CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā [Note: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā are not inventions, but facts ā even to the public confession
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā of the accused.Ā I take them from an old-time Swedish
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā to America.Ā I have added some details, but only a couple of
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā them are important ones. ā M. T.]
Ā
WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tomās uncle Silasās farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and thereās something the matter with him, he donāt know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim itās so far off and still, and everythingās so solemn it seems like everybody youāve loved is dead and gone, and you āmost wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.
Donāt you know what that is? Itās spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when youāve got it, you want ā oh, you donāt quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things youāre so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you canāt do that, youāll put up with considerable less; youāll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it warnāt any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his Aunt Polly wouldnāt let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
āTom, I reckon youāve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw ā your aunt Sally wants you.ā
I āmost jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he didnāt speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didnāt know what to do; then he says, very caām, and I could a shot him for it:
āWell,ā he says, āIām right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused ā for the present.ā
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldnāt say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
āAināt you got any sense? Spāiling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?ā
But he warnāt disturbed. He mumbled back:
āHuck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why, sheād begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know sheād take it all back. You lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her.ā
Now I never would āaā thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was always right ā the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:
āYouāll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what youāll be excused from and what you wonāt, I lay IāLL excuse you ā with a hickory!ā
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. And he says:
āBefore we get away sheāll wish she hadnāt let me go, but she wonāt know any way to get around it now. After what sheās said, her pride wonāt let her take it back.ā
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We set down, and she says:
āTheyāre in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and Huckāll be a kind of diversion for themā ācomfort,ā they say. Much of that theyāll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. Thereās a neighbor named Brace Dunlap thatās been wanting to marry their Benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he COULDNāT; so he has soured on them, and theyāre worried about it. I reckon heās somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for theyāve tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on the farm when they canāt hardly afford it, and donāt want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?ā
āThey live about a mile from Uncle Silasās place, Aunt Polly ā all the farmers live about a mile apart down there ā and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. Heās a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldnāt get Benny. Why, Bennyās only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely as ā well, youāve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas ā why, itās pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way ā so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother.ā
āWhat a name ā Jubiter! Whereād he get it?ā
āItās only just a nickname. I reckon theyāve forgot his real name long before this. Heās twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling him Jubiter, and heās Jubiter yet. Heās tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasnāt got a cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.ā
āWhatās tāother twin like?ā
āJust exactly like Jubiter ā so they say; used to was, anyway, but he haināt been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away ā up North here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. Heās dead, now. At least thatās what they say. They donāt hear about him any more.ā
āWhat was his name?ā
āJake.ā
There wasnāt anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady was thinking. At last she says:
āThe thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.ā
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
āTempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didnāt know he HAD any temper.ā
āWorks him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes.ā
āAunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, heās just as gentle as mush.ā
āWell, sheās worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because heās a preacher and haināt got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to go into the pulpit heās so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and he aināt as popular now as he used to was.ā
āWell, aināt it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable ā why, he was just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?ā
CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warnāt but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days getting out of the āupper river,ā because we got aground so much. But it warnāt dull ā couldnāt be for boys that was traveling, of course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there by the waiters. By and by we asked about it ā Tom did and the waiter said it was a man, but he didnāt look sick.
āWell, but AINāT he sick?ā
āI donāt know; maybe he is, but āpears to me heās just letting on.ā
āWhat makes you think that?ā
āBecause if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or other ā donāt you reckon he would? Well, this one donāt. At least he donāt ever pull off his boots, anyway.ā
āThe mischief he donāt! Not even when he goes to bed?ā
āNo.ā
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer ā a mystery was. If youād lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldnāt have to say take your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter:
āWhatās the manās name?ā
āPhillips.ā
āWhereād he come aboard?ā
āI think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.ā
āWhat do you reckon heās a-playing?ā
āI haināt any notion ā I never thought of it.ā
I says to myself, hereās another one that runs to pie.
āAnything peculiar about him? ā the way he acts or talks?ā
āNo ā nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when you knock he wonāt let you in till he opens the door a crack and sees who it is.ā
āBy jimminy, itās intāresting! Iād like to get a look at him. Say ā the next time youāre going in there, donāt you reckon you could spread the door andāā
āNo, indeedy! Heās always behind it. He would block that game.ā
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
āLooky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in the morning. Iāll give you a quarter.ā
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldnāt mind. Tom says thatās al...