Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

ow. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read
and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to
six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any
further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in
mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by-and-by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got
next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school
the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow’s
ways, too, and they warn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house and
sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold
weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so
that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so
I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming
along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn’t
ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I
reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,
and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what
a mess you are always making!” The widow put in a good word for me, but
that warn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.
I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and
wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to
be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn’t
one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along
low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody’s tracks. They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden
fence. It was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing around so. I
couldn’t make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn’t
notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody. I was at Judge
Thatcher’s as quick as I could get there. He said:

“Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your
interest?”

“No, sir,” I says; “is there some for me?”

“Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in, last night—over a hundred and fifty
dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along
with your six thousand, because if you take it you’ll spend it.”

“No, sir,” I says, “I don’t want to spend it. I don’t want it at
all—nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give
it to you—the six thousand and all.”

He looked surprised. He couldn’t seem to make it out. He says:

“Why, what can you mean, my boy?”

I says, “Don’t you ask me no questions about it, please. You’ll take
it—won’t you?”

He says:

“Well, I’m puzzled. Is something the matter?”

“Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing—then I won’t have
to tell no lies.”

He studied a while, and then he says:

“Oho-o! I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me—not
give it. That’s the correct idea.”

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

“There; you see it says ‘for a consideration.’ That means I have bought
it of you and paid you for it. Here’s a dollar for you. Now you sign
it.”

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which
had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do
magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here
again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was,
what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his
hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and
dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an
inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the
same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and
listened. But it warn’t no use; he said it wouldn’t talk. He said
sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money. I told him I had an old slick
counterfeit quarter that warn’t no good because the brass showed
through the silver a little, and it wouldn’t pass nohow, even if the
brass didn’t show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that
would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I wouldn’t say nothing about
the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but
maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn’t know the
difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would
manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split
open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it
there all night, and next morning you couldn’t see no brass, and it
wouldn’t feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a
minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that
before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened
again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would
tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the
hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:

“Yo’ ole father doan’ know yit what he’s a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he
spec he’ll go ’way, en den agin he spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is to
res’ easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hoverin’
roun’ ’bout him. One uv ’em is white en shiny, en t’other one is black.
De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail
in en bust it all up. A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetch
him at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable
trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git
hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to
git well agin. Dey’s two gals flyin’ ’bout you in yo’ life. One uv
’em’s light en t’other one is dark. One is rich en t’other is po’.
You’s gwyne to marry de po’ one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants
to keep ’way fum de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk,
’kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap
his own self!