The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has 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.

The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.

It most give me the fan-tods.

“Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest Injun, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to tell, and I ain’t a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le’s know all about it.”

Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don’t care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it.

Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger.

Say, how long are you going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming times—they don’t have no school now.

One was Pilgrim’s Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn’t say why.

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done.

“Old man,” said the young one, “I reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?” “I ain’t undisposed. What’s your line—mainly?” “Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there’s a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that comes handy, so it ain’t work. What’s your lay?” “I’ve done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin’ on o’ hands is my best holt—for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I k’n tell a fortune pretty good when I’ve got somebody along to find out the facts for me. Preachin’s my line, too, and workin’ camp-meetin’s, and missionaryin’ around.”

Another reason this would be hard to teach: how many kids today know what ajour printer or patent medicine is? Or mesmerism, phrenology, or the laying on of hands to cure cancer?

There couldn’t anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog fight—unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.

I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.

I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.

There was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with.

Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so—said “How do you get biscuits to brown so nice?” and “Where, for the land’s sake, did you get these amaz’n pickles?” and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know.

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway;

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size.

I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it.

like a jug that’s googling out buttermilk;

I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better.

We blowed out a cylinder-head.” “Good gracious! anybody hurt?” “No’m. Killed a nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.

“I’ll help you steal him!” Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard—and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger-stealer!

difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.

Tom said it warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with.

yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for.

Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?” “I don’t know.” “Well, guess.” “I don’t know. A month and a half.” “Thirty-seven year—and he come out in China. That’s the kind. I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock.” “Jim don’t know nobody in China.”

I knowed he was white inside,