Episode #1: Chapters 1-4

This performance is a co-production of LoudLit.org and Literal Systems.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Performed by Mark Devine

Notice. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted.

Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished.

Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

By order of the author, per GG, Chief of Ordinance.

Chapter 1

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

But that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

That is, he told the truth.

That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.

Aunt Polly, Tom's Aunt Polly she is, and Mary, and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book,

which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now, the way that the book winds up is this.

Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich.

We got $6,000 apiece, all gold.

It was an awful side of money when it was piled up.

Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round,

more than a body could tell what to do with.

The widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me.

But it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal, regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways.

And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out.

I got into my old rags and my sugar hogs.

And was free and satisfied.

But Tom Sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers,

and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable.

So I went back.

The widow, she cried over me and called me a poor lost lamb.

And she called me a lot of other names, too.

But she never meant no harm by it.

She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up.

Well, then.

The old thing commenced again.

The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time.

When you got to the table, you couldn't go right to eating,

but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals,

though there weren't really anything the matter with them.

That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself.

In a barrel of odds and ends, it is different.

Things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper, she got out her book,

and learned me about Moses and the bull rushers.

And I was in a sweat to find out all about him.

But by and by, she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time.

So then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon, I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me.

But she wouldn't.

She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it anymore.

That is just the way with some people.

They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing.

Here she was a-botherin' about Moses,

which was no kin to her and no use to anybody bein' gone, you see,

yet finding a power of fault with me for doin' a thing that had some good in it.

And she took snuff, too.

Of course, that was all right, because she'd done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid with goggles on,

had just come to live with her and took a set at me now with a spelling book.

She worked me middlin' hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up.

But she didn't.

I couldn't stood it much longer.

Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.

Miss Watson would say,

"'Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry,'

and,

"'Don't scrunch up like that Huckleberry. Set up straight.'

And pretty soon she would say,

"'Don't gap and stretch like that Huckleberry. Why don't you try to behave?'

Then she told me all about the bad place,

and I said I wished I was there.

She got mad then,

but I didn't mean no harm.

All I wanted was to go somewhere,

all I wanted was a change.

I weren't particular.

She said it was wicked to say what I said.

She said she wouldn't say it for the whole world.

She was going to live so as to go to the good place.

Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going,

so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.

But I never said so,

because it would only make trouble and wouldn't do no good.

Now she had got a start,

and she went on and told me all about the good place.

She said all a body would have to do there

was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever.

So I didn't think much of it,

but I never said so.

I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there,

and she said not by a considerable sight.

I was glad about that,

because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson, she kept pecking at me,

and it got tiresome and lonesome.

By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers,

and then everybody was off to bed.

I went up to my room with a piece of,

a candle, and put it on the table.

Then I sat down in a chair by the window

and tried to think of something cheerful,

but it weren't no use.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.

The stars were shining,

and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful,

and I heard an owl away off hoo-hooing about somebody that was dead,

and a whip-a-will,

and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.

And the wind was trying to whisper something to me,

and I couldn't make out what it was.

And so it made the cold shiver,

shivers run over me.

Then away out in the woods,

I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes

when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind

and can't make itself understood,

and so can't rest easy in its grave

and has to go about that way every night grieving.

I got so downhearted and scared,

I did wish I had some company.

Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder,

and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle.

And before I could budge, it was all shriveled up.

I didn't need anybody to tell me

that that was an awful bad sign

and would fetch me some bad luck.

So I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me.

I got up and turned around in my tracks three times

and crossed my breast every time,

and then I tied up a little lock of my hair

with a thread to keep witches away.

But I had no confidence.

You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found

instead of nailing it up over the door.

But I had never heard anybody say

it was any way to keep off bad luck

when you'd killed a spider.

I sat down again, shaking all over,

and got out my pipe for a smoke,

for the house was all as still as death now,

and so the widow wouldn't know.

Well, after a long time I heard the clock

away off in the town go boom, boom, boom,

twelve licks, and all still again,

stiller than ever.

Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark

amongst the trees.

Something was a-stirring.

I sat still and listened.

Directly I could just barely hear a

meow, meow, down there.

That was good, says I.

Meow, meow, as soft as I could.

And then I put out the light

and scrambled out of the window onto the shed.

Then I slipped down to the ground

and crawled in among the trees.

And sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

Chapter Two

We went tiptoeing along a path,

amongst the trees,

back towards the end of the widow's garden,

stooping down so as the branches

wouldn't scrape our heads.

When we was passing by the kitchen,

I fell over a root and made a noise.

We scratched down and laid still.

Miss Watson's big nigger named Jim

was setting in the kitchen door.

We could see him pretty clear

because there was a light behind him.

He got up and stretched his neck out

about a minute listening.

Then he says,

Who there?

He listened some more.

Then he come tiptoeing,

and stood right between us.

We could have touched him nearly.

Well, likely it was minutes and minutes

that there weren't a sound,

and we all there so close together.

There was a place on my ankle that got to itching,

but I dessin't scratch it.

And then my ear begun to itch,

and next my back right between my shoulders.

Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.

Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since.

If you are with the quality,

or at a funeral,

or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy,

if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch,

why, you will itch all over and upwards of a thousand places.

Pretty soon, Jim says,

Say who is you?

Where is you?

Dog my cats if I didn't hear something.

Well, I know what I's gwine to do.

I's gwine to sit down here and listen till I hears it again.

So he sat down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.

He leaned his back up against a tree

and stretched his legs out till one of them

most touched him.

It was such one of mine.

My nose begun to itch.

It itched till the tears come into my eyes,

but I dastn't scratch.

Then it begun to itch on the inside.

Next, I got to itching underneath.

I didn't know how I was going to set still.

This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes,

but it seemed a sight longer than that.

I was itching in eleven different places now.

I reckon I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer,

but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try.

Just then,

Jim begun to itch.

Jim begun to breathe heavy.

Next, he begun to snore.

And then I was pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom, he made a sign to me,

kind of a little noise with his mouth,

and we went creeping away on our hands and knees.

When we was ten foot off,

Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun.

But I said no.

He might wake and make a disturbance,

and then they'd find out I weren't in.

Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough,

and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more.

I didn't want him to try.

I said Jim might wake up and come.

But Tom wanted to risk it.

So we slid in there and got three candles,

and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.

Then we got out,

and I was in a sweat to get away.

But nothing would do Tom,

but he must crawl to where Jim was on his hands and knees

and play something on him.

I waited,

and it seemed a good while everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back,

we cut along the path, around the garden fence.

And by and by it fetched up on the steep top of the hill,

the other side of the house.

Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head

and hung it on a limb right over him,

and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.

Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him

and put him in a trance and rode him all over the state

and then set him under the trees again

and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.

And next time Jim told it,

he said they rode him down to New Orleans.

And after that, every time he told it, he spread it more.

And then he said,

spread it more and more,

till by and by he said they rode him all over the world

and tired him most to death

and his back was all over saddle boils.

Jim was monstrous proud about it,

and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers.

Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it,

and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country.

Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open

and look him all over,

same as if he was a wonder.

Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark

by the kitchen fire.

But when everyone was talking

and letting on to know all about such things,

Jim would happen in and say,

hmm,

what you know about witches?

And that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.

Jim always kept that five center piece round his neck with a string

and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands

and told him he could cure anybody with it

and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it.

But he never told what it was he said to it.

Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had

just for a sight of that five center piece,

but they wouldn't touch it because the devil had had his hands on it.

Jim was most ruined for a servant,

because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil

and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop,

we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling,

where there was sick folks, maybe,

and the stars over us were sparkling bright.

Sparkling ever so fine,

and down by the village was the river a whole mile broad

and awful still and grand.

We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers

and two or three more of the boys hid in the old tan yard.

So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half

to the big scar on the hillside and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret

and then showed them a hole in the hill right in the thickest part of the bushes.

Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees.

We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up.

Tom poked about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall

where you wouldn't have noticed that there was a hole.

We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room,

all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.

Tom says,

Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.

Everybody that wants to join has got to do it.

He's got to take an oath and write his name in blood.

Everybody was willing.

So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on and read it.

It swore every boy to stick to the band and never tell any of the secrets.

And if anybody done anything to any boy in the band,

whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it.

And he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them

and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band.

And nobody that didn't belong to the band could

use that mark.

And if he did, he must be sued.

And if he done it again, he must be killed.

And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets,

he must have his throat cut and then have his carcass burnt up

and the ashes scattered all around and his name blotted off of the list with blood

and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it

and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath and asked Tom if he got it out of his own

head.

He said some of it.

But the rest was out of pirate books and robber books.

And every gang that was high-toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets.

Tom said it was a good idea.

So he took a pencil and wrote it in.

Then Ben Rogers says, Here's Huck Finn.

He ain't got no family.

What you going to do about him?

Well ain't he got a father, says Tom Sawyer.

Yes he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days.

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She'll do, that's all right. Huck can come in.

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get the blood to sign with,

and I made my mark on the paper.

Now, says Ben Rogers, what's the line of business of this gang?

Nothing, only robbery and murder, Tom said.

But who are we going to rob? Houses or cattle or...

Stuff? Stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary, says Tom Sawyer.

We ain't burglars, that ain't no sort of style.

We are highwaymen.

We stop stages and carriages on the road with masks on

and kill the people and take their watches and money.

Must we always kill the people?

Oh, certainly, it's best.

Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them,

except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed.

Ransomed? What's that?

I don't know, but that's what they do.

I've seen it in books, and so of course that's what we've got to do.

But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?

Why, blame it all, we've got to do it.

Don't I tell you it's in the books?

Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books and get things all muddled up?

Oh, that's very fine to say, Tom Sawyer.

But how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed

if we don't know how to do it to them?

That's the thing I want to get at.

Now...

What do you reckon it is?

Well, I don't know, but perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed,

it means that we keep them till they're dead.

Now, that's something like.

That'll answer.

Why couldn't you said that before?

We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death,

and a bothersome lot they'll be, too,

eating up everything and always trying to get loose.

How you talk, Ben Rogers.

How can they get loose when there's a guard over them,

ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?

A guard?

Well, that is good.

So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep,

just so as to watch them?

I think that's foolishness.

Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?

Because it ain't in the books, so that's why.

Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular or don't you?

That's the idea.

Don't you reckon that the people that made the books

knows what's the correct thing to do?

Do you reckon you can learn them anything?

No.

Not by a good deal.

No, sir.

We'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.

All right, I don't mind.

But I say it's a fool way anyhow.

Say, do we kill the women, too?

Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you,

I wouldn't let on.

Kill the women?

No.

Nobody ever saw anything in the books like that.

You fetch them to the cave and you're always as polite as pie to them,

and by and by they fall in love with you and never want to go home anymore.

Well, if that's the way I'm agreed.

But I don't take no stock in it.

Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellows waiting to be ransomed

that there won't be no place for the robbers.

But go ahead.

I ain't got nothing to say.

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared and cried

and said he wanted to go home to his ma and didn't want to be a robber anymore.

So they all made fun of him and called him Crybaby, and that made him mad.

And he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.

But Tom gave him five cents to keep quiet and said we would all go home and meet next week

and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday.

But all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing.

They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could,

and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Joe Harper second captain of the gang.

And so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.

My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.

Well, 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.

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

She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it.

But it weren't so. I tried it.

Once I got a fish line, but no hooks.

It weren't any good to me without hooks.

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

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

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

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

I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for,

why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork?

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

Why can't Miss Watson fat up?

No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it.

I went and told the widow about it,

and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts.

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

I 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.

This was including Miss Watson as I took it.

I 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.

So at last I reckon I wouldn't worry about it anymore, but just let it go.

Sometimes the widow would take me one side

and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water,

but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again.

I 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 anymore.

I thought it all out and reckon I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me,

though I couldn't make out how he was going to be any better off then than what he was before,

seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low down and ornery.

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

I didn't want to see him no more.

He 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.

Well, about this time he was found and the river drowned it, about twelve mile above town, so people said.

They judged it was him anyway.

Said this drownded man was just his size and was ragged and had uncommon long hair,

which was all like Pap, but they couldn't make nothing out of the face,

because it had been in the water so long it weren't much like a face at all.

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

They took him and buried him on the bank.

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

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

and that this weren't Pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.

So I was uncomfortable again.

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

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

All the boys did.

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

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

but we never hived any of them.

Tom 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.

But I couldn't see no profit in it.

One 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,

and 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 sumpter mules,

all loaded down with diamonds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers,

and so we would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and killed a lot and scooped the things.

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

He never could go after even a turnip cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for him.

Though they was 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.

I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of 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.

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

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

We busted it up and chased the children up the hollow, but we never got anything but some doughnuts 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.

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

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

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

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

He said it was all done by enchantment.

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

but we had enemies which he called magicians,

and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school just out of spite.

I said all right, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians.

Tom Sawyer said I was a numbskull.

Why, said he, a magician could call up a lot of genies,

and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson.

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

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

Can't we lick the other crowd then?

How are you going to get them?

I don't know.

How do they get them?

Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring,

and the genies come tearing in with the thunder and lightning are ripping around

and the smoke are rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it.

They 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.

Who makes them tear around so?

Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.

They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring,

and they've got to do whatever he says.

If 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've got to do it.

And they've got to do it before sun up next morning too.

And 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.

And 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.

How you talk, Huck Finn.

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

What?

An eye as high as a tree and as big as a church?

All right then, I would come.

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

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

You don't seem to know anything somehow.

Perfect sap head.

I thought all this over for two or three days.

And then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it.

I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring

and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun,

calculating to build a palace and sell it.

But it weren't no use.

None of the genies come.

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

I reckoned he believed in the A-Rabs and the elephants.

But as for me, I think different.

It had all the marks of a Sunday school.

Chapter Four

Well, three or four months went along, and it was well into the winter now.

I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little

and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five,

and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever.

I don't take no stock in mathematics anyway.

At first I hated the school.

But by and by I got so I could stand it.

Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hooky,

and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up.

So the longer I went to school, the easier it got to be.

I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they weren't so raspy on me.

Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly,

but before, the cold weather, I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes,

and so that was a rest to me.

I liked the old ways best.

But I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit.

The widow said I was coming along slow but sure and doing very satisfactory.

She said she weren't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt cellar at breakfast.

I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck,

but Miss Watson was in ahead of me and crossed me off.

She says,

Take your hands away, Huckleberry.

What a mess you are always making.

The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren't going to keep off the bad luck.

I know that well enough.

I started out after breakfast feeling worried and shaky and wondering where it was going to fall on me

and what it was going to be.

There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind,

so I never tried to do anything but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the highboard fence.

There was an inch of new snow on the ground and I seen somebody's tracks.

They had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while

and then went on around the garden fence.

It was funny they hadn't come in after standing around so I couldn't make it out.

It was very curious somehow.

I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first.

I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did.

There was a cross in the left boot heel made with big nails to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill.

I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but didn't see nobody.

I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick as I could get there.

He said,

Why, my boy, you are all out of breath.

Did you come for your interest?

No, sir, I says.

Is there some for me?

Oh, yes.

A half yearly is in last night.

Over a hundred and fifty dollars.

Quite a fortune for you.

You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand,

because if you take it, you'll spend it.

No, sir, I says.

I don't want to spend it.

I don't want it at all, nor the six thousand nother.

I want you to take it.

I want to give it to you, the six thousand and all.

He looked surprised.

He couldn't seem to make it out.

He says,

Why, what can you mean, my boy?

I says,

Don't you ask me no questions about it, please.

You'll take it, won't you?

He says,

Well, I'm puzzled.

Is something the matter?

Please take it, says I,

and don't ask me nothing.

Then I won't have to tell no lies.

He studied a while,

and then he says,

Oh, I think I see.

You want to sell all your property to me,

not give it.

That's the correct idea.

Then he wrote something on a paper

and read it over and says,

There, you see it says,

For a consideration.

That means I have bought it of you

and paid you for it.

Here's a dollar for you.

Now you sign it.

So I signed it and left.

Miss Watson's nigger Jim had a hairball

as big as your fist,

which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox,

and he used to do magic with it.

He said there was a spirit inside of it,

and it knowed everything.

So I went to him that night

and told him Pap was here again,

for I found his tracks in the snow.

What I wanted to know was,

What was he going to do,

and was he going to stay?

So he took out his hairball and said something over it,

and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor.

It fell pretty solid,

and only rolled about an inch.

Jim tried it again,

and then another time,

and it acted just the same.

Jim got down on his knees

and put his ear against it and listened,

but it weren't no use.

He said it wouldn't talk.

He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money.

Well, I told him,

I had an old slick counterfeit quarter

and it wouldn't pass know-how,

even if the brass didn't show,

because it was so slick it felt greasy,

and so that would tell on it every time.

I reckon I wouldn't say nothing

about the dollar I got from the judge.

I said it was pretty bad money,

but maybe the hairball would take it,

because maybe it wouldn't know the difference.

Well, Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it,

and said he would manage

so the hairball would think it was good.

He said he would split open a raw Irish potato

and stick the quarter in between

and keep it there all night,

so that next morning you couldn't see no brass

and it wouldn't feel greasy no more,

and so anybody in town would take it in a minute,

let alone a hairball.

Well, I knowed a potato would do that before,

but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hairball

and got down and listened again.

This time he said the hairball was all right.

He said it would tell my whole fortune

if I wanted it to.

I says go on.

So the hairball talked to Jim,

and Jim told it to me.

He says,

I don't know what he's a-gwanna do.

Sometimes he spec he'll go away,

and then again he spec he'll stay.

The best way is to rest easy

and let the old man take his own way.

There's two angels

hoving round about him.

One of them is white and shiny,

and t'other one is black.

The white one gets him to go right a little while,

then the black one sail in and bust it all up.

My body can't tell yet

which one gwanna fetch him at the last,

but you is all right.

You gwanna have considerable trouble

in your life, and considerable joy.

Sometimes you gwanna get hurt,

and sometimes you gwanna get sick,

but every time you's gwanna get well again.

There's two gals flying about you in your life.

One of them's light,

and t'other one is dark.

And one is rich,

and t'other's poor.

You's gwanna marry the poor one first,

and the rich one by and by.

You wants to keep away from the water

as much as you can,

and don't run no risk,

in case it's down in the bills

or hung.

When I lit my candle

and went up to my room that night,

there sat Pap, his own self.

This presentation

is dedicated by Gordon W. Draper

to all of those

who will enjoy this Mark Twain masterpiece.