- end_line
- 8824
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-28T02:36:10.657Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8763
- text
- bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot
or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had
to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate;
he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so
properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he
turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him
hand and foot.
He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched high
and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third morning
Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind
the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee.
Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and
ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was
unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made
him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. Tom routed him
out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home.
Huck’s face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He
said:
“Don’t talk about it, Tom. I’ve tried it, and it don’t work; it don’t
work, Tom. It ain’t for me; I ain’t used to it. The widder’s good to me,
and friendly; but I can’t stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all
to thunder; she won’t let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don’t seem to any air
git through ’em, somehow; and they’re so rotten nice that I can’t
set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher’s; I hain’t slid on a
cellar-door for—well, it ’pears to be years; I got to go to church
and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons! I can’t ketch a fly in
there, I can’t chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by
a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so
awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.”
“Well, everybody does that way, Huck.”
“Tom, it don’t make no difference. I ain’t everybody, and I can’t
_stand_ it. It’s awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy—I don’t
take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing;
I got to ask to go in a-swimming—dern’d if I hain’t got to ask to do
everything. Well, I’d got to talk so nice it wasn’t no comfort—I’d got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste
in my mouth, or I’d a died, Tom. The widder wouldn’t let me smoke;
she wouldn’t let me yell, she wouldn’t let me gape, nor stretch, nor
scratch, before folks—” [Then with a spasm of special irritation and
injury]—“And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a
woman! I _had_ to shove, Tom—I just had to. And besides, that school’s
going to open, and I’d a had to go to it—well, I wouldn’t stand _that_,
Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It’s
just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead
all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar’l suits me, and
I ain’t ever going to shake ’em any more. Tom, I wouldn’t ever got into
all this trouble if it hadn’t ’a’ been for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your’n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes—not
many times, becuz I don’t give a dern for a thing ’thout it’s tollable
hard to git—and you go and beg off for me with the widder.”
“Oh, Huck, you know I can’t do that. ’Tain’t fair; and besides if you’ll
try this thing just a while longer you’ll come to like it.”
- title
- Chunk 2