Thursday, 29 January 2015

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain — Jan 23, 2015


First Edition, 1884

 Hemingway thought that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the inauguration of American literature, so highly did he respect the original voice and narrative genius of Mark Twain, displayed in this, his most famous novel.

KumKum, Gopa, Priya

The story is about young Huck Finn escaping the disciplined life of home and the cruelties of his father, to raft down the Mississippi with an escaped slave, Jim, who belonged to his benefactor's sister, Miss Watson. Their adventures on the river are numerous, some hair-raising, many humorous (such as the charlatans who pretend to be King and Duke in order to dupe people at country fairs).

Sunil, KumKum, Gopa

Jim himself provides much entertainment in passages, two of which were read: the 'Sollermun' episode and the Jim's take on good-luck signs. Though he is shown in places as simple-minded and ready to believe in witches, yet Jim has the earthy good-sense of honest working men everywhere. He loves Huck Finn and the love is returned as Huck makes the central decision: whether to turn in Jim as an escaped slave, or let him follow his good-luck to freedom and a family reunion.

A Huck Finn version which removes the N-word

The fun the readers had could be best measured in the laughter ringing out of the CYC library. Adept as KRG readers are to find humour in the darkest of novels by employing side narratives of their own, this novel did not need any external injections of wit whatever. One only had to be open to the abundance of drollery Mark Twain had fashioned, two fathoms deep on every other page.

Here is the group who attended, minus Gopa, Kavita, and Priya who had to leave early. 
Pamela, KumKum, Preeti, Sunil, Joe


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Reading on Jan 23, 2015

Present: Priya, KumKum, Joe, Gopa, Preeti, Sunil, Kavita, Pamela
Absent: CJ Mathew (daughter's sports day), Ankush (away in Delhi for Republic Day duty), Talitha (bereavement caused by father's death), Vijay (medical emergency in family), Thommo (?), Sreelatha (?), Zakia (?)


The next session is Poetry, on Wed Feb 11, 2015. The date for reading the next novel is proposed as Fri Mar 20 for Light in August by William Faulkner, but we shall decide when we meet on Feb 11.

For a synopsis of the novel and its characters read the wiki

For a podcast of the novel see:

Elmira in upstate New York is a town that touts its touristic interest because of the house in which many of the Mark Twain classics were written, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Joe and KumKum visited this charming town in upstate New York set amid the Finger Lakes, and besides visiting the house where Mark Twain stayed, they also saw the room in which he wrote many of the classics from his pen, including the novel under discussion.

Mark Twain's study in his house in Elmira, N.Y., was designed to resemble the pilot house of a Mississippi steamboat

For more about it read

To get a good grasp of places Jim and Huck touched at as they rafted down the river see the diagram below:




1. Priya

 Priya read the narrative of Tom Sawyer and his friends forming Tom Sawyer's Gang by signing an oath in their blood. It has all the craziness and hyped up desire for adventure and highway robbery that youth can dream up. Priya said Tom Sawyer comes across as far more of a villain than the relatively innocent Huckleberry Finn, whose imagination, being less wild, is more grounded in the practical arts of survival and escape. Gopa talked of the obvious leadership qualities of Tom Sawyer who had the capacity to conduct his pals into bad ways, though not from evil intent. Kavita mentioned the incident in Tom Sawyer, a novel Mark Twain wrote eight years earlier, where Tom could convince the other boys to pay him for the fun of whitewashing a fence. 


Comparing TS and HF is a standard question in literature studies.

2. Gopa
Gopa chose one of the most humorous incidents in the book, Jim's commentary on King Solomon's Judgment. The story is recounted in 1 Kings 3:16-28. Jim's spelling of the name as 'Sollermun' is a masterly piece of humour in itself, as Sunil pointed out. Joe agreed this was a terrific piece of Mark Twain narrative and he himself had chosen it as his passage of choice. 
Fresco of King Solomon's Judgment

 Kavita adverted to the use of the word 'nigger,' now a term of extreme racial prejudice. Except, as Joe pointed out, when used by an African American comedian about other African Americans. It's still frequently used in the rhymes by rap artists who have the licence to use the word and yet not give offence. 
Huckleberry Finn's Adventures amended for political correctness
(click for larger size)

 Sunil said the book was banned in Boston, at that time a hotbed of primness and prudery, so much so that the slogan 'Banned in Boston' became a great selling point for books! Here is the account from the wikipedia entry:
“Upon issue of the American edition in 1885 several libraries banned it from their shelves. The early criticism focused on what was perceived as the book's crudeness. One incident was recounted in the newspaper, the Boston Transcript: The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The library and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people."

Twain later remarked to his editor, "Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as 'trash and only suitable for the slums.' This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!"

Pamela cited the quote, “You can't learn a nigger to argue” as language used to substantiate the prejudices against back people at that time. They were like children, and could not be taught to reason, and separate fact from fiction in a debate.

Gopa too wanted to read this passage at first. Kavita noted that Pulaya caste people who used to work for the middle and upper classes in Kerala, were treated in a similar manner, not very long ago. Priya has seen movies in which black people in those times were tied by a chain to work in gangs. I think those were prisoners, not slaves working on American plantations, who were not chained.

Sunil brought up the matter of indentured Indian labourers in what was then Malaya, taken to work on the rubber plantations. They were treated no better than the slaves in America.

Gopa said this novel depicts the history of a time and we have to know what it was like. The language and the customs of the times, and the manner of deportment of slaves toward their masters, and vice versa, is depicted by Mark Twain just as it was in those ante-bellum times.

She went on to discuss the five kinds of disability that WHO prescribes in the Act of 1995; the correct form of address is 'persons with disability.' Even the word 'poor' is not approved to talk of the under-privileged; they should be described as 'economically backward.' Sunil agreed that politically correct (PC) terms have to be used now. Joe said he sees nothing wrong with the word 'poor,' for one gains little by replacing one short syllable by eight clumsy syllables. Poor is also used to denote innocence as in 'jnan oru pavam aney,' in Malayalam.



3. KumKum

 KumKum's chosen passages are Mark Twain at his best describing life along the river Mississippi. The carefree nature of Jim and Huck's floating on a raft down the river was the focus of the passages she chose. 
Huck Finn and Jim on the raft on a moonlit night

 Gopa referred to a novel of Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, which has similar descriptions of life in the Sunderbans area of mangrove swamps beside the river Meghana, so wide you cannot see the other bank from one side:

KumKum remembered her visit to Kodungaloor, near the place where St Thomas is supposed to have landed 2,000 years ago; the river Changala (a tributary of the Periyar) is so wide there you cannot make out the spot where St Thomas landed on the other side of the bay. There are similar river scenes in The Life of Pi but that is a fight for survival; in this novel the struggle is not as strenuous.

Joe recalled that the author's pen name, Mark Twain, comes from the sailor's call meaning two fathoms deep; the depth of the river had to be carefully measured as the boat plied the channels, for shifting sandbars and flooding could change the depth. In his life as riverboat pilot, guiding steamboats was a responsibility Mark Twain held. His real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which reminds Joe of a breed of chicken, the White Leghorn.

KumKum praised the imagination of Jim that could come up with a conjecture as to the origin of stars:
We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done.

Joe thought it was quite poetic, and Jim's point of view deciding between stars being 'made' and just 'happening' as Huck thought, is nearer to astrophysical knowledge today. Sunil said the aboriginal people in Australia also have a very reverent attitude to nature in general, and toward Ayers Rock in particular in the middle of the continent. Gopa said something about a jackass having a mule as illegitimate child, but Joe could not make out the relevance of the remark in the context of the passage read.


4. Sunil

 Sunil read from a Puffin Books edition he borrowed from a library with an introduction by Darren Shan, who wrote “a short essay, in which I talk about why I liked the book and why I recommend it. [It] is one of my all-time favourite books.” Hemingway considered Huckleberry Finn to be the book that inaugurated American literature, although that honour is usually reserved for Moby Dick.

Darren Shan says the dialectal passages are easier to understand if one affects a black American accent in reading them (Joe tried that). Elsewhere Shan says “if our hearts are pure, like Huck's, we can see through injustice and instinctively obey a greater law than any misdirected man's.”

The passage Sunil chose deals with the two humbugs, one calling himself a king, and the other a duke.

Sunil started by pointing out the epigraph of the book:
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

On the word 'plot', Joe recalled one of Mark Twain's famous quotes concerning the dictionary: “I have studied it often, but I never could discover the plot.“

When the passage was read, Pamela liked the way Huck Finn kept quiet. Sunil told the story of how as boys they would compete to tell stories; one fellow would come up with a fantastic tale and others would try to outdo it. What a splendid collection of gasbags Mark Twain lays out with the King and the Duke, said Priya. Pamela thought frauds like them are commonplace in India today.

The ending of the novel was a bit abrupt in KumKum's view. Gopa said Jim had total faith in Huck and Tom. Perhaps, it was a consequence of the servile mentality of slaves in that time. Rarely was that faith justified, but in this novel, yes.


5. Kavita

 The passage she read speaks of the joy with which Jim anticipates his coming freedom, if he can get past the town of Cairo (a fictitious town), and enter northern territory where slavery was abolished. Huck, on the other hand, is having a pang of conscience at helping a slave get free from his owner, Miss Watson, who had helped Huck to get his education:
"What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That's what she done."I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.

Edward Ardizzone illustrated the 1961 edition of Huckleberry Finn 

The reader, particularly the young juvenile reader, of the novel will rejoice that Huck comes down on the side of human justice, rather than legal justice, by not giving away Jim when two white men with guns come looking for runaway slaves.


6. Pamela
Pamela's passage exploits the humour of Huck's father (pap) who goes on inveighing against the 'govment' with a litany of complaints:
Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—"
Huckleberry Finn and Jim sight the abandoned craft


Mark Twain's art is to capture each of the characters using dialectal words that ring true to their core. Pap is badly off, penniless, and drunk a good part of the time; yet he looks down on niggers. That's a comforting human tendency, to have someone to look down upon so your self-image gets a boost and your own misery is assuaged. Pap suffers from that other human tendency: to control whom we can, no matter how far down the totem pole one may be oneself, so that we can enjoy low down the same satisfaction of power that the high and mighty possess over underlings. Pap also shows yet another of our human deficiencies: to remake others in our own image, no matter how far from perfect that image may be. Thus pap wants no education for his son, Huck. Here's the conversation in chapter 5:
"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?—who told you you could?" "The widow. She told me." "The widow, hey?—and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?" "Nobody never told her." "Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here—you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died. I can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it—you hear?

Toward the end Jim discloses that pap is dead, to the great relief of Huck.

If you wish to learn how an obscurantist wishes to remake all of India in his own quaint image, then read this:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/make-it-a-hindu-nation-says-rss-chief/article6800008.ece


7. Joe
My Appreciation of Huck Finn
Huck Finn's adventures gives a view of life along the river Mississippi in the time when Mark Twain was a riverboat pilot. Born in 1835 and growing up in Hannibal, Missouri, a southern slave state, he was comfortable with slavery and indeed fought briefly in the Confederate Army i.e., with the Southern states who supported slavery. The phrase 'my nigger' occurs eight times in the book, and here's an example:
they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and cried.

By the time the book was published in 1885 two decades had gone by since the American Civil War, which was fought on the grounds of abolishing slavery and maintaining the Union. But, as we know, the habits of contempt with which American black people were tarred, continued for a century and more, and even now the battle for human rights has not been won. Some of this contempt, is faithfully depicted in the novel: niggers as simpletons, credulous, believing in witches, fawning on their boy masters as a dog would, and so on.


Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn examine the gold

What makes the novel right is when Huck Finn decides that the struggle between his conscience and his heart should be resolved by tearing up the fateful letter he wrote: the letter giving up the slave Jim to his mistress, Miss Watson. Huck Finn has a unique relationship with Jim, the response of a boy influenced no doubt by slavery, but ready to grant Jim a degree of humanity that few whites at that time would have accorded a black slave. In a sense, therefore, it shows the growth of the author too, who infects Huck Finn with a northern egalitarianism.

Huckleberry Finn Story Map

Twain used the adventures to display the humour of charlatans who lived by their wits, hoodwinking people; small town life along the great river; how very affectionate aunts could be; the disguises and airs people would put on; the islands and sandbars along the river that gave cover for rafts and canoes; and the real dangers of being smashed under the paddle wheels of a steamboat. Most humorous are the episodes when Tom Sawyer joins at the end and contrives imaginative devices to rescue Jim from his imprisonment in a shed.

Joe read the passage on goodluck signs, by which Jim divines that he will one day be rich again, no matter that he has lost out so far on all the winnings he made, thanks to his credulous falling for all the knavish tricks and fancy schemes held out by people who plainly want to hoodwink the innocent. His hairy arms are the presage of his future enrichment!


8. Preeti

Preeti introduced the passage where the Grangerfords enter, in particular, Emmeline, who provides the brief boy-girl stuff in the book. Huck learns what a feud is. Once again there was talk of the fight between the conscience (legal justice) and the heart (human justice), and the heart wins in the end for Huck Finn.

 Preeti said (optimistically) that little children until the age of five or so are the “forms of God on earth.” Huck Finn sees the world wide-eyed and somehow or other finds his way forward. An episode Preeti experienced (may not be relevant to the novel) was seeing a farmer beat and hang a dog; this was in an illustration for a children's book which she bought at a book fair for her nephews. She was horrified to discover this when she got home.
Classics Illustrated cover of Huckleberry Finn 15 cents

In another story a frog's reward is to be kissed and then to die. Joe noted that Grimm's Fairy Tales, at least in the uncensored version first published, are pretty grim. See:

The Grimm brothers travelled on their fairy tale collection mission, but the majority of the tales were submitted to them by common folk and taken from older published stories. Many of the original 165 stories collected in the 1812 edition Volume 1 and the 1815 Volume 2 were considered unsuitable for children by critics. There was a hue and cry, and the brothers Grimm published a second smaller edition in 1825 designed for youngsters, and it is the seventh edition of 1857 that is now known all over the world. In spite of that there are traumatic situations, e.g., Red Riding Hood with grandma being swallowed by a wolf.

Princeton Univeristy Press has published a translation of the original Volume 1 and 2 recently in an unexpurgated scholarly edition:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10300.html

You can read more at

KumKum said each of her three children had favourites from Grimm's tales; for the eldest, Michal, it was Goldilocks. For Rachel it was the Three Little Pigs, and for Reuben, it was Billy Goat Gruff. They would want it read to them over and over again.

Sunil said his girls took to vampire stories, which is a modern craze with film on zombies and such like.


Readings

1. Priya (1057 words) Ch 2 – Tom Sawyer's gang starts life
"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood."
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:
"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?"
"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.
"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more."
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:
"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.
"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.
"But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—"
"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money."
"Must we always kill the people?"
"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed."
"Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do."
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"
"Why, blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?—that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"
"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead."
"Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they'll be, too—eating up everything, and always trying to get loose."
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"
"A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so—that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?—that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."
"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?"
"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more."
"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more.

2. Gopa Conversation between Jim and Huck Finn on King Sollermun – Beginning of Ch 14. (1079 words)
BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger.
I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says:
"I didn' know dey was so many un um. I hain't hearn 'bout none un um, skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a pack er k'yards. How much do a king git?"
"Get?" I says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them."
"Ain' dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?"
"They don't do nothing! Why, how you talk! They just set around."
"No; is dat so?"
"Of course it is. They just set around—except, maybe, when there's a war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or go hawking—just hawking and sp—Sh!—d' you hear a noise?"
We skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back.
"Yes," says I, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem."
"Roun' de which?"
"Harem."
"What's de harem?"
"The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? Solomon had one; he had about a million wives."
"Why, yes, dat's so; I—I'd done forgot it. A harem's a bo'd'n-house, I reck'n. Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck'n de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. Yit dey say Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. I doan' take no stock in dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a blim-blammin' all de time? No—'deed he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factry when he want to res'."
"Well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self."
"I doan k'yer what de widder say, he warn't no wise man nuther. He had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see. Does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?"
"Yes, the widow told me all about it."
"Well, den! Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? You jes' take en look at it a minute. Dah's de stump, dah—dat's one er de women; heah's you—dat's de yuther one; I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? No; I take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat's de way Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?—can't buy noth'n wid it. En what use is a half a chile? I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um."
"But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point—blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile."
"Who? Me? Go 'long. Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. I reck'n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. Doan' talk to me 'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back."
"But I tell you you don't get the point."
"Blame de point! I reck'n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de real pint is down furder—it's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. He know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. He as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'. A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!"
I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide.


3. KumKum Descriptions of Incidents along the River Mississippi (888 words)
Chapter XVIII ­ Page 105
I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-­dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

 Chapter XIX (page 105/106/107)
Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swam by,they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there ­­­ sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up­­­ nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee ­deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywhere­­­ perfectly still­­ just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-­cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line­­­ that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around ; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away ­­­ trading ­scows, and such things; and long black streaks­­ rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled­up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak and there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood­yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song­birds just going it! Soon it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kind of things ­­we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us­­­the new clothes Buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, nohow.

 Sometimes we'd have the whole river all to ourselves for the longest time.

 Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark—which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two­­ on a raft or a scow, you know; and may be you could hear fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could 'a'laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

 After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black­­­ no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock­­ the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.


4. Sunil Encounter with the King and the Duke, humbugs both (1271 words)
"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out with you. That's the whole yarn—what's yourn?
"Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a night—ten cents a head, children and niggers free—and business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn't wait for no breakfast—I warn't hungry."
"Old man," said the young one, "I reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?"
"I ain't undisposed. What's your line—mainly?"
"Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. What's your lay?"
"I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o' hands is my best holt—for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's, and missionaryin' around."
Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says:
"Alas!"
"What 're you alassin' about?" says the bald-head.
"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag.
"Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.
"Yes, it is good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame you, gentlemen—far from it; I don't blame anybody. I deserve it all.
…
"Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?"
"Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes—let it pass—'tis no matter. The secret of my birth—"
"The secret of your birth! Do you mean to say—"
"Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!"
Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. Then the baldhead says: "No! you can't mean it?"
"Yes. 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 estates—the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal descendant of that infant—I 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!"
Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't 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 "Your Grace," or "My Lord," or "Your Lordship"—and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain "Bridgewater," 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, "Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him.
But the old man got pretty silent by and by—didn't have much to say, and didn't 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:
"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that."
"No?"
"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place."
"Alas!"
"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." And, by jings, he begins to cry.
"Hold! What do you mean?"
"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing.
"To the bitter death!" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "That secret of your being: speak!"
"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!"
You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:
"You are what?"
"Yes, my friend, it is too true—your eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette."
"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."
"Trouble 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 wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France."
…
It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't 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; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I didn't 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.


5. Kavita Ch XVI Jim is saved from discovery (950 words)
Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." That was so—I couldn't get around that noway. That was where it pinched. Conscience says to me, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That's what she done."
I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.
Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist to go and steal them.
It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, "Let up on me—it ain't too late yet—I'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings out:
"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels! Dat's de good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!"
I says:
"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know."
He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:
"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck; you's de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole Jim's got now."
I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim."
Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it—I can't get out of it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says:
"What's that yonder?"
"A piece of a raft," I says.
"Do you belong on it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any men on it?"
"Only one, sir."
"Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend. Is your man white or black?"
I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man enough—hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says:
"He's white."


6. Pamela Ch VI Huck's father rants about the 'govment' (892 words)
"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him—a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.
"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now—that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—"
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens.


7. Joe
p.41 Goodluck signs (747 words) end of Ch VIII
I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them.  Jim knowed all kinds of signs.  He said he knowed most everything.  I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if there warn't any good-luck signs.  He says:
"Mighty few—an' dey ain't no use to a body.  What you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for?  Want to keep it off?"  And he said:  "Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby."
"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?"
"What's de use to ax dat question?  Don't you see I has?"
"Well, are you rich?"
"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin.  Wunst I had foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out."
"What did you speculate in, Jim?"
"Well, fust I tackled stock."
"What kind of stock?"
"Why, live stock—cattle, you know.  I put ten dollars in a cow.  But I ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock.  De cow up 'n' died on my han's."
"So you lost the ten dollars."
"No, I didn't lose it all.  I on'y los' 'bout nine of it.  I sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents."
"You had five dollars and ten cents left.  Did you speculate any more?"
"Yes.  You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year.  Well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn't have much.  I wuz de on'y one dat had much.  So I stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank mysef. Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say I could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year.
"So I done it.  Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'.  Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted.  So dey didn' none uv us git no money."
"What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?"
"Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' Balum—Balum's Ass dey call him for short; he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know.  But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I warn't lucky.  De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me.  Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times.  So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it."
"Well, what did come of it, Jim?"
"Nuffn never come of it.  I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en Balum he couldn'.  I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de security.  Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! Ef I could git de ten cents back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst."
"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other."
"Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it.  I owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars.  I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'."

8. Preeti
End of Ch XVII Huck's crush on Emmeline Grangerford
She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

Ch VIII The killing feud
Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, I says:
"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"
"Well, I bet I did."
"What did he do to you?"
"Him? He never done nothing to me."
"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"
"Why, nothing—only it's on account of the feud."
"What's a feud?"
"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"
"Never heard of it before—tell me about it."
"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in—and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."
"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"
"Well, I should reckon! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit—which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would."
"What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?"
"I reckon maybe—I don't know."
"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?"
"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."
"Don't anybody know?"
"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."
"Has there been many killed, Buck?"
"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much, anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once or twice."
…
All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell all that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them.
Posted by KRG Convenor at 10:59

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