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a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said theyā€™d think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldnā€™t do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.  And then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods.  The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day heā€™d ever put in in the missionarying line.  He said it warnā€™t no use talking, heathens donā€™t amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

The duke was thinking heā€™d been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didnā€™t think so so much.  He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-officeā€”horse billsā€”and took the money, four dollars.  And he had got in ten dollarsā€™ worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceā€”so they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash.  He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own headā€”three versesā€”kind of sweet and saddishā€”the name of it was, ā€œYes, crush, cold world, this breaking heartā€ā€”and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didnā€™t charge nothing for it.  Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said heā€™d done a pretty square dayā€™s work for it.

Then he showed us another little job heā€™d printed and hadnā€™t charged for, because it was for us.  It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and ā€œ$200 rewardā€ under it.  The reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot.  It said he run away from St. Jacquesā€™ plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses.







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ā€œNow,ā€ says the duke, ā€œafter to-night we can run in the daytime if we want to.  Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward.  Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldnā€™t go well with the story of us being so poor.  Too much like jewelry.  Ropes are the correct thingā€”we must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards.ā€

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldnā€™t be no trouble about running daytimes.  We judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the dukeā€™s work in the printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom right along if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten oā€™clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didnā€™t hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

ā€œHuck, does you reckā€™n we gwyne to run acrost any moā€™ kings on dis trip?ā€

ā€œNo,ā€ I says, ā€œI reckon not.ā€

ā€œWell,ā€ says he, ā€œdatā€™s all right, den.  I doanā€™ mine one er two kings, but datā€™s enough.  Dis oneā€™s powerful drunk, en de duke ainā€™ much better.ā€

I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trouble, heā€™d forgot it.









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CHAPTER XXI.

IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didnā€™t tie up.  The king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after theyā€™d jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart.  When he had got it pretty good him and the duke begun to practice it together.  The duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it pretty well; ā€œonly,ā€ he says, ā€œyou mustnā€™t bellow out Romeo! that way, like a bullā€”you must say it soft and sick and languishy, soā€”R-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Julietā€™s a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesnā€™t bray like a jackass.ā€

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fightā€”the duke called himself Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see.  But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures theyā€™d had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke says:

ā€œWell, Capet, weā€™ll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I guess weā€™ll add a little more to it.  We want a little something to answer encores with, anyway.ā€

ā€œWhatā€™s onkores, Bilgewater?ā€

The duke told him, and then says:

ā€œIā€™ll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailorā€™s hornpipe; and youā€”well, let me seeā€”oh, Iā€™ve got itā€”you can do Hamletā€™s soliloquy.ā€

ā€œHamletā€™s which?ā€

ā€œHamletā€™s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, itā€™s sublime, sublime!  Always fetches the house.  I havenā€™t got it in the bookā€”Iā€™ve only got one volumeā€”but I reckon I can piece it out from memory.  Iā€™ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollectionā€™s vaults.ā€







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So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next heā€™d let on to drop a tear.  It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it.  He told us to give attention.  Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before.  This is the speechā€”I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king:







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c21-181.jpg (157K) To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great natureā€™s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. Thereā€™s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressorā€™s wrong, the proud manā€™s contumely, The lawā€™s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take. In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat iā€™ the adage, Is sicklied oā€™er with care. And all the clouds that lowered oā€™er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ā€™Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws. But get thee to a nunneryā€”go!

Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off.

The first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warnā€™t nothing but sword-fighting and rehearsingā€”as the duke called itā€”going on all the time. One morning, when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They read like this:

  Shaksperean Revival!!!

  Wonderful Attraction!

  For One Night Only! The world renowned tragedians,

  David Garrick the younger, of Drury Lane Theatre, London,

  and

  Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, Whitechapel,
  Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theatres, in
  their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in

  Romeo and Juliet!!!

  Romeo...................................... Mr. Garrick.

  Juliet..................................... Mr. Kean.

  Assisted by the whole strength of the company!

  New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!

  Also:

  The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling Broad-sword conflict In
  Richard III.!!!

  Richard III................................ Mr. Garrick.

  Richmond................................... Mr. Kean.

  also:

  (by special request,)

  Hamletā€™s Immortal Soliloquy!!

  By the Illustrious Kean!

  Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris!

  For One Night Only,

  On account of imperative European engagements!

  Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

Then we went loafing around the town. The stores and houses was most all old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadnā€™t ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little gardens around them, but they didnā€™t seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson

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