Chapter 03 (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

01CHAPTER III.

02Well, I got a good going over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes, but the widow, she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could.

03Then Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.

04She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it, but it warn't so.

05I tried it.

06Once I got a fish line, but no hooks.

07It warn't no good to me without hooks.

08I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work.

09By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try it for me, but she said I was a fool.

10She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way.

11I sat down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it.

12I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Wynn get back the money he lost on pork?

13Why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole?

14Why can't Miss Watson fat up?

15No, says I to myself.

16They ain't nothing in it.

17I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts.

18This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant.

19I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.

20This was including Miss Watson, as I took it.

21I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it, except for the other people.

22So at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go.

23Sometimes the widow would take me one side, and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water.

24But maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold, and knock it all down again.

25I judged I could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if Miss Watson's got him, there weren't no help for him any more.

26I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.

27Pap, he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me.

28I didn't want to see him no more.

29He used to always wail me when he was sober, and could get his hands on me, though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around.

30Well, about this time he was found in the river Drowneded, about twelve miles above town, so people said.

31They judged it was him anyway, said this Drowneded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like Pap.

32But they could make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all.

33They said he was floating on his back in the water.

34They took him and buried him on the bank.

35But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of something.

36I knowed mighty well that a Drowneded man don't float on his back, but on his face.

37So I knowed then that this warn't Pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.

38So I was uncomfortable again.

39I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't.

40We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned.

41All the boys did.

42We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended.

43We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog drivers and women in carts, taking garden stuff to market.

44But we never hived any of them.

45Tom Sawyer called the hogs ingots, and he called the turnips and stuff jewelry, and we would go to the cave and pow-wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked.

46But I couldn't see no profit in it.

47One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan, which was the sign for the gang to get together.

48And then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich arabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants and six hundred camels, and over a thousand Sumter mules, all loaded down with diamonds, and he didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so he would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.

49He said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready.

50We never could go after even a turnip-cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they were only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they weren't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before.

51I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd as Spaniards and arabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade, and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill.

52But there weren't no Spaniards and arabs, and there weren't no camels nor no elephants.

53It weren't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer class at that.

54We busted it up and chased the children up the holla, but we never got anything but some donuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag-doll, and Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.

55I didn't see no diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so.

56He said there was loads of them there anyway, and he said there was arabs there too, and elephants and things.

57I said, why couldn't we see them then?

58He said, if I weren't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking.

59He said it was all done by enchantment.

60He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on.

61But we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school just out of spite.

62I said, all right.

63Then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians.

64Tom Sawyer said I was a numbskull.

65Why, said he, a magician would call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could save Jack Robinson.

66They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.

67Well, I says, suppose we got some genies to help us.

68Can't we lick the other crowd then?

69How are you going to get them?

70I don't know.

71How did they get them?

72Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around, and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do, they up and do it.

73They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it, or any other man.

74Who makes them tear round so?

75Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.

76They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they got to do whatever he says.

77If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of diamonds, and fill it full of chewing gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they got to do it.

78And they got to do it before sun-up next morning, too.

79And more, they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." Well, says I, I think they're a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves, instead of fooling them away like that.

80And what's more, if I was one of them, I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.

81How you talk, Huck Finn?

82Why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not.

83What?

84And I as high as a tree and as big as a church?

85All right, then, I would come.

86But I'd lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.

87Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn.

88You don't seem to know anything, somehow.

89Perfect sap-head!

90I thought all this over for two or three days.

91Then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it.

92I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an inchin', calculatin' to build a palace and sell it.

93But it warn't no use.

94None of the genies come.

95So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies.

96I reckoned he believed in the arabs and the elephants.

97But as for me, I think different.

98It had all the marks of a Sunday school.

99End of chapter