Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

They swarmed up toward Sherburn’s house, whooping and raging like wild animals, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and trampled to mush, and it was awful to see. Children were running ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women’s heads, and there were Black boys in every tree, and Black men and women looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them, they would break and skedaddle back out of reach. Lots of the women and girls were crying and carrying on, scared nearly to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburn’s palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn’t hear yourself think for the noise. It was a little twenty-foot yard. Some sang out, “Tear down the fence! Tear down the fence!” Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she went, and the front wall of the crowd began to roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburn stepped out onto the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barreled gun in his hand, and took his stand, perfectly calm and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word—just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awfully creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn ran his eye slowly along the crowd; and wherever it struck, the people tried a little to outstare him, but they couldn’t; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel the way you do when you are eating bread that has sand in it.

Then he said, slowly and scornfully:

“The idea of your lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of your thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women who come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man is safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it’s daytime and you’re not behind him.

“Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man is a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him who wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man all by himself has stopped a stagecoach full of men in the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people—whereas you’re just as brave, and no braver. Why don’t your juries hang murderers? Because they’re afraid the man’s friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark—and it’s just what they would do.

“So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is that you didn’t bring a man with you; that’s one mistake, and the other is that you didn’t come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man—Buck Harkness, there—and if you hadn’t had him to start you, you would have taken it out in blowing.

“You didn’t want to come. The average man doesn’t like trouble and danger. You don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man—like Buck Harkness, there—shouts ‘Lynch him! Lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down—afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are—cowards—and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man’s coattail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The most pitiful thing in the world is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching is going to be done, it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they’ll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave—and take your half-a-man with you”—tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it as he said this.

The crowd washed back suddenly, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness hurried after them, looking pretty cheap. I could have stayed if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to.

I went to the circus and loafed around the back side until the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I had better save it, because there is no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and among strangers that way. You can’t be too careful. I’m not opposed to spending money on circuses when there is no other way, but there is no use in wasting it on them.

It was a real first-rate circus. It was the most splendid sight that ever was when they all came riding in, two and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes or stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable—there must have been twenty of them—and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerfully fine sight; I never saw anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and went weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, way up there under the tent roof, and every lady’s rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the loveliest parasol.

And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole, cracking his whip and shouting “Hi!—hi!” and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! And so one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever saw, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild.

Well, all through the circus they did the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so, it nearly killed the people. The ringmaster couldn’t ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a person ever said; and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I couldn’t possibly understand. Why, I couldn’t have thought of them in a year. And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring—said he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn’t listen, and the whole show came to a standstill. Then the people began to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he began to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men began to pile down off the benches and swarm toward the ring, saying, “Knock him down! Throw him out!” and one or two women began to scream. So, then, the ringmaster made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn’t be any disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn’t make any more trouble, he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the horse began to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing until tears rolled down. And at last, sure enough, in spite of all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like blazes, round and round the ring, with that drunkard lying down on him and hanging to his neck, with first one leg hanging almost to the ground on one side, and then the other one on the other side, and the people just crazy. It wasn’t funny to me, though; I was trembling all over to see his danger. But pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprang up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse going like a house afire, too. He just stood up there, sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he had never been drunk in his life—and then he began to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed in the gaudiest and prettiest clothes you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum—and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing room, and everybody just howling with pleasure and astonishment.

Then the ringmaster saw how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever saw, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had gotten up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to anybody. Well, I felt sheepish enough to be taken in so, but I wouldn’t have been in that ringmaster’s place, not for a thousand dollars. I don’t know; there may be better circuses than that one was, but I never struck them yet. Anyway, it was more than good enough for me; and wherever I run across it, it can have all of my business every time.

Well, that night we had our show; but there were only about twelve people there—just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, except one boy who was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansas lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy—and maybe something rather worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size up their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drew off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURTHOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY! The World-Renowned Tragedians DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER! AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER! Of the London and Continental Theaters, in their Thrilling Tragedy of THE KING’S CAMELOPARD OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH!!! Admission 50 cents.

Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all—which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.

“There,” he said, “if that line doesn’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansas!”