Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
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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 heād ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warnāt no use talking, heathens donāt amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.
The duke was thinking heād been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didnāt think so so much. He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-officeāhorse billsāand 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 advanceāso 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 headāthree versesākind of sweet and saddishāthe name of it was, āYes, crush, cold world, this breaking heartāāand he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didnāt charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said heād done a pretty square dayās work for it.
Then he showed us another little job heād printed and hadnāt 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$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.
āNow,ā says the duke, āafter 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 wouldnāt go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thingāwe must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards.ā
We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldnāt 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 dukeās 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 oāclock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didnāt 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:
āHuck, does you reckān we gwyne to run acrost any moā kings on dis trip?ā
āNo,ā I says, āI reckon not.ā
āWell,ā says he, ādatās all right, den. I doanā mine one er two kings, but datās enough. Dis oneās 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, heād forgot it.
CHAPTER XXI.
IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didnāt tie up. The king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after theyād 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; āonly,ā he says, āyou mustnāt bellow out Romeo! that way, like a bullāyou must say it soft and sick and languishy, soāR-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Julietās a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesnāt 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 fightāthe 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 theyād had in other times along the river.
After dinner the duke says:
āWell, Capet, weāll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I guess weāll add a little more to it. We want a little something to answer encores with, anyway.ā
āWhatās onkores, Bilgewater?ā
The duke told him, and then says:
āIāll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailorās hornpipe; and youāwell, let me seeāoh, Iāve got itāyou can do Hamletās soliloquy.ā
āHamletās which?ā
āHamletās soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, itās sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I havenāt got it in the bookāIāve only got one volumeābut I reckon I can piece it out from memory. Iāll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollectionās vaults.ā
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 heād 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 speechāI learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king:
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 natureās second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. Thereās 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 oppressorās wrong, the proud manās contumely, The lawās 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 oāer with care. And all the clouds that lowered oāer our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. āTis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws. But get thee to a nunneryāgo!
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 warnāt nothing but sword-fighting and rehearsingāas the duke called itāgoing 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:
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,)
Hamletās 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 hadnāt 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 didnāt seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson
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