Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they came. Pretty soon we were in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldiers’ march. The windows and dooryards were full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

“Is it them?”

And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:

“You bet it is.”

When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls were standing in the door. Mary Jane was red-headed, but that didn’t make any difference; she was awfully beautiful, and her face and her eyes were all lit up like glory; she was so glad her uncles had come. The king spread his arms, and Mary Jane jumped for them, and Joanna jumped for the duke, and there they had it! Almost everybody—at least the women—cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times.

Then the king nudged the duke privately—I saw him do it—and then he looked around and saw the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then he and the duke, with a hand across each other’s shoulder and the other hand to their eyes, walked slowly and solemnly over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying “Sh!” and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so that you could have heard a pin fall. And when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one look, and then they burst out crying so that you could have heard them to Orleans, almost; and then they put their arms around each other’s necks, and hung their chins over each other’s shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I never saw two men leak the way they did. And, mind you, everybody was doing the same; and the place was damper than anything I ever saw. Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and the other on the other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and pretended to pray all to themselves. Well, when it came to that it worked the crowd like nothing you ever saw, and everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud—the poor girls, too; and nearly every woman went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemnly, on the forehead, and then put her hand on their heads, and looked up toward the sky, with the tears running down, and then burst out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and gave the next woman a chance. I never saw anything so disgusting.

Well, by and by the king got up and came forward a little, and worked himself up and slobbered out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing the diseased alive after the long journey of four thousand miles, but it was a trial that was sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanked them out of his heart and out of his brother’s heart, because out of their mouths they couldn’t, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, until it was just sickening; and then he blubbered out a pious goody-goody Amen, and turned himself loose and began crying fit to burst.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxology, and all the people joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I never saw it freshen things up so, and sound so honest and fine.

Then the king began to work his jaw again, and said how he and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help sit up with the ashes of the diseased; and said that if his poor brother lying yonder could speak, he knew who he would name, for they were names that were very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he would name the same, to wit, as follows, viz.: Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow Bartley.

Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson were down at the end of the town hunting together—that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to the other world, and the preacher was pointing him right. Lawyer Bell was away up to Louisville on business. But the rest were on hand, and so they all came and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke and didn’t say anything, but just kept smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads while he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said “Goo-goo—goo-goo-goo” all the time, like a baby that can’t talk.

So the king blathered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town, by name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that had happened one time or another in the town, or to George’s family, or to Peter. And he always let on that Peter had written him those things; but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat.

Then Mary Jane fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king read it out loud and cried over it. It gave the dwelling house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it gave the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hidden down in the cellar. So these two frauds said they would go and fetch it up, and have everything square and aboveboard; and told me to come with a candle. We shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilled it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all those yellow-boys. My, the way the king’s eyes did shine! He slapped the duke on the shoulder and said:

“Oh, this isn’t wonderful or anything! Oh, no, I reckon not! Why, Bilji, it beats the Nonesuch, doesn’t it?”

The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yellow-boys, and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king said:

“There’s no use talking; being brothers to a rich dead man and representatives of foreign heirs that have been left is the line for you and me, Bilge. This comes of trusting to Providence. It’s the best way, in the long run. I’ve tried them all, and there isn’t any better way.”

Almost everybody would have been satisfied with the pile, and taken it on trust; but no, they must count it. So they counted it, and it came out four hundred and fifteen dollars short. Said the king:

“Darn him, I wonder what he did with that four hundred and fifteen dollars?”

They worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. Then the duke said:

“Well, he was a pretty sick man, and probably he made a mistake—I reckon that’s the way of it. The best way is to let it go, and keep still about it. We can spare it.”

“Oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. I don’t care anything about that—it’s the count I’m thinking about. We want to be awfully square and open and aboveboard here, you know. We want to lug this money upstairs and count it before everybody—then there isn’t anything suspicious. But when the dead man says there’s six thousand dollars, you know, we don’t want to—”

“Hold on,” said the duke. “Let’s make up the deficit,” and he began to haul yellow-boys out of his pocket.

“It’s a most amazingly good idea, Duke—you do have a rattling clever head on you,” said the king. “Blessed if the old Nonesuch isn’t helping us out again,” and he began to haul out yellow-jackets and stack them up.

It almost busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear.

“Say,” said the duke, “I have another idea. Let’s go upstairs and count this money, and then just give it to the girls.”

“Good land, Duke, let me hug you! It’s the most dazzling idea that a man ever struck. You certainly have the most astonishing head I ever saw. Oh, this is the best dodge; there isn’t any mistake about it. Let them fetch along their suspicions now if they want to—this will lay them out.”

When we got upstairs everybody gathered around the table, and the king counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile—twenty elegant little piles. All the people looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I saw the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. He said:

“Friends all, my poor brother who lies yonder has done generously by those who are left behind in the vale of sorrows. He has done generously by these poor little lambs, whom he loved and sheltered, and who are left fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we who knew him know that he would have done more generously by them if he hadn’t been afraid of wounding his dear William and me. Now, wouldn’t he? There isn’t any question about it in my mind. Well, then, what kind of brothers would they be who would stand in his way at such a time? And what kind of uncles would they be who would rob—yes, rob—such poor sweet lambs as these, whom he loved so, at such a time? If I know William—and I think I do—he—well, I’ll just ask him.” He turned around and began to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands, and the duke looked at him, stupid and leather-headed, for a while; then all of a sudden he seemed to catch his meaning, and jumped for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugged him about fifteen times before he let up. Then the king said, “I knew it; I reckon that will convince anybody of the way he feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanna, take the money—take it all. It’s the gift of him who lies yonder, cold but joyful.”

Mary Jane went for him, Susan and Joanna went for the duke, and then such hugging and kissing as I never saw before. And all the people crowded up with tears in their eyes, and almost shook the hands off those frauds, saying all the time:

“You dear good souls!—how lovely!—how could you!”

Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and everybody was busy listening. The king was saying—in the middle of something he had started in on—

“—they being particular friends of the diseased. That’s why they’re invited here this evening; but tomorrow we want all to come—everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it’s fitting that his funeral orgies should be public.”

And so he went mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, until the duke couldn’t stand it anymore; so he wrote on a little scrap of paper, “Obsequies, you old fool,” and folded it up, and started goo-gooing and reaching it over people’s heads to him. The king read it and put it in his pocket, and said:

“Poor William, afflicted as he is, his heart’s always right. Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral—wants me to make everyone welcome. But he didn’t need to worry—it was just what I was getting at.”

Then he weaved along again, perfectly calm, and began dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just the way he had done before. And when he did it the third time he said:

“I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it isn’t—obsequies being the common term—but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies aren’t used in England anymore—it’s gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re after more exactly. It’s a word that’s made up out of the Greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open or public funeral.”

He was the worst I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man laughed right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody said, “Why, Doctor!” and Abner Shackleford said:

“Why, Robinson, haven’t you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks.”

The king smiled eagerly, and shoved out his hand, and said:

“Is it my poor brother’s dear good friend and physician? I—”

“Keep your hands off me!” said the doctor. “You talk like an Englishman, don’t you? It’s the worst imitation I ever heard. You, Peter Wilks’s brother! You’re a fraud, that’s what you are!”

Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey had shown in forty ways that he was Harvey, and knew everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt Harvey’s feelings and the poor girl’s feelings, and all that. But it was no use; he stormed right along, and said any man who pretended to be an Englishman and couldn’t imitate the lingo any better than he did was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls were hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor turned on them. He said:

“I was your father’s friend, and I’m your friend; and I warn you as a friend, and an honest one who wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his ridiculous Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of impostor—has come here with a lot of empty names and facts that he picked up somewhere, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal out—I beg you to do it. Will you?”

Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She said:

“Here is my answer.” She heaved up the bag of money and put it in the king’s hands, and said, “Take these six thousand dollars, and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us any receipt for it.”

Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and Joanna did the same on the other. All the people clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, while the king held up his head and smiled proudly. The doctor said:

“All right; I wash my hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a time is coming when you’re going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.” And away he went.

“All right, Doctor,” said the king, kind of mocking him; “we’ll try to get them to send for you,” which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.