Twain's HUCK FINN (Chapters 23-34)

WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it.

Providence had stood by me this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now.

“Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them that’s left behind in the vale of sorrers. He has done generous by these yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that’s left fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he would a done more generous by ’em if he hadn’t ben afeard o’ woundin’ his dear William and me.

It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter.

Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot.

“Well, anyways, I doan’ hanker for no mo’ un um, Huck.

And so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying himself; but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in, and says:

All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out:

...very well. Yes, I remember now, he did die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. But it didn’t save him. Yes, it was mortification—that was it. He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle’s...

The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don’t disturb them.

“My land!” she says, breaking in and jumping for him, “you impudent young rascal, to fool a body so—” and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says:

Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights.

You hain’t done a thing from the start that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark.

That’s why they’re invited here this evenin’; but tomorrow we want all to come—everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it’s fitten that his funeral orgies sh’d be public.”

Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.

The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says:

But that trick took ’em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn’t let go all holts and made that rush to get a look we’d a slept in our cravats to-night—cravats warranted to wear, too—longer than we’d need ’em.”

“Neighbors, I don’t know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if these two ain’t frauds, I am an idiot, that’s all. I think it’s our duty to see that they don’t get away from here till we’ve looked into this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We’ll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t’other couple, and I reckon we’ll find out something before we get through.”

“This is a surprise to me which I wasn’t looking for; and I’ll acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain’t very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he’s broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks’ brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can’t hear nor speak—and can’t even make signs to amount to much, now’t he’s only got one hand to work them with.

I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better.

Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery.

Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full.

I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says:

“Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water—in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they’ve got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can’t bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven’t got no conveniences for it.”

“Yes—regular. His pew’s right over opposite ourn—on t’other side the pulpit.”

“Broke his arm—very likely, ain’t it?—and very convenient, too, for a fraud that’s got to make signs, and ain’t learnt how. Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good!—and mighty ingenious—under the circumstances!”

"We are sold—mighty badly sold. But we don’t want to be the laughing stock of this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. No. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! Then we’ll all be in the same boat. Ain’t that sensible?”

“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger—some idiots don’t require documents—leastways I’ve heard there’s such down South here. 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.

Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song yet.

But it warn’t no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an Englishman and couldn’t imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar.

They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his’n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t’other one lies.

“We’ll do it!” they all shouted; “and if we don’t find them marks we’ll lynch the whole gang!”

Dese is all I kin stan’.”

The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home.

“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don’t know what all.”

They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says:

...tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to...

...You see, he was pretty old, and George’s g’yirls was too young to be much company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn’t seem to care much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey—and William, too, for that matter—because he was...

“It’s a pretty long journey. But it’ll be lovely; wisht I was a-going. Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others?”

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.