Chapter Chapter 35 · CHAPTER XXXV. A New Order of Things—Poor Huck—New Adventures Planned

. CHAPTER XXXV. A New Order of Things—Poor Huck—New Adventures Planned

The reader may rest satisfied that Tom’s and Huck’s windfall made a

mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a

sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked

about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens

tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted”

house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected,

plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden

treasure—and not by boys, but men—pretty grave, unromantic men, too,

some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired,

stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had

possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and

repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as

remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying

commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and

discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper

published biographical sketches of the boys.

The Widow Douglas put Huck’s money out at six per cent., and Judge

Thatcher did the same with Tom’s at Aunt Polly’s request. Each lad had

an income, now, that was simply prodigious—a dollar for every weekday in

the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got—no,

it was what he was promised—he generally couldn’t collect it. A dollar

and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in those old

simple days—and clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter.

Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no

commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When

Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her

whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded

grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that

whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine

outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie—a lie that

was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to

breast with George Washington’s lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky

thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he

walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight

off and told Tom about it.

Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some

day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the

National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school

in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or

both.

Huck Finn’s wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas’

protection introduced him into society—no, dragged him into it, hurled

him into it—and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The

widow’s servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they

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.”

“Like it! Yes—the way I’d like a hot stove if I was to set on it long

enough. No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed

smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and

I’ll stick to ’em, too. Blame it all! just as we’d got guns, and a cave,

and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to come up

and spile it all!”

Tom saw his opportunity—

“Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain’t going to keep me back from turning

robber.”

“No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?”

“Just as dead earnest as I’m sitting here. But Huck, we can’t let you

into the gang if you ain’t respectable, you know.”

Huck’s joy was quenched.

“Can’t let me in, Tom? Didn’t you let me go for a pirate?”

“Yes, but that’s different. A robber is more high-toned than what a

pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in

the nobility—dukes and such.”

“Now, Tom, hain’t you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn’t shet me

out, would you, Tom? You wouldn’t do that, now, _would_ you, Tom?”

“Huck, I wouldn’t want to, and I _don’t_ want to—but what would people

say? Why, they’d say, ‘Mph! Tom Sawyer’s Gang! pretty low characters in

it!’ They’d mean you, Huck. You wouldn’t like that, and I wouldn’t.”

Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he

said:

“Well, I’ll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I

can come to stand it, if you’ll let me b’long to the gang, Tom.”

“All right, Huck, it’s a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I’ll ask the

widow to let up on you a little, Huck.”

“Will you, Tom—now will you? That’s good. If she’ll let up on some of

the roughest things, I’ll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd

through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?”

“Oh, right off. We’ll get the boys together and have the initiation

tonight, maybe.”

“Have the which?”

“Have the initiation.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang’s

secrets, even if you’re chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and

all his family that hurts one of the gang.”

“That’s gay—that’s mighty gay, Tom, I tell you.”

“Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing’s got to be done at midnight,

in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find—a ha’nted house is the

best, but they’re all ripped up now.”

“Well, midnight’s good, anyway, Tom.”

“Yes, so it is. And you’ve got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with

blood.”

“Now, that’s something _like_! Why, it’s a million times bullier than

pirating. I’ll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be

a reg’lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking ’bout it, I reckon

she’ll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet.”

CONCLUSION

So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a _boy_, it

must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the

history of a _man_. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows

exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of

juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are

prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the

story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they

turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that

part of their lives at present.