

"About what, Sid?"

"Why, about the way the whole thing was done."

"What whole thing?"

"Why, _the_ whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway
nigger free--me and Tom."

"Good land! Set the run--What _is_ the child talking about! Dear,
dear, out of his head again!"

"_No_, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We
_did_ set him free--me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we _done_
it. And we done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never
checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip
along, and I see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in. "Why, Aunty, it
cost us a power of work--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night,
whilst you was all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet,
and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and
case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and
just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make
the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and
you can't think half the fun it was. And we had to make up the
pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the
robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole into
the cabin, and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie,
and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"

"Mercy sakes!"

"--and load up the cabin with rats and snake's and so on, for company
for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat
that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come
before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us
and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path
and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in
us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for
the raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all
by ourselves, and _wasn't_ it bully. Aunty!"

"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was
_you_, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble,
and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to
death. I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out
o' you this very minute. To think, here I've been, night after night,
a--_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the
Old Harry out o' both o' ye!"

But Tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in, and
his tongue just _went_ it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all
along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and
she says:

"_Well_, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it _now_, for mind I
tell you if I catch you meddling with him again--"

"Meddling with _who_ Tom says, dropping his smile and looking
surprised.

"With _who?_ Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

"_Him?_" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't.
They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on
bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or
sold!"

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening
and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

"They hain't no _right_ to shut him up! _Shove!_--and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!"

"What _does_ the child mean?"

"I mean every word I _say_, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go,
_I'll_ go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old
Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was
going to sell him down the river, and _said_ so; and she set him free
in her will."

"Then what on earth did _you_ want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?"

"Well, that _is_ a question, I must say; and _just_ like women! Why, I
wanted the _adventure_ of it; and I'd 'a' waded neck-deep in blood
to--goodness alive, _Aunt Polly!"_

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and
cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed,
for it was getting pretty sultry for _us_, seemed to me. And I peeped
out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and
stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of
grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:

"Yes, you _better_ turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."

"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "_is_ he changed so? Why, that ain't
_Tom_, it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute
ago."

"You mean where's Huck _Finn_--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I
_see_ him. That _would_ be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that
bed, Huck Finn."

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever
see--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they
told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he
didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a
prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation,
because the oldest man in the world couldn't 'a' understood it. So
Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to
up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took
me for Tom Sawyer--she chipped in and says, "Oh, go on and call me
Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and 'taint no need to change"--that
when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it--there warn't
no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts
for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be
perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid,
and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson
setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone
and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I
couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how
he _could_ help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.

Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom
and _Sid_ had come all right and safe, she says to herself:

"Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that
way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all
the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that
creetur's up to _this_ time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any
answer out of you about it."

"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally.

"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean
by Sid being here."

"Well, I never got 'em. Sis."

Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:

"You, Tom!"

"Well--_what?_" he says, kind of pettish.

"Don't you what _me_, you impudent thing--hand out them letters."

"What letters?"

"_Them_ letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--"

"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they
was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought
if you warn't in no hurry, I'd--"

"Well, you _do_ need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I
wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--"

"No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but _it's_ all right,
I've got that one."

I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe
it was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.

The first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea,
time of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion
worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already
free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head from the
start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the
river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the
river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up
home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and
write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them
waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and
then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about
as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse
Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and
give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And
we had him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim
forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so
good, and Jim was pleased most to death and busted out, and says:

"_Dah_, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
Islan'? I tole you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I
_tole_ you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich _ag'in;_ en it's
come true; en heah she _is! Dah_, now! doan' talk to _me_--signs is
_signs_, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter
be rich ag'in as I's a-stannin' heah dis minute!"

And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all
three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go
for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the territory, for
a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I
ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get
none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and
got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars
and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come
away, anyhow."

Jim says, kind of solemn:

"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck."

I says:

"Why, Jim?"

"Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo'."

But I kept at him; so at last he says:

"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz
a man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let
you come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase
dat wuz him."

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a
watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so
there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it,
because if I'd 'a' knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I
wouldn't 'a' tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I
got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt
Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I
been there before.

Huck returns to town and finds a doctor. Instead of allowing Huck to come along, the doctor makes Huck tell him where the raft is and takes the canoe out alone to find Tom and Jim. Huck falls asleep on a woodpile while waiting for him to return. When he wakes up, he is told the doctor has not yet returned. Huck soon sees Silas, who is very glad Huck is not hurt. Together, they go to the post office, and Silas asks where Sid is. Huck makes up a story about Sid taking off to gather news about the events of the night. When they return home, Aunt Sally makes a fuss over Huck, but is glad he has returned. A large gathering is held at the house, and the women discuss how they think Jim must have been crazy due to Jim's grindstone inscriptions and the tools found in his hut, all of which Huck and Tom actually crafted. Aunt Sally is worried about Sid's whereabouts. Huck tells her the same tale he told Uncle Silas, but it does not set her mind at ease. During the night, Huck sneaks out several times and each time sees her sitting with a lit candle on the front porch, waiting for Sid's return. Huck feels very sorry for her and wishes he could tell her everything. Chapter 42 The next day, the doctor appears, bringing Tom on a stretcher and Jim in chains. Tom is comatose due to a fever from the bullet wound, but is still alive. Aunt Sally takes him inside and immediately starts to care for him. Tom improves rapidly and is almost completely better by the next day. Huck goes into the bedroom to sit with Tom and see how he is doing. Aunt Sally walks in as well and while both of them are sitting there, Tom wakes up. He immediately starts to tell Aunt Sally about everything the two of them did and how they managed to help Jim escape. Aunt Sally cannot believe they were creating all of the trouble around her house. When Tom hears that Jim has been recaptured he shouts at them that they cannot chain Jim up anymore. He tells them that Jim has been free ever since Miss Watson died and freed him in her will. Apparently Miss Watson was so ashamed about planning to sell Jim that she felt it best to set him free. At that moment Aunt Polly, Aunt Sally's sister, appears. Aunt Sally is so surprised that she rushes over to her sister to give her a hug. Aunt Polly proceeds to tell Aunt Sally that the boys masquerading as Tom and Sid are actually Huck and Tom. Embarrassed, the boys look quite sheepish. Aunt Polly only gets angry when she discovers that Tom has been stealing and hiding her letters. She also explains to Aunt Sally that in regards to Jim, Tom is correct. Miss Watson freed Jim in her will. Chapter 43 Tom tells Huck he had planned for them to run all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi if they had managed to escape unharmed. Jim gets a positive reception in the house because of how well he cared for Tom when he was sick. Tom, feeling slightly guilty, gives Jim forty dollars for putting up with them the entire time and for being such a good prisoner. Jim turns to Huck and tells him he was right about being a rich man one day. Huck asks about his six thousand dollars, assuming Pap managed to take it all. However, Tom explains that Pap was never seen again after Huck disappeared. Finally, Jim reveals that the man he and Huck found dead in the floating house was in fact Pap, but Jim had not wanted Huck to see him. Huck ends the novel by announcing that Aunt Sally wants to adopt him now, so he needs to start planning on heading west since he tried to be civilized once before, and did not like it.

There are several key facts revealed in the final chapters that influence how the reader views each character. Tom announces that Jim is free, which reveals why Tom was willing to help Huck in what Huck thought was a true crime. Since Jim was already a free man, Tom was not breaking any laws and therefore thought the entire ordeal was a great adventure. The second major revelation is that Pap is dead. Jim has known this for most of the journey, in fact since leaving Jackson's Island. However, Jim's motivation for hiding this secret from Huck is unclear. Perhaps Jim felt sorry for Huck and wanted to care for him since he was now an orphan. Or, perhaps Jim knew that if Huck found out Pap was dead, he would simply have returned to town and ended his runaway journey.  Without Huck, Jim would have had a far more difficult journey downriver as a lone black man and runaway slave. Having developed a strong understanding of Jim's character, it seems most likely that Jim was motivated by kindness, but a selfish desire for Huck's companionship might also have played a role. The ending appears to leave Huck almost exactly where he started. However, Huck has changed significantly during the course of his travels. Huck's comment that he needs to head west before they try to civilize is significant, because we know that Huck can act civilized when he needs to, as he survived well in his many extended stays at Southern family estates. In the beginning of the novel, Huck is a poor, simple, uneducated boy. However, by the conclusion of novel, Huck is a crafty, intelligent, wealthy young man who simply does not care to be a part of a boring middle-class lifestyle. Huck changes profoundly in the course of this novel, struggles with powerful moral issues, risks his life for those he cares about, and thrives in the process. In addition, the depiction of black slaves changes dramatically in the course of the novel. At first, slaves are merely background characters, carrying out chores while white characters monopolize the plot. However, this changes with the introduction of Jim, and continues to develop even when Jim leaves the plot for brief periods. Thus, the King's forced break-up of the Wilks's slave family powerfully impacts the reader, whereas before getting to know Jim, it might not have been perceived as so significant.  In addition to being a story about Huck's growth and maturation, and resulting freedom from his Pap, The Adeventures of Huckleberry Finn is also a story about Jim's journey towards freedom.  By ending the novel with Jim becoming a free man, with money to his name, Twain provides a clear social commentary about the immorality of slavery. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Twain's literary masterpiece. To create this novel he first overcame the difficulty of writing in the first person from a young boy's perspective. The novel is also a testament to the various dialects and characteristics of the southern regions. Lastly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a story about freedom, as it deals with physical freedom for the slaves and spiritual freedom for both Jim and Huck. Few novels have approached the success of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in combining such serious issues with Twain's characteristically delightful humor.


the adventures of huckleberry finn: summary & analysis | chapter 1 | study guide | cliffsnotes

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 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.

The novel begins with Huck Finn introducing himself and referencing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. "You don't know about me," Huck narrates, "without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter." He tells readers that, for the most part, Twain told the truth in Tom Sawyer but that everyone tells some lies, even people like Aunt Polly and the Widow Douglas. of how he and Tom got six thousand dollars each at the end of Tom Sawyer. Judge Thatcher has taken Huck's money and invested it with a dollar of interest coming in each day, and Huck now lives with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. The sisters are, as Huck puts it, trying to "sivilize" him, and his frustration at living in a clean house and minding his manners starts to grow. Miss Watson tells Huck he will go to "the bad place" if he does not behave, and Huck thinks that will be okay as long as Miss Watson is not there. During the evening, Huck accidentally kills a spider that was on his shoulder and worries that bad luck will follow. When the town clock strikes twelve midnight, Huck hears a noise outside his window and climbs out to find Tom Sawyer waiting for him.

The opening sentence of the novel notifies readers that Huck Finn is the narrator and will tell his story in his own words, in his own language and dialect , and from his own point of view. By using the first person narrative point of view, Twain carries on the southwestern humor tradition of vernacular language; that is, Huck sounds as a young, uneducated boy from Missouri should sound. This first sentence also alludes to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The allusion reminds the reader of a novel about boys and their adventures, the purpose of which, according to Twain, was to rekindle in adults memories "of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in." Then Huck -- and Twain -- dismiss the work with "But that ain't no matter." Although the boyish type adventure episodes tend to reappear as a plot motif in Huck Finn, especially in the sections including Tom, their primary purpose is more to communicate criticism of Twain's contemporary society than to evoke fond memories. This statement also makes clear that it does not matter whether readers have read Twain's earlier book or not. Huck Finn is Huck's story, and he will tell it from his natural, unsophisticated perspective. This first chapter introduces several major literary elements. Humor is used in various ways in the novel, but Huck's deadpan narration and pragmatic personality juxtaposed to events and beliefs that make no logical or practical sense to him provide much of the novel's humor. Because Huck is young and uncivilized, he describes events and people in a direct manner without any extensive commentary. Huck does not laugh at humorous situations and statements simply because his literal approach does not find them to be funny; he fails to see the irony. He does not project social, religious, cultural, or conceptual nuances into situations because he has never learned them. For example, when Miss Watson tells Huck that "she was going to live so as to go to the good place ," Huck, applying what he knows about Miss Watson and the obvious lifestyle that makes her happy, responds that he "couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going," and makes up his mind to not try to get there. Huck does not intend his comment to be disrespectful or sarcastic; it is simply a statement of fact and is indicative of the literal, practical approach to life that he exhibits throughout the novel.

Chapter 1  . . . 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.  The novel begins as the narrator  states that we may know of him from another book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, written by "Mr. Mark Twain. " Huck quickly asserts that it "ain't no matter" if we haven't heard of him. According to Huck, Twain mostly told the truth in the previous tale, with some "stretchers" thrown in, although everyone--except Tom's Aunt Polly, the Widow Douglas, and maybe a few other girls--tells lies once in a while. We learn that Tom Sawyer ended with Tom and Huckleberry finding a stash of gold some robbers had hidden in a cave. The boys received $6,000 apiece, which the local judge, Judge Thatcher, put into a trust The money in the bank now accrues a dollar a day from interest. Then, the Widow Douglas adopted and tried to "sivilize" Huck. Huck couldn't stand it, so he threw on his old rags and ran away. He has since returned because Tom Sawyer told him he could join his new band of robbers if he would return to the Widow "and be respectable." The Widow frequently bemoans her failure to reform Huck. He particularly cringes at the fact that he has to "grumble"  over the food before every meal. The Widow tries to teach Huck about Moses, but Huck loses interest when he realizes that Moses is dead. The Widow will not let Huck smoke but approves of snuff since she uses it herself. Her sister, Miss Watson, tries to give Huck spelling lessons. These efforts are not in vain, as Huck does in fact learn to read. Huck feels especially restless because the Widow and Miss Watson constantly attempt to improve his behavior. When Miss Watson tells him about the "bad place"--hell--he blurts out that he would like to go there, for a change of scenery. This proclamation causes an uproar. Huck doesn't see the point of going to the "good place" and resolves not to bother trying to get there. He keeps this sentiment a secret, however, because he doesn't want to cause more trouble. When Huck asks, Miss Watson tells him that there is no chance that Tom Sawyer will end up in heaven. Huck is glad "because I wanted him and me to be together." One night, after Miss Watson leads a prayer session with Huck and the household slaves, Huck goes to bed feeling "so lonesome I most wished I was dead." He gets shivers hearing the sounds of nature through his window. Huck accidentally flicks a spider into a candle, and the bad omen frightens him. Just after midnight, Huck hears movement below the window and hears a "me-yow" sound, to which he responds with another "me-yow. " Climbing out the window onto the shed, Huck finds Tom Sawyer waiting for him in the yard.

Analysis In the opening pages of Huckleberry Finn, we feel the presence of both Huck's narrative voice and Twain's voice as author. From the start, Huck speaks to us in a conversational tone that is very much his own but that also serves as a mouthpiece for Twain. When Huck mentions "Mr. Mark Twain" by name, he immediately gains an independence from his author: if he can mention his author, then in some sense he must exist on the same level that the author does. At the same time, Huck links Twain's new novel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, although he is careful to note that the two works are independent of one another and that we do not need to have read the previous novel to understand this one. Nevertheless, Twain does seek to take advantage of Tom Sawyer's popularity by featuring the earlier novel's characters in this one. Beyond establishing a voice, the first paragraph also conveys Huck's deeper personality. Huck is not just a poor boy with a humorous way of speaking and thinking; he is also a thoughtful young man who is willing and eager to question the "facts" of life and facets of human personality, such as the tendency to lie. The events in Tom Sawyer have already established Huck as a somewhat marginal character in the town of St. Petersburg. Although he is white, he is poor and therefore out of touch with civilized society. The novelty of practices like "grumbling" over food lends Huck's observations a humorous, fresh perspective on the foibles of society. Though Huck always remains open to learning, he never accepts new ideas without thinking, and he remains untainted by the rules and assumptions of the white society in which he finds himself. Though quick to comment on the absurdity of much of the world around him, Huck is not mean-spirited. He is equally quick to tell us that though the "widow cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb . . . she never meant no harm by it." The first chapter begins Twain's exploration of race and society, two of the major thematic concerns in Huckleberry Finn. We see quickly that, in the town of St. Petersburg, owning slaves is considered normal and unremarkable--even the Widow Douglas, a pious Christian, owns slaves. The slaves depicted in the novel are "household slaves," slaves who worked on small farms and in homes in which the master owned only a few slaves. Twain implicitly contrasts this type of slavery with the more brutal form of plantation slavery, in which hundreds of slaves worked for a single master, creating greater anonymity between slave and master, which in turn led to more backbreaking labor--and, often, extreme cruelty. Some critics have accused Twain of painting too soft a picture of slavery by not writing about plantation slaves. However, by depicting the "better" version of slavery, Twain is able to make a sharper criticism of the insidious dehumanization that accompanies all forms of slavery: the "lucky" household slaves, just like their counterparts on the plantations, are also in danger of having their families torn apart and are never considered fully human. Twain's portrayal suggests that if the "better" slavery is this terrible, the horrors of the "worse" type must be even more awful and dehumanizing. It is important to note here that Twain uses the word nigger, which has gotten Huckleberry Finn in trouble with many twentieth-century school boards, with a nonchalance that is certainly troubling to us today. The word would not have been disturbing in Twain's time, however, and is sadly necessary to any novel claiming to paint a realistic portrait of the slaveholding South at the time. Twain's portrayal of slaveholding in this first chapter also raises questions about the hypocrisy and moral vacuity of society. Throughout the novel, Huck encounters seemingly good people who happen to own slaves--an incongruity that is never easily resolved. We are not meant to think that the Widow Douglas, for example, is thoroughly evil. People like the Widow serve as foils for Huck throughout the novel, as he tries to sort out the value of civilizing influences. Huck is a kind of natural philosopher, skeptical of social doctrines like religion and willing to set forth new ideas--for example, his idea that hell might actually be a better place than the Widow Douglas's heaven. Beneath the adventure story, Huckleberry Finn is a tale of Huck's moral development and of what his realizations can teach us about race, slavery, Southern society, and morality.


the adventures of huckleberry finn: summary & analysis | chapter 2 | study guide | cliffsnotes

We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back toward 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 came 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 upward 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 ag'in."

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. Afterward Jim said the witches bewitched 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 Joe
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 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 Joe 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.

As Huck and Tom sneak off from the Widow Douglas' house, Huck trips, and the noise alerts Miss Watson's slave, Jim. Jim tries to find what made the noise and almost discovers the boys, but after a while he falls asleep. While Jim is sleeping, Tom takes Jim's hat and hangs it on a tree-limb. Afterwards, Jim tells everyone that witches put a spell on him and took him all over the state. Jim's story grows with each telling until finally slaves come from all over to hear Jim's tale of being bewitched. After this episode, he is considered an authority on witches. Huck and Tom meet the rest of the town boys, and they all go to a hidden cave two miles down the river. In the cave, Tom declares that the band of robbers will be called "Tom Sawyer's Gang" and "Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." The boys all swear that, if a gang member tells the gang's secrets, they will cut his throat and then kill that boy's family. One of the boys says the oath is not fair because Huck Finn does not have a family unless you count a father who can never be found. A solution is found when Huck offers Miss Watson as his family and says, "they could kill her." Using pirate books as a reference, Tom describes the future business of the gang as robbery and murder. The other boys wonder why everything must be so complicated and involve ransoms and guards, and Tom replies that he's "seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do."

Chapter 2 introduces Jim, Huck's future companion and friend. In Missouri, most slaves were domestic servants, not workers on plantations that most people today identify with slavery. Jim's initial behaviors as interpreted through Huck are stereotypical traits attributed to blacks at the time: laziness, a tendency toward exaggeration, and conceit. Jim's belief in superstition mirrors that of Huck, and his explanations of what had happened to him that night could be interpreted to reveal either a gullible nature or an opportunist who makes the most of the circumstances that he encounters. Twain not only taps Huck's prejudices in the early portrayal of Jim, but he also taps the prejudices of the reader. Jim gains handsomely from his witch adventure and wisely uses the fictional kidnapping to boost his stature among his peers. Nevertheless, the suggestion that Jim displays negative traits has been partially responsible for the opposition to teaching Huck Finn in the classroom. The character of Jim, however, is much more complex than the sleepy man who has seen the devil and been kidnapped by witches. Moreover, this simplistic interpretation of Jim in the beginning of the novel enhances the prejudicial nature of the stereotype when the true depth of his character is revealed later in the novel. As readers learn about Huck, they also learn about Jim and the admirable character he is. Also introduced in Chapter 2 is the character of Tom Sawyer. Tom is a contrasting character  to Huck, despite their obvious bond and friendship. Tom is a romantic, insensitive representative of the society Huck dislikes. His tendency is to take control, romanticize, and exaggerate all situations. Tom bases his expertise in adventures on the many pirate and robber books he has read. His humorous exaggerations symbolize Twain's dislike of popular and glorified romantic novels. Later, in Chapter 3, Tom mentions Don Quixote as a model of the romantic novels. Ironically, Cervantes was satirizing romantic adventure stories in this work much the same as Twain does in this work. Obviously, Tom was unaware of the satiric nature of the novel, but Twain was not. Unlike the playful humor of Tom Sawyer, the humor of Huck Finn is bitter satire using the hypocrisy, violence, and squalor in the society that Twain observed. For example, when Tom decides that the gang will rob and murder people "except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed," the boys discover that no one, including Tom, knows the meaning of "ransom." The boys assign a meaning to the word by conjecturing what it means . This meaning, of course, is wrong, but, as in the greater society, because the group believes it to be true, it becomes their truth, and the rest of their action is based on this error, a serious subject matter undercut by humor. Glossary the quality word used by the South to describe aristocracy, five-center piece monetary equivalent of a nickel. Nickels were not minted until after the Civil War. skiff a flat-bottomed boat propelled by oars. high-toned aristocratic or snobbish. blame a milder slang alternative for "damned." the nation slang for "damnation."

Huck and Tom tiptoe through the Widow's garden. Huck trips on a root as he passes by the kitchen, and Jim, one of Miss Watson's slaves, hears him from inside. Tom and Huck crouch down and try to stay still, but Huck is struck by a series of uncontrollable itches, as often happens when he is in a situation "where it won't do for you to scratch. Jim says aloud that he will stay put until he discovers the source of the sound, but after several minutes, he falls asleep. Tom wants to tie Jim up, but the more practical Huck objects, so Tom settles for simply playing a trick by putting Jim's hat on a tree branch over Jim's head. Tom also takes candles from the kitchen, despite Huck's objections that they will risk getting caught. Huck tells us that afterward, Jim tells everyone that some witches flew him around and put the hat atop his head. Jim expands the tale further, becoming a local celebrity among the slaves, who enjoy witch stories. Around his neck, Jim wears the five-cent piece Tom left for the candles, calling it a charm from the devil with the power to cure sickness. Huck notes somewhat sarcastically that Jim nearly becomes so "stuck up" from his newfound celebrity that he is unfit to be a servant. Meanwhile, Tom and Huck meet up with a few other boys and take a boat to a large cave. There, Tom names his new band of robbers "Tom Sawyer's Gang. All must sign an oath in blood, vowing, among other things, to kill the family of any member who reveals the gang's secrets. The boys think it "a real beautiful oath," and Tom admits that he got part of it from books that he has read. The boys nearly disqualify Huck because he has no family aside from a drunken father who can never be found, but Huck appeases the boys by offering Miss Watson. Tom says the gang must capture and ransom people, although none of the boys knows what "ransom" means. Tom assumes it means to keep them captive until they die. In response to one boy's question, Tom tells the group that women are not to be killed but should be kept at the hideout, where the boys' manners will charm the women into falling in love with the boys. When one boy begins to cry out of homesickness and threatens to tell the group's secrets, Tom bribes him with five cents. They agree to meet again someday, but not on a Sunday, because that would be blasphemous. Huck makes it home and gets into bed just before dawn

These chapters establish Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as foils for each other--characters whose actions and traits contrast each other in a way that gives us a better understanding of both of their characters. Twain uses Tom to satirize romantic literature and to comment on the darker side of so-called civilized society. Tom insists that his make-believe adventures be conducted "by the book." As Tom himself admits in regard to his gang's oath, he gets many of his ideas from fiction. In particular, Tom tries to emulate the romantic--that is, unrealistic, sensationalized, and sentimentalized--novels, mostly imported from Europe, that achieved enormous popularity in nineteenth-century America. Tom is identified with this romantic genre throughout the novel. Whereas Tom puts great stock in literary models, Huck is as skeptical of these as he is of religion. In both realms, Huck refuses to accept much on faith. He rejects both genies and prayers when they fail to produce the promised results. Twain makes this contrast between Tom's romanticism and Huck's skepticism to show that both points of view can prove equally misleading if taken to extremes. Although Huck and Tom are set up as foils for one another, they still share some traits, which help to sustain their friendship throughout the novel. Perhaps most important, the two share a rambunctious boyishness; they delight in the dirty language and pranks that the adult world condemns. Yet Huck's feelings about society and the adult world are based on his negative experiences--most notably with his abusive father--and ring with a seriousness and weight that Tom's fancies lack. We get the sense that Tom can afford to accept the nonsense of society and romantic literature, but Huck cannot. On the whole, Huck's alienation from the "civilization" of the adult world is a bit starker and sadder. Ironically, the novel that Tom explicitly mentions as a model for his actions is Cervantes's Don Quixote. In his masterpiece, Cervantes satirizes romantic adventure stories as Twain does in Huckleberry Finn. In referencing Don Quixote, Twain also gives a literary tip of the hat to one of the earliest and greatest picaresque novels, which, through its naive protagonist's wacky adventures, satirizes literature, society, and human nature in much the same way that Twain does in Huckleberry Finn. By means of the reference to Don Quixote, Twain tells us that, though he intends to write a humorous novel, Huckleberry Finn also fits into a longstanding tradition of novels that seek to criticize through humor, to point out absurdity through absurdity. In this chapter, for instance, Twain comments on Tom's absurdity and blind ignorance in basing his actions on a novel that is so clearly a satire. Tom, who is interested in contracts, codes of conduct, fancy language, and make-believe ideas, believes in these frilly ideas at the expense of common sense. He cares more about absurd stylistic ideals than he does about people. Tom also displays some of the hypocrisy of civilized society. For instance, he makes the members of his gang sign an oath in blood and swear not to divulge the group's secrets, but when a boy threatens to betray that promise, Tom simply offers him a bribe.


the adventures of huckleberry finn: summary & analysis | chapter 3 | study guide | cliffsnotes

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 snuff-box that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson
fat up? No, says I to myself, 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 Joe
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 flatheads 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.

The next day, Huck receives a scolding from Miss Watson because of his dirty clothes, but the Widow Douglas does not reproach him at all. Miss Watson explains to Huck that, through prayer, he can have anything he wants. She makes Huck pray for the next few days, and Huck does not understand why the fishhooks he prays for never arrive. During this time, Huck is told that his father, Pap Finn, has been found drowned in the river. Because the body was floating on his back, the superstitious Huck does not believe it is Pap and worries that the violent Pap will show up again. The Tom Sawyer Gang disbands because the only adventure they have is attempting to rob a Sunday-school picnic.

In Chapter 3, the practical Huck again struggles to understand religion. When Miss Watson tells Huck he can receive anything he wants through prayer, the literal Huck believes he can receive fishing gear. He contemplates the concept of prayer and wonders why, if someone can get anything, he cannot get any fish-hooks, the widow cannot reclaim her stolen silver snuff-box, and Miss Watson cannot "fat up"? The humorous moment is another example of Huck's literal approach to his surroundings. Because Huck takes everything at face value, he cannot understand the concept of prayer or "spiritual gifts." He does not reject religion, but his literal mindset has difficulty with beliefs that, on the surface, appear to be impractical or untrue. More important, Huck's struggle compares and contrasts the religions of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson as he begins to see that religion is practiced differently by his guardians. Through Huck, Twain is exploring his own reservations about religion and its ties to the institution of slavery. It is not incidental that it is Miss Watson who owns Jim and not the Widow Douglas, and Huck continues to question religion and the rules of his society. Huck eventually decides that there are two kinds of Providence, and he would like to avoid Miss Watson's and go to the one the Widow Douglas describes. Chapter 3 continues to establish Tom and Huck as contrasting characters. Whereas Huck takes a literal approach to everything he sees and hears, Tom's knowledge comes solely from the books he reads. At the same time Huck questions religion, he begins to see Tom's "magicians and A-rabs" as fabrication. For Huck, Tom's imagination has the same quality as Miss Watson's religion, and he distrusts the superficial nature of both. This approach serves Huck well throughout the novel. Although he does not completely understand prayer, he does understand the widow's explanation that he "must help other people . . . and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself." By applying his own conscience and beliefs, Huck grows as a character and is able to form his own opinions and not blindly accept society's values and the status quo. Glossary hived robbed. pow-wow to confer, to have an intense discussion; originally from a North American Indian word. "sumter" mule sumpter mule, a packhorse, mule, or other animal used for carrying baggage. lay in ambuscade hide in ambush. slick up to polish. tract a propagandizing pamphlet, especially one on a religious or political subject. sap-head a fool.

After punishing Huck for dirtying his new clothes during his night out with Tom, Miss Watson tries to explain prayer to him. Huck gives up on it after some of his prayers are not answered. Miss Watson calls him a fool, and the Widow Douglas later explains that prayer bestows spiritual gifts, such as acting selflessly to help others. Huck, who cannot see any advantage in such gifts, resolves to forget the matter. The two women often take Huck aside for religious discussions, in which Widow Douglas describes a wonderful God, while Miss Watson describes a terrible one. Huck concludes there are two Gods and decides he would like to belong to Widow Douglas's, if He would take him. Huck considers this unlikely because of his bad qualities. Meanwhile, a rumor circulates that Huck's Pap, who has not been seen in a year, is dead. A corpse was found in the river, thought to be Pap because of its "ragged" appearance. The face, however, was unrecognizable. At first, Huck is relieved. His father had been a drunk who beat him when he was sober, although Huck stayed hidden from him most of the time. Upon hearing further description of the body found, however, Huck realizes that it is not his father but rather a woman dressed in men's clothes. Huck worries that his father will soon reappear. After a month in Tom's gang, Huck and the rest of the boys quit. With no actual robbing or killing going on, the gang's existence is pointless. Huck tells of one of Tom's more notable games, in which Tom pretended that a caravan of Arabs and Spaniards was going to camp nearby with hundreds of camels and elephants. It turned out to be a Sunday-school picnic, although Tom explained that it really was a caravan of Arabs and Spaniards--only they were enchanted, like in Don Quixote. The raid on the picnic netted the boys only a few doughnuts and jam but a fair amount of trouble. After testing another of Tom's theories by rubbing old lamps and rings but failing to summon a genie, Huck judges that most of Tom's stories have been "lies