Huckleberry Finn - Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (reading books for 7 year olds TXT) 📗

as if he was asking for eggs for breakfast. ‘Bring up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They bring her up. Next morning, ‘Cut off her head!’ And they cut it off. ‘Bring up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes, Next morning, ‘Cut off her head’ -- and they cut it off. ‘Ring for Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, ‘Cut off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a story every night; and he kept that up until he had saved a thousand and one stories that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it the Domesday Book -- which was a good name and said what it was about. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old man of ours is one of the cleanest I’ve seen in history. Well, Henry he starts feeling he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it? Does he say so? Does he warn the country? No. Without warning, he throws all the tea in Boston out of the ships, and starts a war. That was his way -- he never give anyone a way to get away. He didn’t trust his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No, he drowned him, like a cat. If people left money lying around where he was -- what did he do? He took it. If you had an agreement for him to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn’t sit down there and see that he done it -- what did he do? He always done the other thing. If he opened his mouth -- what then? If he didn’t shut it up very quickly he’d lose a lie every time. That’s the kind of insect Henry was; and if we’d a had him along instead of our kings he’d a tricked that town a lot worse than ours done. I don’t say that ours is lambs, because they ain’t, when you come right down to the cold truth; but they ain’t nothing to that old goat. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make room for that. Take them all around, they’re a mighty bad lot. It’s the way they’re brought up.”

 

“But dis one do smell so, Huck.”

 

“Well, they all do, Jim. We can’t help the way a king smells; history don’t tell no way.”

 

“Now de duke, he’s a good enough man in some ways.”

 

“Yes, a duke’s different. But not very different. This one’s a little bad for a duke. When he’s drunk there ain’t no man could tell him from a king.”

 

“Well, anyway, I don’t want no more of ‘em, Huck. Dese is all I can stand.”

 

“It’s the way I feel, too, Jim. But we’ve got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make space for that. Times I wish we could hear of a country that’s out of kings.”

 

What was the use to tell Jim these weren’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said: you couldn’t tell them from the real kind.

 

I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just as the sun was coming up he was sitting there with his head down between his knees, moaning and feeling sad to himself. I didn’t let on that I saw it. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up north, and he was low and sad; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white people does for theirs. It don’t seem like that could be true, but I think it is. He was often moaning and feeling sad that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Poor little Elizabeth! poor little Johnny! it’s mighty hard; it seems I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no more, no more!” He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.

 

But this time, one way or another, I got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says: “What makes me feel so bad dis time was because I hear sumpin over on de side of de river like a hit or a slap, a while ago, and it made me think of de time I act so rough toward my Elizabeth. She weren’t only about four years old, and she took sick and had a powerful rough time of it; but she got well, and one day she was a-standing around, and I says to her, I says: ’Shut de door.’

 

“She never done it; just stood dere, kind a smiling up at me. It made me angry; and I says again, mighty loud, I says: ’Don’t you hear me? Shut de door!’

“She just stood de same way, kind a smiling up. I was a-burning up! I says: ’I know how to make you do what I say!’

 

“And wid dat I give her a slap up side de head dat sent her to de ground’. Den I went into de other room, and was gone about ten minutes; and when I come back dere was dat door a-standing open yet, and dat child standing almost right in it, a-looking down and being sad, and de tears running down. My, but I was angry! I was a-gwyne for de child, but just den -- it was a door dat open in -- just den, along come de wind and force it to, behind de child, ker-blam! -- and my land, de child never moved! My breevin’ almost stopped; and I feel so -- so -- I don’t know how I feel. I went quietly out, all a-shaking, and went secretly around and open de door easy and slow, and put my head in behind de child, soft and quiet, and then I says BANG! just as loud as I could shout. She never moved! Oh, Huck, I break out a-crying and take her up in my arms, and say, ‘Oh, de poor little thing! De Lord God forgive poor old Jim, because he never gwyne to forgive himself as long as he lives!’ Oh, she couldn’t hear, Huck, she was deaf, and I’d been a-doing dat to her!”

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Next day, toward night, we stopped under a little island out in the middle, in a place where there was a village on each side, and the duke and the king started to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn’t take but a few hours, because it got very difficult for him when he had to lie all day in the tent tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anyone happened onto him not tied it wouldn’t look much like he was a prisoner. So the duke said it was kind of bad to have to be tied up all day, and he’d work out some way to get around it.

 

He was very smart, the duke, and he soon found it. He dressed Jim up in one of his acting uniforms -- it was a long dress. -- with white hair and a white beard; and then he took his theatre paint and painted Jim’s face and hands and ears and neck all over solid blue, like a man that’s been drowned nine days. I’ll be... if he weren’t the most awful looking thing I ever did see. Then the duke took and wrote out a sign like so:

 

 

Sick Arab -- but safe enough when he's not out of his head.

And he nailed that sign to a stick, and put the stick up four or five foot in front of the tent. Jim was happy with that. He said it was better than lying tied two years every day, and shaking all over each time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anyone ever come looking around, he must run out of the tent, and carry on a little, and give a shout or two like a wild animal, and he believed they would run off and leave him alone. Which was true enough; but you take most people, they wouldn’t even wait for him to shout. Why, he didn’t only look like he was dead, he looked even worse than that.

 

These old robbers wanted to try The King’s Foolishness again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn’t be safe, because maybe the news might a worked along down by this time. They couldn’t hit no plan that fitted perfectly; so at last the duke said he thought he’d rest and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn’t put up something on the Arkansas village; and the king he said he would drop over to t’other village without any plan, but just trust in God to lead him the best way -- meaning the devil, I think. We had all paid for shop clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his on, and he told me to put mine on. The king’s clothes was all black, and he did look real smart and straight.

 

I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the worst old man that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white animal skin hat and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that great and good and holy that you’d say he had walked right out of the Temple, and maybe was old Moses himself.

 

Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my oar ready. There was a big river-boat stopped on the beach away up under the point, about three mile above the town -- been there two or three hours, taking on boxes and other things.

 

Says the king: “Seeing how I’m dressed, I think maybe I should arrive down from St. Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the river-boat, Huckleberry; we’ll come down to the village on her.”

 

I didn’t have to be told more than once to go and take a river-boat ride. I reached the side a half a mile above the village, and then went moving up river in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice-looking young country man sitting on a log rubbing the heat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had two big bags by him.

 

“Run her nose in,” says the king.

 

I done it.

 

“Where you going, young man?”

 

“To the river boat; going to Orleans.”

 

“Get in,” says the king. “Hold on a minute, my servant will help you with them bags. Jump out and help the man, Adolphus” -- meaning me, I see.

 

I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young man was very thankful; said it was hard work carrying his bags in such weather. He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he’d come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The young man says: “When I first see you I says to myself, ‘It’s Mr. Wilks, sure, and he come very close to getting here in time.’ But then I says again, ‘No, I think it ain’t him, or else he wouldn’t be coming up the river in a canoe.’ You ain’t him, are you?”

 

“No, my name’s Blodgett -- Alexander Blodgett -- Reverend Alexander Blodgett, I must say, as I’m one of the Lord’s poor servants. But still I’m just as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving in time, all the