You Ⓐalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation don’tⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom SawyerⒺexplanatory note,”Ⓔexplanatory note but that ain’t no matter.Ⓐemendation That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothingⒶalteration in the MS.Ⓐemendation I never seen anybodyⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation but lied, one time or another, without it was auntⒶhistorical collation PollyⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐhistorical collation or the widow, or maybeⒶalteration in the MS MaryⒺexplanatory note. Aunt Polly,—Tom’sⒶalteration in the MS auntⒶhistorical collation Polly, she isⒶemendation—and Mary, and the widowⒶhistorical collation DouglasⒺexplanatory note, is all told about in that book—which is mostlyⒶemendation a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now theⒶemendation way that the book winds up, is this:Ⓐemendation Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge ThatcherⒺexplanatory note, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The widowⒶhistorical collation DouglasⒶhistorical collation she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me;Ⓐemendation but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar hogsheadⒶemendation again, and was free and satisfied.Ⓐalteration in the MS But Tom SawyerⒶhistorical collation he hunted me up and said he was going to [begin page 2] start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot ofⒶalteration in the MS other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating,Ⓐalteration in the MS but you had to wait for the widow to tuck downⒶemendation her head and grumble a little over the victuals;Ⓐalteration in the MS Ⓐhistorical collation though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and endsⒶalteration in the MS it is different; thingsⒶemendation get mixed up, and the juiceⒶemendation kind of swapsⒶemendation around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bulrushersⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐhistorical collation and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and byⒶhistorical collation she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’tⒶemendation take no stock in dead people.
[begin page 3] Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothingⒶemendation about it. Here she was a-botheringⒶhistorical collation about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see,Ⓐemendation yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in itⒺexplanatory note. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister, Miss WatsonⒺexplanatory note, a tolerable slimⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set atⒶalteration in the MS me now, with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hardⒶalteration in the MS for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up.Ⓐalteration in the MS I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadlyⒶemendation dull,Ⓐalteration in the MS and I was fidgetyⒶemendation. Miss Watson would say, “Don’t putⒶhistorical collation your feet up there,Ⓐalteration in the MS Huckleberry,Ⓐhistorical collation” and “Don’tⒶhistorical collation scrunch up likeⒶalteration in the MS that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty soon she would say, “Don’tⒶalteration in the MS gapⒶalteration in the MS and stretchⒶalteration in the MS like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wishedⒶalteration in the MS I was there. She got madⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation, then, but I didn’t [begin page 4] mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheresⒶemendation; all I wanted was a change—Ⓐhistorical collationI warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; saidⒶemendation she wouldn’tⒶalteration in the MS say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it.Ⓐalteration in the MS But I never said so, because it would onlyⒶemendation make trouble, and wouldn’t do no goodⒶemendation.
Now she hadⒶalteration in the MS got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and singⒺexplanatory note, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it.Ⓐalteration in the MS But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, andⒶhistorical collation she saidⒶhistorical collation not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.Ⓐalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation
Miss Watson she kept pecking at meⒶhistorical collation and it got tiresomeⒶalteration in the MS andⒶemendation lonesome. By and byⒶhistorical collation they fetched the niggers in and had prayersⒺexplanatory note, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I mostⒶalteration in the MS wished I was dead.Ⓐalteration in the MS The stars was shiningⒶalteration in the MS, and the leaves rustledⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowillⒶemendation and a dog cryingⒺexplanatory note about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its graveⒺexplanatory note and has to go about that way every night,Ⓐhistorical collation grieving. I got soⒶalteration in the MS down-hearted and scared, I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candleⒺexplanatory note; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful badⒶalteration in the MS Ⓐemendation sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every timeⒺexplanatory note; and then I tied up a little lock of my hairⒺexplanatory note with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horse-shoe that you’ve foundⒶemendation Ⓔexplanatory note, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t everⒶemendation heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.
[begin page 5] I set down again, a-shakingⒶemendation all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death, now, and so the widow wouldn’t know. Well, after a long timeⒶalteration in the MS I heard the clock away off in the townⒶemendation go BoomⒶhistorical collation—boom—boom—twelve licks—Ⓐalteration in the MSand all still again—stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap, down in the dark amongst the trees—something was a-stirringⒶemendation. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a “ Me-yow! me-yow! Ⓐemendation” down there. That was good!Ⓐalteration in the MS Says I, “Me-yow! me-yow!”Ⓐemendation as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. Then I slippedⒶalteration in the MS downⒶemendation to the ground and crawled in amongst the trees, and sure enough there was Tom Sawyer waitingⒶalteration in the MS for me.Ⓔexplanatory note
The Adventures . . . Finn.] Kemble’s use of “The” in the title here is mistaken. The definite article was also mistakenly used in the running heads of the first edition, and in some of Webster and Company’s advertisements for the book (see, for example, Publisher’s Advertisements, 1884–1891, pp. 659–61, 663). It appeared throughout the English and Continental editions, as well as the third and fourth American editions, published in 1896 and 1899 (see Description of Texts, pp. 804–6). Just after completing the book manuscript, Clemens himself quoted the title with the article in a letter to James R. Osgood, but without it in one to Andrew Chatto, both on 1 September 1883. And probably he, rather than the editor or typesetter, used it in the introductory note for the selections published in the Century Magazine (SLC 1884b). Still, there is little room for doubt that he intended the book title to omit the article. Kemble’s design for the cover, which was among the first illustrations reviewed and approved by Webster and Clemens, omitted the article, as did Clemens’s holograph title page from the summer of 1883 (see Manuscript Facsimiles, p. 562). The printed title page of the first edition, as well as the printed half-title, the illustrated cover and the spine (and both front and back of the prospectus) all agree with the holograph title page in omitting the definite article (SLC to Osgood, 1 Sept 83, WEU; SLC to Chatto, 1 Sept 83, Uk, in Gates, 79; Webster to SLC, 5 May 84, CU-MARK; SLC to Webster, 7 May 84, NPV, in MTLP , 174; David and Sapirstein, 38).
[begin page 379]
You don’t know about me . . . “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,”] In chapter 6 of Tom Sawyer (1876) Mark Twain had described Huck Finn as “the juvenile pariah of the village . . . son of the town drunkard,” adding that he “was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society” ( ATS , 47).
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. ( ATS , 48)
On hearing this passage read aloud, Clemens’s sister Pamela said, “Why, that’s Tom Blankenship!” ( MTBus , 265). Mark Twain had said in his preface that “Huck Finn is drawn from life” ( ATS , xvii), and in 1906 he repeated the assertion in his autobiography. A letter from Alex C. Toncray, an old Hannibal acquaintance, asked him if it were true that Huck Finn was based on his brother, A. O. Toncray. Clemens said:
I have replied that “Huckleberry Finn” was Tom Blankenship. . . . Tom’s father was at one time Town Drunkard, an exceedingly well defined and unofficial office of those days. . . .
In “Huckleberry Finn” I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than of any other boy’s. (AD, 8 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:174–75)
One of eight children of Woodson and Mahala Blankenship, Tom was four years older than Clemens ( Inds , 302–3). Huck’s last name was borrowed from another town drunkard—Jimmy Finn, the prototype for Pap Finn (see the note to 10.10–12). The origin of Huck’s first name is less clearly documented. Mark Twain certainly knew the derogatory meaning for “huckleberry”—an inconsequential or unimportant person. When he wrote chapter 26 of Connecticut Yankee, four years after finishing Huckleberry Finn, he had the local reporter for the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano praise two knights, including Sir Palamides the Saracen, “who is no huckleberry himself” ( CY , 11, 304). Mark Twain doubtless also knew the huckleberry’s general connotation: a plain, common fruit, not requiring cultivation in order to flourish, often signifying something backward or rural (Colwell, 71, 74).
illustration] Kemble used a single model, for Huck and “for every character in the story,” a neighbor, sixteen-year-old Courtland P. Morris, hired at four dollars a week. Morris, Kemble wrote, “tallied with my idea of Huck. He was a bit tall for the ideal boy, but I could jam him down a few pegs in my drawing and use him for the other characters. . . . He was always grinning, and one side of his cheek was usually well padded with a ‘sour ball’ or a huge wad of molasses taffy” (Kemble, 43). Morris recalled:
The props we used for illustrating the characters in Huckleberry Finn were, for the most part, old clothes belonging to my father and mother, with some of mine thrown in, which I found stored away in trunks up in the attic of our house.
The battered old straw hat, which was so much a part of Huck, was mine. . . The old single-barrel shotgun, another of Huck’s treasured possessions, was a gun which my aunt had given me a few years before. . . .
In portraying the female characters in the book, Aunt Polly, Widow Douglas, the woman who caught Huck trying to pass off as a girl, and the others, I would get into an old faded dress of my mother’s. Sometimes, if the text called for it, I’d don a sun-bonnet belonging to my mother. (Morris 1930)
Kemble presented his young model with one of the first copies of the book, autographed “To ‘Huckleberry Court’ ” (Morris 1938).
fetched the niggers in and had prayers] During the time of Huck’s story, “nigger” was a common colloquial term for black person, used by whites and blacks to refer to slave or freeman, both in the North and the South. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911), the white commander of the first regiment of ex-slaves mustered into Union service, noted in 1862 that “This offensive word . . . is almost as common with them as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred slaveholders” (Higginson, 1, 21). Mark Twain was certainly aware of growing objections to its use, and about 1869 he seems to have stopped using it in print, at least when speaking in his own voice (Pettit, 42–43; but see the note to 188.13–16). In Huckleberry Finn, however, he deliberately reprises it as a literary device to realistically depict the social class and speech of his characters. Nevertheless, by 1885, he would probably have agreed with the editor of the Century Dictionary (1889–91) who declared that even though “nigger” was “formerly and to some extent still is used without opprobrious intent . . . its use is now confined to colloquial or illiterate speech, in which it generally conveys more or less of contempt” (4:3989). In addition to those who deplored [begin page 384] its implicit “contempt” were those who found it indelicate, vulgar, or low. In 1884, George Washington Cable advised Mark Twain before their joint reading tour not to list one of his selections in the printed program as “Can’t learn a nigger to argue” (Huck’s rationalization after losing a debate to Jim in chapter 14) because in isolation it might hint at a “gross” entertainment:
When we consider that the programme is advertised & becomes cold-blooded newspaper reading I think we should avoid any risk of appearing—even to the most thin-skinned and super-sensative and hypercritical matrons and misses—the faintest bit gross. In the text, whether on the printed page or in the readers utterances the phrase is absolutely without a hint of grossness; but alone on a published programme, it invites discreditable conjectures of what the context may be, from that portion of our public who cannot live without aromatic vinegar. (Cable to SLC, 25 Oct 84, CU-MARK, in Cardwell, 105)
Objections to the use of “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn were not made explicit by even a single newspaper reviewer, north or south, at the time of first publication, although it is likely that Concord and Boston’s objections to the book’s “ignorant dialect” and “vulgarity” tacitly included its use of the term (see Victor Fischer; Budd 1999; Mailloux, 102; and additional notices and reviews in CU-MARK courtesy of Steven Mailloux). All three extracts from the book published by the Century Magazine in late 1884 and early 1885 used the word without warning or apology, unless we count Mark Twain’s signed introduction to these passages which carefully referred to “The negro Jim” (29:268). For an acute discussion of the different connotations of “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn, see David L. Smith, especially 4–6; for a modern lexicographer’s analysis, including four senses distinguished by the color and intent of the speaker, see Cassidy, 3:788–89; for a personal account of a black youth’s encounter with this loaded word in Huckleberry Finn, see Bradley, xxxix–xlviii; for further critical and factual contributions to the discussion of Mark Twain’s use of the term, see Railton, 393–99; Sloane, 28–29; Janows and Lee; Rasmussen, 338; and Pettit, 40–50 (despite use of four 1869–70 Buffalo Express articles misattributed to Mark Twain).