Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was halfway I saw a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited until he came along. I said, “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed that way; and he swallowed two or three times like a person who has a dry throat, and then said:

“I haven’t ever done you any harm. You know that. So, then, what do you want to come back and haunt me for?”

I said:

“I haven’t come back—I haven’t been gone.”

When he heard my voice it steadied him somewhat, but he wasn’t quite satisfied yet. He said:

“Don’t you play any tricks on me, because I wouldn’t on you. Honestly, now, you aren’t a ghost?”

“I promise, I’m not,” I said.

“Well—I—I—well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can’t somehow seem to understand it in any way. Look here, weren’t you ever murdered at all?”

“No. I wasn’t ever murdered at all—I played it on them. Come in here and feel me if you don’t believe me.”

So he did it; and it satisfied him; and he was so glad to see me again that he didn’t know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right away, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. But I said to leave it alone until by and by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little way, and I told him the kind of fix I was in, and asked what he reckoned we had better do. He said to let him alone a minute, and not to disturb him. So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he said:

“It’s all right; I’ve got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and pretend it’s yours; and you turn back and fool along slowly, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and I’ll go toward town a little way, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or half an hour after you; and you don’t need to let on that you know me at first.”

I said:

“All right; but wait a minute. There’s one more thing—a thing that nobody knows but me. And that is, there’s an enslaved man here that I’m trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is Jim—old Miss Watson’s Jim.”

He said:

“What! Why, Jim is—”

He stopped and began to think. I said:

“I know what you’ll say. You’ll say it’s a dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? I’m low-down; and I’m going to steal him, and I want you to keep mum and not let on. Will you?”

His eye lit up, and he said:

“I’ll help you steal him!”

Well, I let go all holds then, as if I had been shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard—and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerably in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a stealer of enslaved people!

“Oh, shucks!” I said; “you’re joking.”

“I’m not joking, either.”

“Well, then,” I said, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway enslaved man, don’t forget to remember that you don’t know anything about him, and I don’t know anything about him.”

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slowly on account of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home much too quickly for a trip of that length. The old gentleman was at the door, and he said:

“Why, this is wonderful! Who would ever have thought it was in that mare to do it? I wish we had timed her. And she hasn’t sweated a hair—not a hair. It’s wonderful. Why, I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that horse now—I wouldn’t, honestly; and yet I would have sold her for fifteen before, and thought that was all she was worth.”

That’s all he said. He was the most innocent, best old soul I ever saw. But it wasn’t surprising, because he was not only a farmer but a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he had built himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged anything for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There were plenty of other farmer-preachers like that, and they did the same, down South.

In about half an hour Tom’s wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt Sally saw it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and said:

“Why, somebody has come! I wonder who it is. Why, I do believe it’s a stranger. Jimmy,” (that’s one of the children) “run and tell Lize to put on another plate for dinner.”

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger doesn’t come every year, and so he beats yellow fever for interest when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we were all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an audience—and that was always a treat for Tom Sawyer. In those circumstances it was no trouble to him to throw in a suitable amount of style. He wasn’t a boy to go meekly along up that yard like a sheep; no, he came calm and important, like the ram. When he got in front of us he lifted his hat ever so graciously and daintily, as if it were the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn’t want to disturb them, and said:

“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”

“No, my boy,” said the old gentleman, “I’m sorry to say that your driver has deceived you; Nichols’s place is down a matter of three miles more. Come in, come in.”

Tom took a look back over his shoulder, and said, “Too late—he’s out of sight.”

“Yes, he’s gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we’ll hitch up and take you down to Nichols’s.”

“Oh, I can’t cause you so much trouble; I couldn’t think of it. I’ll walk—I don’t mind the distance.”

“But we won’t let you walk—it wouldn’t be Southern hospitality to do it. Come right in.”

“Oh, do,” said Aunt Sally; “it isn’t a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. You must stay. It’s a long, dusty three miles, and we can’t let you walk. And, besides, I’ve already told them to put on another plate when I saw you coming; so you mustn’t disappoint us. Come right in and make yourself at home.”

So Tom thanked them very heartily and handsomely, and let himself be persuaded, and came in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson—and he made another bow.

Well, he ran on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervous, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortably, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and said:

“You audacious puppy!”

He looked kind of hurt, and said:

“I’m surprised at you, ma’am.”

“You’re surp—Why, what do you reckon I am? I have a good notion to take and—Say, what do you mean by kissing me?”

He looked kind of humble, and said:

“I didn’t mean anything, ma’am. I didn’t mean any harm. I—I—thought you’d like it.”

“Why, you born fool!” She took up the spinning stick, and it looked as if it were all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. “What made you think I’d like it?”

“Well, I don’t know. Only, they—they—told me you would.”

“They told you I would. Whoever told you is another lunatic. I never heard the beat of it. Who’s they?”

“Why, everybody. They all said so, ma’am.”

It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked as if she wanted to scratch him; and she said:

“Who’s ‘everybody’? Out with their names, or there’ll be a fool short.”

He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and said:

“I’m sorry, and I wasn’t expecting it. They told me to. They all told me to. They all said, ‘Kiss her,’ and said she’d like it. They all said it—every one of them. But I’m sorry, ma’am, and I won’t do it anymore—I won’t, honestly.”

“You won’t, won’t you? Well, I should reckon you won’t!”

“No, ma’am, I’m honest about it; I won’t ever do it again—until you ask me.”

“Until I ask you! Well, I never saw the beat of it in my born days! I bet you’ll be the Methuselah-numskull of creation before I ever ask you—or the likes of you.”

“Well,” he said, “it does surprise me so. I can’t make it out, somehow. They said you would, and I thought you would. But—” He stopped and looked around slowly, as if he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewhere, and fetched up on the old gentleman’s, and said, “Didn’t you think she’d like me to kiss her, sir?”

“Why, no; I—I—well, no, I believe I didn’t.”

Then he looked around the same way, to me, and said:

“Tom, didn’t you think Aunt Sally would open out her arms and say, ‘Sid Sawyer—’”

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

“No, not until you’ve asked me first.”

So she didn’t lose any time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she said:

“Why, dear me, I never saw such a surprise. We weren’t looking for you at all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him.”

“It’s because it wasn’t intended for any of us to come but Tom,” he said; “but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, Tom and I thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to tag along by and by and drop in, and pretend to be a stranger. But it was a mistake, Aunt Sally. This isn’t a healthy place for a stranger to come.”

“No—not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to have had your jaws boxed; I haven’t been so put out since I don’t know when. But I don’t care; I don’t mind the terms—I’d be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don’t deny it; I was almost petrified with astonishment when you gave me that smack.”

We had dinner out in that broad open passage between the house and the kitchen; and there were things enough on that table for seven families—and all hot, too: none of your flabby, tough meat that has lain in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn’t cool it a bit, either, the way I’ve seen those kinds of interruptions do lots of times. There was a great deal of talk all the afternoon, and Tom and I were on the lookout all the time; but it was no use; they didn’t happen to say anything about any runaway enslaved man, and we were afraid to try to work up to it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys said:

“Pa, can’t Tom and Sid and I go to the show?”

“No,” said the old man, “I reckon there isn’t going to be any; and you couldn’t go if there were, because the runaway enslaved man told Burton and me all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people; so I reckon they’ve driven the audacious loafers out of town before this time.”

So there it was!—but I couldn’t help it. Tom and I were to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we said good night and went up to bed right after supper, and climbed out of the window and down the lightning rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn’t believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn’t hurry up and give them one they would get into trouble for sure.

On the road Tom told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered, and how Pap disappeared pretty soon and didn’t come back anymore, and what a stir there was when Jim ran away. I told Tom all about our Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of it—it was as much as half past eight, then—here came a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I saw they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail—that is, I knew it was the king and the duke, though they were all over tar and feathers, and didn’t look like anything in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for those poor pitiful rascals; it seemed as if I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them anymore in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awfully cruel to one another.

We saw we were too late—we couldn’t do any good. We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent, and lay low and kept dark until the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody gave a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I wasn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of mean, and humble, and to blame, somehow—though I hadn’t done anything. But that’s always the way; it doesn’t make any difference whether you do right or wrong; a person’s conscience has no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yellow dog that didn’t know any more than a person’s conscience does, I would poison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet isn’t any good, anyhow. Tom Sawyer says the same.