Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
says the duke. “The first good town we come to we’ll hire a hall and do
the sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and
Juliet. How does that strike you?”
“I’m in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but,
you see, I don’t know nothing about play-actin’, and hain’t ever seen
much of it. I was too small when pap used to have ’em at the palace. Do
you reckon you can learn me?”
“Easy!”
“All right. I’m jist a-freezn’ for something fresh, anyway. Le’s
commence right away.”
So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and
said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.
“But if Juliet’s such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white
whiskers is goin’ to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.”
“No, don’t you worry; these country jakes won’t ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you’ll be in costume, and that makes all the
difference in the world; Juliet’s in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight
before she goes to bed, and she’s got on her night-gown and her ruffled
nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts.”
He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was
meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t’other chap, and a long white
cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was
satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the
most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same
time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the
king and told him to get his part by heart.
There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to
run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he
would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would
go, too, and see if he couldn’t strike something. We was out of coffee,
so Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.
When we got there there warn’t nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn’t too young or
too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in
the woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he’d go and work
that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.
The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a
little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop—carpenters and
printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty,
littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of
horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed
his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for
the camp-meeting.
We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most
awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty
mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched
everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off
the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with
branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of
watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.
The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was
bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside
slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into
for legs. They didn’t have no backs. The preachers had high platforms
to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and
some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the
young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and
some of the children didn’t have on any clothes but just a tow-linen
shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks
was courting on the sly.
The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,
there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then
he lined out two more for them to sing—and so on. The people woke up
more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some
begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to
preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side
of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the
front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and
shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he
would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around
this way and that, shouting, “It’s the brazen serpent in the
wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out,
“Glory!—A-a-_men!_” And so he went on, and the people groaning and
crying and saying amen:
“Oh, come to the mourners’ bench! come, black with sin! (_amen!_) come,
sick and sore! (_amen!_) come, lame and halt and blind! (_amen!_) come,
pore and needy, sunk in shame! (_a-a-men!_) come, all that’s worn and
soiled and suffering!—come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite
heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is
free, the door of heaven stands open—oh, enter in and be at rest!”
(_a-a-men!_ _glory, glory hallelujah!_)
And so on. You couldn’t make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the
crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners’
bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the
mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung
and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and
wild.
Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and
the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He
told them he was a pirate—been a pirate for thirty years out in the
Indian Ocean—and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a
fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to
goodness he’d been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat
without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that
ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for
the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start
right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the
rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he
could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate
crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get
there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he
convinced a pirate he would say to him, “Don’t you thank me, don’t you
give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville
camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that
dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!”
And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody
sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well,
a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let _him_
pass the hat around!” Then everybody said it, the preacher too.
So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes,
and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being
so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the
prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks,
would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by;
and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as
five or six times—and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody
wanted him to live in their houses, and said they’d think it was an
honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he
couldn’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 he’d ever put in in the
missionarying line. He said it warn’t no use talking, heathens don’t
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.
The duke was thinking _he’d_ been doing pretty well till the king come
to show up, but after that he didn’t think so so much. He had set up
and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that
printing-office—horse bills—and took the money, four dollars. And he
had got in ten dollars’ worth of advertisements for the paper, which he
said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance—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 head—three verses—kind of sweet and saddish—the name of
it was, “Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart”—and he left that
all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didn’t charge nothing
for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he’d done a
pretty square day’s work for it.
Then he showed us another little job he’d printed and hadn’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 “$200 reward” under it. The
reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he
run away from St. Jacques’ 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.
“Now,” says the duke, “after 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 wouldn’t go well with the story of us being so
poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing—we must
preserve the unities, as we say on the boards.”
We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn’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 duke’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
o’clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn’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:
“Huck, does you reck’n we gwyne to run acrost any mo’ kings on dis
trip?”
“No,” I says, “I reckon not.”
“Well,” says he, “dat’s all right, den. I doan’ mine one er two kings,
but dat’s enough. Dis one’s powerful drunk, en de duke ain’ much
better.”
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