Kabanata Kabanata 3 · 第3章

Well, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on

account of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned

off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would

behave a while if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet

and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and

whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once

I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without

hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I

couldn’t make it work. By-and-by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try

for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I

couldn’t make it out no way.

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I

says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t

Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can’t the widow get

back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up?

No, says I to myself, there ain’t nothing in it. I went and told the

widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for

it was “spiritual gifts.” This was too many for me, but she told me

what she meant—I must help other people, and do everything I could for

other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about

myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the

woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no

advantage about it—except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I

wouldn’t worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the

widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make

a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold

and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two

Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the

widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help

for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to

the widow’s if he wanted me, though I couldn’t make out how he was

a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was

so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.

Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable

for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me

when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take

to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time

he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so

people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was

just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was

all like pap; but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because

it had been in the water so long it warn’t much like a face at all.

They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and

buried him on the bank. But I warn’t comfortable long, because I

happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded

man don’t float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that

this warn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was

uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again

by-and-by, though I wished he wouldn’t.

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All

the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any people, but

only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging

down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market,

but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs “ingots,”

and he called the turnips and stuff “julery,” and we would go to the

cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had

killed and marked. But I couldn’t see no profit in it. One time Tom

sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a

slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he

said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel

of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow

with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand

“sumter” mules, all loaded down with di’monds, and they didn’t have

only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in

ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He

said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never

could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns

all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and

you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn’t worth a

mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn’t believe we

could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see

the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the

ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down

the hill. But there warn’t no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn’t no

camels nor no elephants. It warn’t anything but a Sunday-school picnic,

and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the

children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts

and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a

hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us

drop everything and cut.

I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was

loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too,

and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He

said if I warn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I

would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He

said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure,

and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had

turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite.

I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the

magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

“Why,” said he, “a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they

would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They

are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.”

“Well,” I says, “s’pose we got some genies to help _us_—can’t we lick

the other crowd then?”

“How you going to get them?”

“I don’t know. How do _they_ get them?”

“Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies

come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and

the smoke a-rolling, and everything they’re told to do they up and do

it. They don’t think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots,

and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it—or any

other man.”

“Who makes them tear around so?”

“Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs

the lamp or the ring, and they’ve got to do whatever he says. If he

tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di’monds, and fill

it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor’s

daughter from China for you to marry, they’ve got to do it—and they’ve

got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they’ve got to

waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you

understand.”

“Well,” says I, “I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping

the palace themselves ’stead of fooling them away like that. And what’s

more—if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would

drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.”

“How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d _have_ to come when he rubbed it,

whether you wanted to or not.”

“What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then;

I _would_ come; but I lay I’d make that man climb the highest tree

there was in the country.”

“Shucks, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to

know anything, somehow—perfect saphead.”

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I

would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an

iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat

like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn’t

no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff

was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed in the

A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all

the marks of a Sunday-school.