ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

(Tom Sawyer's Friend)

By Mark Twain

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. Becoming Civilized.—Miss Watson.—Tom Sawyer Waits.

CHAPTER II. The Boys Escape Jim.—Tom Sawyer's Gang.—Careful Plans.

CHAPTER III. A Good Talking-To.—Grace Wins Out.—"One of Tom Sawyer's Lies."

CHAPTER IV. Huck and the Judge.—Superstition.

CHAPTER V. Huck's Father.—The Loving Parent.—Reform.

CHAPTER VI. He Went for Judge Thatcher.—Huck Decides to Leave.—Talk of Money and Government.—Fighting Around.

CHAPTER VII. Waiting for Him.—Locked in the Cabin.—Sinking the Body.—Resting.

CHAPTER VIII. Sleeping in the Woods.—Raising the Dead.—Exploring the Island.—Finding Jim.—Jim's Escape.—Signs.—Balum.

CHAPTER IX. The Cave.—The Floating House.

CHAPTER X. The Find.—Old Hank Bunker.—In Disguise.

CHAPTER XI. Huck and the Woman.—The Search.—Fibbing.—Going to Goshen.

CHAPTER XII. Slow Traveling.—Borrowing Things.—Boarding the Wreck.—The Plotters.—Hunting for the Boat.

CHAPTER XIII. Escaping from the Wreck.—The Watchman.—Sinking.

CHAPTER XIV. A Good Time for All.—The Harem.—French.

CHAPTER XV. Huck Loses the Raft.—In the Fog.—Huck Finds the Raft.—Trash.

CHAPTER XVI. Waiting.—A White Lie.—Money on the Water.—Passing Cairo.—Swimming Ashore.

CHAPTER XVII. An Evening Visit.—The Farm in Arkansas.—Inside Decorations.—Stephen Dowling Bots.—Poems.

CHAPTER XVIII. Colonel Grangerford.—High Society.—Family Feuds.—The Bible.—Getting the Raft Back.—The Woodpile.—Pork and Cabbage.

CHAPTER XIX. Hiding in the Daytime.—A Star Theory.—Running a Temperance Meeting.—The Duke of Bridgewater.—The Troubles of Royalty.

CHAPTER XX. Huck Explains.—Planning a Trick.—Working the Camp Meeting.—A Pirate at the Camp Meeting.—The Duke as a Printer.

CHAPTER XXI. Sword Practice.—Hamlet's Speech.—Wandering the Town.—A Lazy Town.—Old Boggs.—Dead.

CHAPTER XXII. Sherburn.—Going to the Circus.—A Drunk in the Ring.—The Exciting Play.

CHAPTER XXIII. Sold.—Comparing Kings.—Jim Gets Homesick.

CHAPTER XXIV. Jim in Royal Clothes.—They Take a Passenger.—Getting Information.—Family Sadness.

CHAPTER XXV. Is It Them?—Singing the Hymn.—A Strange Funeral.—A Bad Deal.

CHAPTER XXVI. A Religious King.—The King's Church Talk.—She Asked His Forgiveness.—Hiding in the Room.—Huck Takes the Money.

CHAPTER XXVII. The Funeral.—Satisfying Curiosity.—Suspicious of Huck.—Quick, Small Sales.

CHAPTER XXVIII. The Trip to England.—"The Brute!"—Mary Jane Decides to Leave.—Huck Says Goodbye to Mary Jane.—Mumps.—The Other Family.

CHAPTER XXIX. Who's Really Related.—The King Explains the Loss.—A Question of Handwriting.—Digging Up the Body.—Huck Escapes.

CHAPTER XXX. The King Comes After Him.—A Royal Fight.—Very Drunk.

CHAPTER XXXI. Bad Signs.—News of Jim.—Old Memories.—A Sheep Story.—Useful Information.

CHAPTER XXXII. Quiet Like a Sunday.—Mistaken for Someone Else.—Stuck.—In Trouble.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A Slave Stealer.—Southern Hospitality.—A Very Long Prayer.—Tar and Feathers.

CHAPTER XXXIV. The Hut by the Ash Pile.—Outrageous.—Climbing the Lightning Rod.—Bothered by Witches.

CHAPTER XXXV. Escaping the Right Way.—Sneaky Plans.—Picky About Stealing.—A Deep Hole.

CHAPTER XXXVI. The Lightning Rod.—Trying His Hardest.—A Gift for the Future.—A High Price.

CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last Shirt.—Wandering Around.—Orders to Sail.—The Witch Pie.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Coat of Arms.—A Skilled Helper.—Unwanted Fame.—A Sad Topic.

CHAPTER XXXIX. Rats.—Lively Bedmates.—The Straw Dummy.

CHAPTER XL. Fishing.—The Watch Group.—A Fast Chase.—Jim Wants a Doctor.

CHAPTER XLI. The Doctor.—Uncle Silas.—Sister Hotchkiss.—Aunt Sally in Trouble.

CHAPTER XLII. Tom Sawyer Hurt.—The Doctor's Story.—Tom Confesses.—Aunt Polly Arrives.—Hand Over Those Letters.

CHAPTER THE LAST. Freedom.—Paying the Prisoner.—Yours Truly, Huck Finn.

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NOTICE

Anyone who tries to find a reason behind this story will be punished. Anyone who tries to find a lesson in it will be sent away. Anyone who tries to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
FROM G. G., CHIEF OF WEAPONS

EXPLANATION

In this book, several different ways of talking are used. There is the Missouri Black dialect (the special way people from that group spoke); the strongest form of backwoods Southern speech; the everyday "Pike County" way of talking; and four milder versions of that last kind.

These different speech patterns were not chosen by accident or by guessing. They were chosen carefully, based on real knowledge of how people actually spoke this way.

I explain this so that readers won't think all the characters were trying to talk the same way and just failing at it.

THE AUTHOR

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HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Setting: The Mississippi Valley
Time: Forty to fifty years ago

CHAPTER I.

You don't know about me unless you've read a book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But that's all right. That book was written by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth—mostly. He stretched some things, but mostly he told the truth. That's nothing new. I've never met anybody who didn't lie sometimes, except maybe Aunt Polly, or the widow, or Mary. Aunt Polly is Tom's aunt. She, and Mary, and the Widow Douglas are all in that book, which is mostly true, with a few stretched parts, like I said.

Here's how that book ends: Tom and I found money that some robbers had hidden in a cave, and it made us rich. We each got six thousand dollars—all in gold. It was an amazing amount of money to see piled up. Judge Thatcher took the money and invested it, so it earned us a dollar a day each, all year round—more than anyone would know what to do with. The Widow Douglas decided to adopt me as her son and said she would "civilize" me. But it was hard living in her house all the time, since she was so proper and serious about everything. So when I couldn't take it anymore, I ran off. I put on my old ragged clothes and went back to living in my old sugar barrel, and I felt free and happy again. But then Tom Sawyer found me and said he was starting a gang of robbers. He said I could join if I went back to the widow and acted respectable. So I went back.

The widow cried over me and called me a poor lost lamb, along with some other names, but she never meant any harm by it. She put me back in the new clothes, and all I could do was sweat and feel squeezed and uncomfortable. Then the same old routine started again. The widow would ring a bell for supper, and you had to show up right on time. Once you got to the table, you couldn't just start eating—you had to wait while the widow bowed her head and said a little something over the food, even though there was nothing really wrong with it. The only odd thing was that everything was cooked separately. When food is all mixed together in one pot, the flavors blend and everything tastes better, if you ask me.

After supper, she got out her Bible and taught me about Moses and the baby found in the bulrushes (reeds by a river). I was excited to learn about him. But then she mentioned that Moses had been dead a long, long time. After that, I lost interest, because I don't care much about people who are already dead.

Pretty soon, I wanted to smoke, so I asked the widow if I could. She said no. She said it was a bad habit and not clean, and that I should try to stop. That's just how some people are. They dislike something they don't understand at all. Here she was, worrying about Moses, who wasn't even her relative and was no use to anybody since he was long gone—yet she found plenty of fault with me for doing something that actually felt good. And she took snuff (a kind of tobacco you sniff) herself! Of course, that was fine, because she was the one doing it.

Her sister, Miss