Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Page #8

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.

• Novel

								


I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.  While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again.  He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.  A body would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud.  Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising.  Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him.  And they call that govment!  That ain't all, nuther.  The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property.  Here's what the law does:  The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment!  A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face.  Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said.  Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin.  Them's the very words.  I says look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe.  Look at it, says I--such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here. There was a free n*gger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And what do you think?  They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home.  Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?  It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that n*gger vote, I drawed out.  I says I'll never vote agin.
 Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me--I'll never vote agin as long as I live.  And to see the cool way of that n*gger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way.  I says to the people, why ain't this n*gger put up at auction and sold?--that's what I want to know.  And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.  There, now--that's a specimen.  They call that a govment that can't sell a free n*gger till he's been in the State six months.  Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free n*gger, and--”

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language--mostly hove at the n*gger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there.  He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.  But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.  He said so his own self afterwards.
 He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens.  That was always his word.  I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other.  He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way.
 He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.  He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time.  At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.  There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes.  He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes.  He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!”  I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him.  He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning.  Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound.
 I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still.  He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.  He says, very low:
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