Beginning the World

The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr.
Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient
hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to
go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and
was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that
my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked
forward--a very little way now--to the help that was to come to her,
and never drooped.

It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on
there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest
myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home
directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and
walked down there through the lively streets--so happily and
strangely it seemed!--together.

As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and
Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And
there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little
carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so
many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I
had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done,
but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back,
and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so
overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers,
and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her
hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of
precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't know what for
her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm
her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan,
standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased
as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than
that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking
after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as
she could see us.

This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to
Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse
than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery
that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what
was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for
occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to
be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to
get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional
gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in
wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them
told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and
quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about
the pavement of the Hall.

We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us
Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it.
He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he
could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he
said, over for good.

Over for good!

When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another
quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set
things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich?
It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!

Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd,
and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and
bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all
exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce
or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching
for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper
began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got
into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes,
which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being,
anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.
Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing
Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person
who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over.
Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing
too.

At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an
affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was
deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see
us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he said. "And Mr. Woodcourt."

"Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with
polished politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is
not here?"

No. He never came there, I reminded him.

"Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here
to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his
indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened,
perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened."

"Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.

"What has been done to-day?"

"What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not
much has been done; not much. We have been checked--brought up
suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?"

"Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will
you tell us that?"

"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone
into that, we have not gone into that."

"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low
inward voice were an echo.

"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his
silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a
great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has
been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not
inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."

"And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.

"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain
condescending laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect,
Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the
numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of
procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,
ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
intellect. For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar,
and the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of
the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the
public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of
this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth,
sir."

"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment.
"Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate
is found to have been absorbed in costs?"

"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU
say?"

"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.

"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"

"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"

"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.

"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's
heart!"

There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew
Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her
foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.

"In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming
after us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself
a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me
that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of
his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant
shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he
gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,
and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low
door at the end of the Hall.

"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the
charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's
by and by!"

I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to
Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished.
Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what
news I had returned. "Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for
himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater
blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!"

We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was
possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my
darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and
threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and
said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him
sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have
spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth
being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.

He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There
were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan
stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be
quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing
me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he
looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.

I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he
said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me,
my dear!"

It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low
state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our
intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had
been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and
wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if
my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband's hand
and hold it to his breast.

We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times
that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his
feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely,
dearest Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so
serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so
near--I knew--I knew!

It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we
were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for
my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada
leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed
often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,
"Where is Woodcourt?"

Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian
standing in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard
asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face
that some one was there.

I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over
Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me
in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard,
"you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for
the first time.

My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping
his hand on Richard's.

"My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is
bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or
less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?"

"I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin
the world."

"Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian.

"I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad
smile. "I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you
shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it."

"Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well,
dear boy!"

"I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on
earth I should so much like to see as their house--Dame Durden's and
Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed there when I begin to
recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than
anywhere."

"Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our
little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very
day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?"

Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind
the head of the couch.

"I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have
thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending
over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,
my dear love, my poor girl!"

He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually
released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and
moved her lips.

"When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to
tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't
you?"

"Undoubtedly, dear Rick."

"Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like
you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you
remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like
coming to the old Bleak House again."

"And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,
you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come
to me, my love!" he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over
her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed
within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)

"It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's
hands eagerly.

"Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."

"And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity
the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"

"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"

"I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes.

My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly
lift up his hand to warn my guardian.

"When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the
old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been
to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn
child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?"

"Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian.

"Ada, my darling!"

He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she
could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.

"I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray
shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have
scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my
Ada, before I begin the world?"

A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid
his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,
and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
this! The world that sets this right.

When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came
weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.

Down in Lincolnshire

There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is
upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir
Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;
but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any
brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for
certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the
park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at
night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be
laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all
mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once
occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large
fans--like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing
all their other beaux--did once occasionally say, when the world
assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her
company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have
never been known to object.

Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road
among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of
horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester--invalided, bent, and
almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with a stalwart man
beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain
spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse
stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is
still for a few moments before they ride away.

War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain
intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady
fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to
abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which
Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or
misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently
aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of
committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.
Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the
disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth
vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;
similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by
testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is
whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is
really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of
being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little
does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered
in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now,
is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the
satisfaction of both.

In one of the lodges of the park--that lodge within sight of the
house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in
Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwart
man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling
hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a
little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy
little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of
stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way
of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction.
A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some
mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to
the name of Phil.

A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of
hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to
observe--which few do, for the house is scant of company in these
times--the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards
them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey
cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are
seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found
gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and
when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening
air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the
lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; and as the
evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while
two men pace together up and down, "But I never own to it before the
old girl. Discipline must be maintained."

The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no
longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long
drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my
Lady's picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined
only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually
contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more,
in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the
damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so
obdurate, will have opened and received him.

Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her
face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the
long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her
yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of
the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on
the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and
Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle
and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be
one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her
reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not
appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes
broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously
repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she
finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her
bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a
memorandum concerning herself in the event of "anything happening" to
her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course
of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.

The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness,
but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard
in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at
the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of
cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness
of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under
penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that
such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew fler up--frever.

The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the
place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated,
when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way
of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come
out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the
exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during
three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year,
is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables
upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her
condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as
in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of
teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she
twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes
of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with
sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and
unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular
kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of
another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre
stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no
drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have
both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem
Volumnias.

For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of
overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their
hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the
window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less
the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly
likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which
start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding
through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in
which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a
stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few
people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops
from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the
victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and
departs.

Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and
vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry
lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag flying now by day,
no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go,
no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of
life about it--passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have
died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull
repose.

The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case is finally ready to "come up," this time at Westminster Hall . On their way to Westminster, Esther and Allan meet Caddy passing by in a carriage. The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case is finally ready to "come up," this time at Westminster Hall . On their way to Westminster, Esther and Allan meet Caddy passing by in a carriage. At Westminster Hall, they learn that legal costs have exhausted the entire worth of the estate. The shock is too much for the already ill Richard: though resolved to start life afresh -- "to begin the world" -- and reconciled at last with Mr. Jarndyce, he dies the same day. Miss Flite comes weeping to Esther. The "poor, crazed" woman has set her birds free. Lady Dedlock has been buried unobtrusively in the family mausoleum at Chesney Wold. How she died is a mystery. Sir Leicester, riding on the estate with George Rouncewell, constantly honors her memory and her burial place. He and Boythorn still quarrel over the disputed thoroughfare, but in a way that gives satisfaction to both. George and Phil Squod have a permanent residence in one of the lodges of the park. Chesney Wold, now headed only by an aging widower, settles into a "dull repose." Sir Leicester himself will live only a little longer. In the evenings, Volumnia reads political treatises to him. She discovers that she will inherit the estate.

Things go according to Dickens' foreshadowing. Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes to nothing. Richard pays for his persistent folly. Sir Leicester remains firm in his dignity and touching in his devotion to Lady Dedlock. In the descriptions of a changed and subdued Chesney Wold, Dickens' art of creating atmosphere or mood by describing houses and grounds in changing light and seasons asserts itself triumphantly once more.


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.

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.

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.

Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter
now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read
and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to
six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get
any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock
in mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got
next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to
school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the
widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house
and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the
cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and
so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting
so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was
coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she
warn't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I
reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of
me, and crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry;
what a mess you are always making!" The widow put in a good word for
me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well
enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and
wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to
be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't
one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked
along low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the stile awhile, and then went on around the garden
fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I
couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I
didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in
the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said:

"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your
interest?"

"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?"

"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty
dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it
along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it."

"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at
all--nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to
give it to you--the six thousand and all."

He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says:

"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"

I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take
it--won't you?"

He says:

"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"

"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have
to tell no lies."

He studied awhile, and then he says:

"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to _sell_ all your property to me--not
give it. That's the correct idea."

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have
bought it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you
sign it."

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which
had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do
magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here
again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was,
what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his
hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and
dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about
an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just
the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and
listened. But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said
sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I had an old
slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed
through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the
brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that
would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about
the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but
maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the
difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would
manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would
split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and
keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass,
and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take
it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would
do that before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened
again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would
tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the
hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:

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

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

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around, and there he was. I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I
was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is,
after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched,
he being so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of
him worth bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like
he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face
showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to
make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad
white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was
all. He had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot
was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now
and then. His hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with
the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was
up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By
and by he says:

"Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug,
_don't_ you?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say--can read
and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you,
because he can't? _I'll_ take it out of you. Who told you you might
meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?"

"The widow. She told me."

"The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?"

"Nobody never told her."

"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that
school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs
over his own father and let on to be better'n what _he_ is. You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother
couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None
of the family couldn't before _they_ died. I can't; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you
hear? Say, lemme hear you read."

I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack
with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says:

"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky
here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for
you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you
good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a
son."

He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy,
and says:

"What's this?"

"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good."

He tore it up, and says:

"I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide."

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

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

"They lie--that's how."

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

"I hain't got no money."

"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it."

"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell
you the same."

"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know
the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it."

"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--"

"It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it
out."

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down-town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all
day. When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and
cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and
when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again,
and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for
me and lick me if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and
then he swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge
that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts
mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said
he'd druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher
and the widow had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide
me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most
midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before
court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said _he_ was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for
_him._

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of
him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and
nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family,
and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked
to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and
said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was
a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be
ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on
him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and
his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always
been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old
man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the
judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the
old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more;
it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die
before he'll go back. You mark them words--don't forget I said them.
It's a clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard."

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The
judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made
his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or
something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful
room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got
powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a
stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb
back again and had a good old time; and toward daylight he crawled out
again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left
arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him
after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had
to take soundings before they could navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could
reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other
way.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer leaves off. At the end of the previous novel, Huck and Tom find a treasure of twelve thousand dollars, which they divide. Judge Thatcher takes their money and invests it in the bank at six percent interest, so that each boy earns a dollar a day on their money. Huck Finn moves in with the Widow Douglas, who has agreed to care for him. Huckleberry Finn is the narrator of this story, and he starts off by describing his life to the reader. After moving in with the Widow Douglas, who buys him new clothes and begins teaching him the Bible. Huck is uncomfortable with all of these "restrictions" on his life, and soon runs away to avoid being "civilized". Tom Sawyer goes after Huck and convinces him to return to the Widow's house after promising that they will start a band of robbers together. Huck agrees to return, but still complains about having to wear new clothes and eat only when the dinner bell rings, something he was not used to while growing up with his Pap. The Widow Douglas teaches Huck the Bible and forbids him from smoking. Her attentions towards him are complemented by her sister, Miss Watson, who also lives in the house. Miss Watson is a spinster who decides that Huck must get an education. She tries to teach him spelling and lectures him on how to behave well so that he will be welcomed into heaven. Miss Watson warns Huck that if he does not change his ways, he will go to hell. Ironically, Huck finds the description of hell far more enticing and exciting than the description of heaven, and decides he would rather go to hell, but doesn't tell Miss Watson of his decision. That night, Huck goes into his bedroom and lights a candle before falling asleep. He starts to feel very lonely and equates every night sound, including an owl, dog and whippowill, with death. At one point, Huck flicks a spider away, and accidentally burns it up in the candle flame, which he thinks is a very bad omen. Huck lies awake until midnight, at which time he hears a soft meow from below his window. The meow is a signal from Tom Sawyer, and Huck replies with a similar meow. He climbs out of the bedroom window and drops to the ground to meet his friend. Chapter 2 While the boys are sneaking away, Huck trips over a root and makes a noise when he falls. Miss Watson's slave Jim hears the sound and comes outside to look around. Huck and Tom hunker down to hide, and Jim ends up sitting down right between them to wait to hear the sound again. At first, Huck thinks they will never get away, but Jim soon gets tired and falls asleep against a tree. While Jim sleeps, Tom wants to play a trick on him. He and Huck climb into the house and steal three candles, for which they leave a nickel as "pay". Then Tom quietly makes his way to Jim, takes off Jim's hat, and places it on a tree branch above Jim's head. He soon returns and tells Huck what he did. After Jim wakes up, he believes he has been bewitched, and keeps the nickel as a token around his neck for the rest of his life. According to Huck, Jim tells all the other slaves that he had been ridden around the world by some witches, and that the nickel was given to him by the devil. Tom and Huck sneak down to the river and meet some of the other boys who are supposed to be members of Tom's robber band. Together, they steal a skiff and float down the river several miles to an area where Tom has discovered a cave. Tom shows the boys a hidden room in the cave which they make their robber headquarters. Tom then reads them an oath that he has written, taken mostly from robber books and pirate stories. The boys argue over what Huck Finn's role in the gang will be, because Huck does not have a family for them to kill in case he reveals any of the gang's secrets. Huck finally offers them Miss Watson in place of his real parents, and the boys then sign an oath in blood to join the band. Tom is elected captain. Tom explains that as robbers, they will only attack carriages and take the things inside. The men will be killed and the women will be brought back to the cave. He also mentions that they will ransom some of the people, because that is what they do in books, although he has no idea what "ransom" means. After that, all the boys agree to meet again soon. They return home exhausted and Huck climbs into bed having muddied up his new clothes, and feeling dead tired. Chapter 3 The morning after his robber gang adventure, Huck receives a lecture from Miss Watson for dirtying his clothes. She takes him into a closet to pray, and tells him to pray every day so he will get what he wants. Huck tries to pray daily, but becomes disillusioned when all he gets is a fish-line with no hooks, when he prayed extra hard for hooks. When he asks Miss Watson about it, she tells him praying brings spiritual gifts. Unable to see any use for that sort of thing, Huck decides praying is probably not worth his time. A drowned man is found in the river, and the townspeople believe is Huck's Pap. Huck is unconvinced after he hears the man was found floating on his back. He remarks that everyone knows dead men float face down, so this must have been a woman in man's clothing that looked like his Pap. Tom Sawyer's robber band falls apart after a few weeks because the boys get bored of pretending they are robbing people. The only real escapade is when they wreck a Sunday School picnic and chase some of elementary school children away. Tom pretends that during this 'battle' there were Arabs and elephants and that the boys were attacking a large army, but Huck is too practical to follow Tom's fantastical imaginations. When Huck asks why they could not see all the elephants, Tom explains that some magicians must have turned the whole army into a Sunday School picnic. Tom then tells Huck all about genies in bottles, and how the genies must obey whoever rubs the bottle. Huck gets an old lamp and tries to find a genie, but when it fails he decides that the genies were just another of Tom's lies. Chapter 4 Huck spends the next three months living with the widow and getting acclimated to his new life. He starts to attend school and remarks, "I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too." Everything goes fairly well until one day when Huck accidentally overturns a salt-shaker at the breakfast table. Miss Watson does not let him throw any salt over his left shoulder , and as a result Huck starts to get worried that something bad will happen. As soon as Huck leaves the house, he notices boot prints in the fresh snow. Upon closer inspection he realizes that there is a cross on the left boot-heel, which he has only ever seen in his Pap's. Huck's Pap has returned. Aware that Pap is probably after his money , Huck goes to Judge Thatcher and begs the Judge to take all his money as a gift. The Judge is quite surprised by the request, but when Huck refuses to reveal why he wants to give away his money, Judge Thatcher agrees to "buy" it for one dollar, saying he will take the money "for a consideration." Huck, still quite worried over what is going to happen now that Pap has returned, goes to the Miss Watson's slave Jim for advice. Jim takes out a hair-ball in order to do some magic with it for Huck. When the hair-ball refuses to work properly, Jim suggest that Huck give it some money. Huck offers a counterfeit quarter, which Jim takes and places under the ball. Jim tells Huck that Pap is torn between two angels, a good white angel and a bad black angel. He also explains that Huck will have considerable pain in his life and at the same time considerable joy. Huck returns to his room that night and finds his Pap sitting there. Chapter 5 Huck arrives back at his room and sees his Pap sitting in a chair. Huck describes Pap as a filthy, poor man who used to scare him a great deal. Now, however, Huck is no longer scared of Pap, and instead notes how old his father has grown. Pap harasses Huck for wearing good clothes and going to school. He then accuses Huck of putting on airs and acting better than his own father. Pap remarks that no one in his family could ever read, and that he certainly does not want his son to be smarter than he is. He demands that Huck read him something, and soon becomes quite furious when he realizes that Huck is in fact able to read. Pap threatens to beat Huck if he ever catches him near the school again. He makes Huck hand over the dollar that Judge Thatcher "paid" him and then climbs out the window to go drinking in the town. The next day, Pap goes to Judge Thatcher and tries to make the Judge give him Huck's money. The Judge refuses, and he and the widow take a case to court in an effort to get Huck legally placed with one of them. The custody judge is unfortunately new to the town and refuses to separate Huck from his father. Judge Thatcher, realizing he cannot win, gives Huck some money, which Huck immediately turns over to Pap. Pap gets extremely drunk and is placed in jail for a week. The new judge then sympathetically takes Pap into his home, dresses him well, and tries to reform him. After thinking that he has reformed Pap, the Judge goes to bed. That night, Pap sneaks out of the new judge's house and buys some alcohol. By morning he is so drunk that he breaks his arm in two places and nearly freezes to death on the porch. The new judge is livid at this betrayal of his trust and comments that the only way to reform Pap is with a shotgun.

The first sentence introduces Huck in a colloquial, friendly manner: "You don't know about me." From the very first words of the novel, Twain makes it clear that Huck is the narrator, and that the reader will hear the story of his adventures directly from him. In addition, to make it clear to readers unfamiliar with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that this novel exists independently, Huck explains that if they haven't read Twain's earlier work, it "ain't no matter." The Widow Douglas is an honorable woman who hopes to nurture Huck into a civilized child. Here, the reader immediately understands the main theme of the novel, the conflict between civilization and freedom. In agreement with Rousseau, Twain tends to suggest that civilization corrupts rather than improves human beings. For example, in the first chapter, Huck is forced to change his natural character into the mold the Widow Douglas demands from him. He feels cramped in new clothes, and hates being limited to eating dinner only when the dinner bell rings. Twain cleverly contrasts this new lifestyle with Huck's old way of life. For example, Huck compares eating dinner off a plate to eating from a "barrel of odds and ends," which implies a pig's slop bucket. Here, Twain explains that in his earlier life, Huck competed for food with pigs, but also notes that Huck enjoyed eating from the slop bucket more than eating from the plate.  Huck's relationship with food is a prominent theme throughout the novel, and during his time on Jackson's Island and working his way down river, Huck revels in and enjoys his ad hoc dining. In the first chapter, we observe Huck is ironically trapped in a "civilized" world, when he would prefer to live freely in nature.  Irony appears in other areas of the novel as well.  For example, Huck explains that the Widow Douglas wouldn't let him smoke, even though, ironically, she secretly uses snuff herself. Irony appears yet again when Miss Watson tries to warn Huck about hell.  This warning is juxtaposed by her painful academic lessons. Huck finds spelling very difficult to learn and hates the lessons so much, that he remarks hell sounds more enjoyable. In this ironic reference, Twain reminds the reader of Huck's childhood innocence.  Only a child would rationally choose hell over heaven. Superstition permeates the novel.  The first chapter provides several examples of Huck's superstitious side, specifically in his interpretation of the night sounds , and in how he believes the spider burning to death in the flame of his candle is a serious omen of bad luck.  After killing the spider, Huck immediately attempts a counter-charm, even though he knows there is no way of undoing bad luck. Typically, Huck is a very sensible person, making his adherence to superstition slightly ironic. Huck is very logical and reasonable.  For example, in determining that he would prefer heaven over hell after Miss Watson describes the two to him, Huck uses very logical reasoning that the reader can understand.  Superstition, on the other hand, is completely irrational. Thus, when confronted by superstition Huck behaves contrary to his usual manner, perhaps a reminder that he is just a child, or an allusion to typical sensibilities of the time.  Moreover, superstition symbolizes Huck's fear of the unknown; Huck is most superstitious whenever he is extremely worried about his future, such as in this opening chapter and later while on Jackson's Island. Superstition also serves to foreshadow events throughout the novel, as Huck knows the bad luck will return to haunt him.  For example, after Huck accidentally brushes the spider into his candle flame, Pap returns to town. This chapter serves to introduce the other boys in Huck's town. It is important to notice that although Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are best friends, the other boys are more than willing to cut Huck out of Tom's gang. Understanding that Huck is not very popular helps explain his feelings of isolation in the town; the adults keep trying to "sivilize" him, and the other boys tend to ignore him. Here, Twain interestingly juxtaposes theft and honor. These contradictory ideas are conveniently merged by Tom Sawyer, who logically explains to the other boys that robbery is honorable. Tom's definition appears to be complete nonsense. However, as the reader will see by the end of the book, this scene actually parallels the novel's ending, where Huck and Tom "steal" Jim out of slavery. Thus, Twain truly demonstrates how honor and robbery can coexist. Tom Sawyer's gang can be viewed as a childish representation of society as a whole, an example of a synecdoche. Tom creates a set of rules, ideas, and morals that he expects the boys to adhere to, all of which he gets from books.  Thus, books form a foundation for civilization; using books, Tom creates a society for his gang of friends.  Ironically, Twain mocks the adult world in this chapter by showing that although the adult world relies on books such as the Bible to define civilization, pirate and robber books might also suffice. Slavery is introduced in this chapter through Tom and Huck's interactions with Miss Watson's slave, Jim. As the novel progresses, slavery gradually becomes a larger issue. It is important to note Huck's views towards slavery at this point so that they may be compared to his views later on. In this chapter, Huck comments that Jim, "was most ruined, for a servant," thus demonstrating he supports the idea of slavery. Only later in the novel does Huck start to question whether Jim should be a servant at all. Huck's rationality and literalness appear here. Twain goes to great lengths to show that Huck is a logical thinker who only believes what he can see with his own eyes. Thus, Tom's band becomes boring when all they do is attack turnip wagons and Sunday School picnics. Unlike Tom Sawyer, Huck is unable to make-believe that the picnic is really an Arab army. The same thing happens with respect to Huck's Pap; Huck decides that Pap cannot be dead because the dead person was floating on its back rather than its face, meaning that it must have been a woman. This focus on rationality and literalness is used by Twain to further attack religion. Huck is told to pray for what he wants, but when he prays and does not get anything, he decides that praying is pointless. Huck also thinks about the Christian concept of always helping other people. When he realizes that Christianity seems to offer him no personal advantage in life, he quickly rejects it as quite pointless. Superstition appears again when Huck asks Jim to help him decide what to do about Pap.  Jim uses a large hairball he believes to have magical abilities to help Huck.  This is the first time that Twain foreshadows the happenings of the rest of the novel. Jim mentions "two gals flyin'" around Huck's life, a light one and a dark one, a rich one and a poor one. This is of course a reference to Huck and to Jim, since Huck is rich and Jim is poor. Jim's comment that Huck should avoid the water will go unheeded when both of them end up running away downriver. Huck reinforces a split between what can be termed "natural learning" versus "book learning." He has been brought up with only "natural learning," such as how to survive in the wild. This can be contrasted with Tom Sawyer's "book learning," which has little actual application in Huck's life, and which Twain makes fun of by portraying the silliness of Tom's robber band. The usefulness of Huck's type of learning is constantly tested, for instance when he spots Pap's boot marks in the snow. This split between natural and book learning will be brought to a head when Huck encounters Pap directly.