Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It was after sunup now, but we went right on and didn’t tie up. The king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after they had jumped overboard and taken a swim, it perked them up a good deal. After breakfast the king took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his pants, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and set about learning his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he knew it pretty well, he and the duke began to practice it together. The duke had to teach him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he did it pretty well; “only,” he said, “you mustn’t bellow out ‘Romeo!’ that way, like a bull—you must say it soft and sick and languishing, so—R-o-o-meo! That is the idea; for Juliet is a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn’t bray like a donkey.”

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke had made out of oak laths, and began to practice the sword fight—the duke called himself Richard III; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see. But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they had had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke said:

“Well, Capet, we’ll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I guess we’ll add a little more to it. We want a little something to answer encores with, anyway.”

“What are encores, Bilgewater?”

The duke told him, and then said:

“I’ll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor’s hornpipe; and you—well, let me see—oh, I’ve got it—you can do Hamlet’s soliloquy.”

“Hamlet’s what?”

“Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it’s sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven’t got it in the book—I’ve only got one volume—but I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I’ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection’s vaults.”

So he began marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horribly every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he would pretend to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he had it. He told us to give attention. Then he struck a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forward, and his arms stretched way up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he began to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread himself around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting I ever saw before. This is the speech—I learned it easily enough, while he was teaching it to the king:

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin / That makes calamity of so long life; / For who would fardels bear, until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, / But that the fear of something after death / Murders the innocent sleep, / Great nature’s second course, / And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune / Than fly to others that we do not know of. / There’s the respect must give us pause: / Wake Duncan with your knocking! I wish you could; / For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, / The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, / The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take. / In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn / In customary suits of solemn black, / But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, / Breathes forth contagion on the world, / And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat in the adage, / Is sicklied over with care. / And all the clouds that lowered over our housetops, / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action. / It is a consummation devoutly to be wished. / But soft you, the fair Ophelia: / Do not open your ponderous and marble jaws. / But get yourself to a nunnery—go!

Well, the old man liked that speech, and he soon got it so he could do it first-rate. It seemed as if he were just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rear up behind when he was getting it off.

The first chance we got, the duke had some show bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommonly lively place, for there was nothing but sword fighting and rehearsing—as the duke called it—going on all the time. One morning, when we were pretty well down the State of Arkansas, we came in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a creek which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people were already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old rickety wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They read like this:

Shakespearean Revival!!! Wonderful Attraction! For One Night Only! The world-renowned tragedians, David Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane Theater, London, and Edmund Kean the Elder, of the Royal Haymarket Theater, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theaters, in their sublime Shakespearean Spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet!!!

Romeo...................................... Mr. Garrick. Juliet..................................... Mr. Kean.

Assisted by the whole strength of the company! New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!

Also: The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broadsword conflict in Richard III!!!

Richard III................................ Mr. Garrick. Richmond................................... Mr. Kean.

Also (by special request): Hamlet’s Immortal Soliloquy!! By the Illustrious Kean! Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris! For One Night Only, on account of imperative European engagements! Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

Then we went loafing around the town. The stores and houses were almost all old, rickety, dried-up frame buildings that had never been painted; they were set up three or four feet above the ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river overflowed. The houses had little gardens around them, but they seemed to raise hardly anything in them but jimsonweeds, and sunflowers, and ash piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and worn-out tinware. The fences were made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times; and they leaned every which way, and had gates that generally had only one hinge—a leather one. Some of the fences had been whitewashed sometime or other, but the duke said it was in Columbus’s time, like enough. There were generally hogs in the garden, and people driving them out.

All the stores were along one street. They had white cotton awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning posts. There were empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chewing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching—a mighty ornery lot. They generally had on yellow straw hats almost as wide as an umbrella, but didn’t wear coats or waistcoats; they called one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazily, with a drawl, and used a great many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning against every awning post, and he almost always had his hands in his pants pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chew of tobacco or to scratch. What a person heard among them all the time was:

“Give me a chew of tobacco, Hank.”

“Can’t; I have only one chew left. Ask Bill.”

Maybe Bill gives him a chew; maybe he lies and says he hasn’t got any. Some of those kinds of loafers never have a cent in the world, nor a chew of tobacco of their own. They get all their chewing by borrowing; they say to a fellow, “I wish you’d lend me a chew, Jack; I just this minute gave Ben Thompson the last chew I had”—which is a lie pretty much every time; it doesn’t fool anybody but a stranger; but Jack isn’t a stranger, so he says:

“You gave him a chew, did you? So did your sister’s cat’s grandmother. You pay me back the chews you have already borrowed from me, Lafe Buckner, and then I’ll loan you one or two tons of it, and won’t charge you any back interest, either.”

“Well, I did pay you back some of it once.”

“Yes, you did—about six chews. You borrowed store tobacco and paid back cheap twist.”

Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chew the natural leaf twisted. When they borrow a chew they don’t generally cut it off with a knife, but set the plug between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands until they get it in two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournfully at it when it’s handed back, and says, sarcastically:

“Here, give me the chew, and you take the plug.”

All the streets and lanes were just mud; there was nothing but mud—mud as black as tar and nearly a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in all the places. The hogs loafed and grunted around everywhere. You would see a muddy sow come lazing along the street with her litter of pigs, and flop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she would stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears while the pigs were milking her, and look as happy as if she were on salary. And pretty soon you would hear a loafer sing out, “Hi! So, boy! Sic him, Tige!” and away the sow would go, squealing most horribly, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they would settle back again until there was a dog fight. Nothing could wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog fight—unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and seeing him run himself to death.

On the river front some of the houses were sticking out over the bank, and they were bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. The people had moved out of them. The bank had caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. People still lived in them, but it was dangerous, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along until it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river is always gnawing at it.

The nearer it got to noon that day, the thicker and thicker were the wagons and horses in the streets, and more were coming all the time. Families fetched their dinners with them from the country, and ate them in the wagons. There was considerable whiskey drinking going on, and I saw three fights. By and by somebody sang out:

“Here comes old Boggs!—in from the country for his little old monthly drunk; here he comes, boys!”

All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they were used to having fun out of Boggs. One of them said:

“I wonder who he’s going to chew up this time. If he had chewed up all the men he’s been going to chew up in the last twenty years, he’d have a considerable reputation now.”

Another one said, “I wish old Boggs would threaten me, because then I’d know I wasn’t going to die for a thousand years.”

Boggs came tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling at the top of his voice, and singing out:

“Clear the track, there. I’m on the warpath, and the price of coffins is going to rise.”

He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty years old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he would attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn’t wait now because he had come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, “Meat first, and spoon victuals to top off on.”

He saw me, and rode up and said:

“Where did you come from, boy? Are you prepared to die?”

Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man said:

“He doesn’t mean anything; he’s always carrying on like that when he’s drunk. He’s the best-natured old fool in Arkansas—never hurt anybody, drunk or sober.”

Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning, and yelled:

“Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you’ve swindled. You’re the hound I’m after, and I’m going to have you, too!”

And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to, with the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five—and he was by far the best-dressed man in that town, too—stepped out of the store, and the crowd dropped back on each side to let him come. He said to Boggs, mighty calmly and slowly—he said:

“I’m tired of this, but I’ll endure it until one o’clock. Until one o’clock, mind—no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once after that time, you can’t travel so far that I won’t find you.”

Then he turned and went in. The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there was no more laughing. Boggs rode off abusing Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he came and stopped before the store, still keeping it up. Some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn’t; they told him it would be one o’clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he must go home—he must go right away. But it didn’t do any good. He cussed away with all his might, and threw his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went raging down the street again, with his gray hair flying. Everybody who could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it was no use—up the street he would tear again, and give Sherburn another cussing. By and by somebody said:

“Go for his daughter!—quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he’ll listen to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can.”

So somebody started on a run. I walked down the street a little way and stopped. In about five or ten minutes here came Boggs again, but not on his horse. He was reeling across the street toward me, bareheaded, with a friend on both sides of him holding his arms and hurrying him along. He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he wasn’t hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. Somebody sang out:

“Boggs!”

I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel Sherburn. He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right hand—not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up toward the sky. The same second I saw a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned around to see who had called him, and when they saw the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol barrel came down slow and steady to a level—both barrels cocked. Boggs threw up both of his hands and said, “O Lord, don’t shoot!” Bang! went the first shot, and he staggered back, clawing at the air—bang! went the second one, and he tumbled backward onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl screamed out and came rushing, and down she threw herself on her father, crying, and saying, “Oh, he’s killed him, he’s killed him!” The crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting, “Back, back! Give him air, give him air!”

Colonel Sherburn tossed his pistol onto the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off.

They took Boggs to a little drugstore, the crowd pressing around just the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good place at the window, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt first, and I saw where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drew in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out—and after that he lay still; he was dead. Then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. She was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle-looking, but awfully pale and scared.

Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and squeezing and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but the people who had the places wouldn’t give them up, and folks behind them were saying all the time, “Say, now, you’ve looked enough, you fellows; it isn’t right and it isn’t fair for you to stay there all the time and never give anybody else a chance; other folks have their rights as well as you.”

There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trouble. The streets were full, and everybody was excited. Everybody who had seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. One long, lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs stood and where Sherburn stood, with the people following him around from one place to the other and watching everything he did, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hat brim down over his eyes, and sang out, “Boggs!” and then fetched his cane down slowly to a level, and said “Bang!” staggered backward, said “Bang!” again, and fell down flat on his back. The people who had seen the thing said he did it perfectly; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. Then as many as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him.

Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothesline they came to, to do the hanging with.