The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 31–The Last

So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in.

I was right on him before I could shirk.

And when you tell him the handbill and the reward’s bogus, maybe he’ll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting ’em out.

A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks—hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar...

We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep’ you?—boat get aground?

She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside.

I must go up the road and waylay him.

It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard—and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation.

“But we won’t let you walk—it wouldn’t be Southern hospitality to do it. Come right in.”

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson—and he made another bow.

...at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says:
“You owdacious puppy!”

No—not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I hain’t been so put out since I don’t know when. But I don’t care, I don’t mind the terms—I’d be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here.

...here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail—that is, I knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn’t look like nothing in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier- plumes.

We see we was too late—couldn’t do no good. We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side I warn’t acquainted with—which was the north side—we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it.

Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank.

Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat—because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know—and there’s your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is.

You don’t reckon it’s going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?

So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with the other...

“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss; but I won’t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.

She kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.

But she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong.

We didn’t cook none of the pies in the wash-pan—afraid the solder would melt...

But he had to have it; Tom said he’d got to; there warn’t no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life.

It was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn’t give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn’t seem to make no headway, hardly...

Prisoners ain’t ever without rats. There ain’t no instance of it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies.

All animals like music—in a prison they dote on it.

And there warn’t a blessed snake up there when we went back—we didn’t half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn’t matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres.

But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him.

The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Hain’t you got no principle at all?

When a prisoner of style escapes it’s called an evasion.

“He had a dream,” I says, “and it shot him.”
“Singular dream,” he says.

I was just to that pass I didn’t have no reasoning faculties no more.

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

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me.

So now I got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur’s up to this time, as long as I couldn’t seem to get any answer out of you about it.

“Well—what?” he says, kind of pettish.