Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
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āDrot your pore broken heart,ā says the baldhead; āwhat are you heaving your pore broken heart at us fār? we haināt done nothing.ā
āNo, I know you havenāt. I aināt blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself downāyes, I did it myself. Itās right I should sufferāperfectly rightāI donāt make any moan.ā
āBrought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?ā
āAh, you would not believe me; the world never believesālet it passāātis no matter. The secret of my birthāā
āThe secret of your birth! Do you mean to sayāā
āGentlemen,ā says the young man, very solemn, āI will reveal it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!ā
Jimās eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. Then the baldhead says: "No! you canāt mean it?ā
āYes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the titles and estatesāthe infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal descendant of that infantāI am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!ā
Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but he said it warnāt much use, he couldnāt be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say āYour Grace,ā or āMy Lord,ā or āYour Lordshipāāand he wouldnāt mind it if we called him plain āBridgewater,ā which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.
Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him, and says, āWill yoā Grace have some oā dis or some oā dat?ā and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him.
But the old man got pretty silent by and byādidnāt have much to say, and didnāt look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in the afternoon, he says:
āLooky here, Bilgewater,ā he says, āIām nation sorry for you, but you aināt the only person thatās had troubles like that.ā
āNo?ā
āNo you aināt. You aināt the only person thatās ben snaked down wrongfully outān a high place.ā
āAlas!ā
āNo, you aināt the only person thatās had a secret of his birth.ā And, by jings, he begins to cry.
āHold! What do you mean?ā
āBilgewater, kin I trust you?ā says the old man, still sort of sobbing.
āTo the bitter death!ā He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, āThat secret of your being: speak!ā
āBilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!ā
You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:
āYou are what?ā
āYes, my friend, it is too trueāyour eyes is lookinā at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette.ā
āYou! At your age! No! You mean youāre the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.ā
āTrouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderinā, exiled, trampled-on, and sufferinā rightful King of France.ā
Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didnāt know hardly what to do, we was so sorryāand so glad and proud weād got him with us, too. So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. But he said it warnāt no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him āYour Majesty,ā and waited on him first at meals, and didnāt set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and tāother for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didnāt look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the dukeās great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the king says:
āLike as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, Bilgewater, and so whatās the use oā your beinā sour? It āll only make things oncomfortable. It aināt my fault I warnāt born a duke, it aināt your fault you warnāt born a kingāso whatās the use to worry? Make the best oā things the way you find āem, says Iāthatās my motto. This aināt no bad thing that weāve struck hereāplenty grub and an easy lifeācome, give us your hand, duke, and leās all be friends.ā
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.
It didnāt take me long to make up my mind that these liars warnāt no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; itās the best way; then you donāt have no quarrels, and donāt get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadnāt no objections, ālong as it would keep peace in the family; and it warnāt no use to tell Jim, so I didnāt tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.
CHAPTER XX.
THEY asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of runningāwas Jim a runaway nigger? Says I:
āGoodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run south?ā
No, they allowed he wouldnāt. I had to account for things some way, so I says:
āMy folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he ālowed heād break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, whoās got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when heād squared up there warnāt nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warnāt enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned weād go down to Orleans on it. Paās luck didnāt hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. We donāt run daytimes no more now; nights they donāt bother us.ā
The duke says:
āLeave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to. Iāll think the thing overāIāll invent a plan thatāll fix it. Weāll let it alone for to-day, because of course we donāt want to go by that town yonder in daylightāit mightnāt be healthy.ā
Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiverāit was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jimās, which was a corn-shuck tick; thereās always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldnāt. He says:
āI should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warnāt just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace āll take the shuck bed yourself.ā
Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says:
āāTis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit; ātis my fate. I am alone in the worldālet me suffer; can bear it.ā
We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and byāthat was the town, you knowāand slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten oāclock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldnāt a turned in anyway if Iād had a bed, because a body donāt see such a storm as that every day
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