Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Well, all day he and the king were hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn’t hold any more, the duke quit tending the door and went around the back way and came onto the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised this tragedy, and said it was the most thrilling one that ever was; and so he went on bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, who was to play the main principal part in it; and at last, when he had gotten everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king came prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And—but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awfully funny. The people almost killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed until he came back and did it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the capers that old fool cut.

Then the duke let the curtain down, and bowed to the people, and said the great tragedy would be performed only two nights more, on account of pressing London engagements, where the seats were all sold already for it in Drury Lane; and then he made them another bow, and said that if he had succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he would be deeply obliged if they would mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it.

Twenty people sang out:

“What, is it over? Is that all?”

The duke said yes. Then there was a fine time. Everybody sang out, “Sold!” and rose up mad, and was going for that stage and those tragedians. But a big, fine-looking man jumped up on a bench and shouted:

“Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen.” They stopped to listen. “We are sold—mighty badly sold. But we don’t want to be the laughingstock 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 quietly, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! Then we’ll all be in the same boat. Isn’t that sensible?” (“You bet it is!—the judge is right!” everybody sang out.) “All right, then—not a word about any sell. Go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy.”

Next day you couldn’t hear anything around that town but how splendid that show was. The house was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. When the king and the duke and I got home to the raft, we all had supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and hide her about two miles below town.

The third night the house was crammed again—and they weren’t newcomers this time, but people who had been at the show the other two nights. I stood by the duke at the door, and I saw that every man who went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat—and I saw it wasn’t any perfume, either, not by a long sight. I smelled sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there were sixty-four of them that went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me; I couldn’t stand it. Well, when the place couldn’t hold any more people, the duke gave a fellow a quarter and told him to tend the door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, with me after him; but the minute we turned the corner and were in the dark, he said:

“Walk fast now until you get away from the houses, and then run for the raft as if the dickens were after you!”

I did it, and he did the same. We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we were gliding downstream, all dark and still, and edging toward the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. I reckoned the poor king was in for a lively time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawled out from under the wigwam, and said:

“Well, how’d the old thing pan out this time, Duke?”

He hadn’t been up to town at all.

We never showed a light until we were about ten miles below the village. Then we lit up and had supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they had served those people. The duke said:

“Greenhorns, flatheads! I knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they’d lay for us the third night, and consider that it was their turn now. Well, it is their turn, and I’d give something to know how much they’d take for it. I would just like to know how they’re putting in their opportunity. They can turn it into a picnic if they want to—they brought plenty of provisions.”

Those rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in those three nights. I had never seen money hauled in by the wagonload like that before. By and by, when they were asleep and snoring, Jim said:

“Doesn’t the way those kings carry on surprise you, Huck?”

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

“Why doesn’t it, Huck?”

“Well, it doesn’t, because it’s in the breed. I reckon they’re all alike.”

“But, Huck, these kings of ours are regular rapscallions; that’s just what they are; they’re regular rapscallions.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying; all kings are mostly rapscallions, as far as I can make out.”

“Is that so?”

“You read about them once—you’ll see. Look at Henry the Eighth; this one is a Sunday school superintendent compared with him. And look at Charles the Second, and Louis the Fourteenth, and Louis the Fifteenth, and James the Second, and Edward the Second, and Richard the Third, and forty more; besides all those Saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain. My, you should have seen old Henry the Eighth when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head the next morning. And he would do it just as indifferently as if he were ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwyn,’ he would say. They would fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they would chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he would say; and up she would come. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head’—and they would chop it off. ‘Ring up Fair Rosamund.’ Fair Rosamund would answer the bell. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up until he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ours is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history. Well, Henry took a notion that he wanted to get up some trouble with this country. How did he go at it—give notice?—give the country a chance? No. All of a sudden he heaved all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacked out a declaration of independence, and dared them to come on. That was his style—he never gave anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No—he drowned him in a butt of malmsey, like a cat. Suppose people left money lying around where he was—what did he do? He collared it. Suppose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn’t sit down there and see that he did it—what did he do? He always did the other thing. Suppose he opened his mouth—what then? If he didn’t shut it up mighty quickly, he would lose a lie every time. That’s the kind of bug Henry was; and if we had had him along instead of our kings, he would have fooled that town a lot worse than ours did. I don’t say that ours are lambs, because they aren’t, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they’re nothing compared with that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings are kings, and you have to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.”

“But this one does smell so awful, Huck.”

“Well, they all do, Jim. We can’t help the way a king smells; history doesn’t tell of any way.”

“Now the duke, he’s a fairly decent man in some ways.”

“Yes, a duke’s different. But not very different. This one’s a pretty hard lot for a duke. When he’s drunk, there isn’t any nearsighted man who could tell him from a king.”

“Well, anyway, I don’t hanker for any more of them, Huck. These are all I can stand.”

“It’s the way I feel, too, Jim. But we have them on our hands, and we have to remember what they are, and make allowances. Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that’s out of kings.”

What was the use of telling Jim these weren’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t have done any good; and, besides, it was just as I said: you couldn’t tell them from the real kind.

I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often did that. When I woke up just at daybreak, he was sitting there with his head down between his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice or let on. I knew what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick, because he had never been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks do for theirs. It doesn’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so. He was often moaning and mourning that way at night, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Poor little ’Lizabeth! Poor little Johnny! It’s mighty hard; I expect I’m never going to see you again, never again!” He was a mighty good Black man, Jim was.

But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he said:

“What makes me feel so bad this time is that I heard something over yonder on the bank like a whack, or a slam, a while ago, and it reminded me of the time I treated my little ’Lizabeth so meanly. She was only about four years old, and she caught scarlet fever, and had a mighty rough spell; but she got well, and one day she was standing around, and I said to her, I said:

“‘Shut the door.’

“She never did it; just stood there, kind of smiling up at me. It made me mad; and I said again, mighty loud, I said:

“‘Don’t you hear me?—shut the door!’

“She just stood the same way, kind of smiling up. I was boiling! I said:

“‘I bet I’ll make you mind!’

“And with that I gave her a slap alongside the head that sent her sprawling. Then I went into the other room, and was gone about ten minutes; and when I came back there was that door still standing open, and that child standing almost right in it, looking down and mourning, with the tears running down. My, but I was mad! I was going for the child, but just then—it was a door that opened inward—just then, along came the wind and slammed it shut behind the child, ker-blam!—and my land, the child never moved! My breath almost hopped out of me; and I felt so—so—I don’t know how I felt. I crept out, all trembling, and crept around and opened the door easy and slow, and poked my head in behind the child, soft and still, and all of a sudden I said pow! just as loud as I could yell. She never budged! Oh, Huck, I burst out crying and grabbed her up in my arms, and said, ‘Oh, the poor little thing! May the Lord God Almighty forgive poor old Jim, because he will never forgive himself as long as he lives!’ Oh, she was completely deaf and unable to speak, Huck, completely deaf and unable to speak—and I had been treating her that way!”