Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
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I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warnāt no show for me; so I laid outsideāI didnāt mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warnāt running so high now. About two they come up again, though, and Jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he reckoned they warnāt high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard. It most killed Jim a-laughing. He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway.
I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed I rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day.
The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired of it, and allowed they would ālay out a campaign,ā as they called it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said, āThe celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban, of Paris,ā would ālecture on the Science of Phrenologyā at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and āfurnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece.ā The duke said that was him. In another bill he was the āworld-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane, London.ā In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a ādivining-rod,ā ādissipating witch spells,ā and so on. By and by he says:
āBut the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards, Royalty?ā
āNo,ā says the king.
āYou shall, then, before youāre three days older, Fallen Grandeur,ā says the duke. "The first good town we come to weāll hire a hall and do the sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. How does that strike you?ā
āIām in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you see, I donāt know nothing about play-actinā, and haināt ever seen much of it. I was too small when pap used to have āem at the palace. Do you reckon you can learn me?ā
āEasy!ā
āAll right. Iām jist a-freeznā for something fresh, anyway. Leās commence right away.ā
So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.
āBut if Julietās such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goinā to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.ā
āNo, donāt you worry; these country jakes wonāt ever think of that. Besides, you know, youāll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; Julietās in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and sheās got on her night-gown and her ruffled nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts.ā
He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for Richard III. and tāother chap, and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart.
There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go, too, and see if he couldnāt strike something. We was out of coffee, so Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.
When we got there there warnāt nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warnāt too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. The king got the directions, and allowed heād go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.
The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shopācarpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting.
We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.
The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. They didnāt have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didnāt have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly.
The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to singāand so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, āItās the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!ā And people would shout out, āGlory!āA-a-men!ā And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:
āOh, come to the mournersā bench! come, black with sin! (Amen!) come, sick and sore! (Amen!) come, lame and halt and blind! (Amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (A-A-Men!) come, all thatās worn and soiled and suffering!ācome with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands openāoh, enter in and be at rest!ā (A-A-Men! Glory, Glory Hallelujah!)
And so on. You couldnāt make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mournersā bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.
Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirateābeen a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Oceanāand his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness heād been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, āDonāt you thank me, donāt you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!ā
And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, āTake up a collection for him, take up a collection!ā Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, āLet him pass the hat around!ā Then everybody said it, the preacher too.
So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six timesāand he was invited to stay
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