Mark Twain

-was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835. When he was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, a town on the Mississippi River much like the towns depicted in his two most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Clemens spent his young life in a fairly affluent family that owned a number of household slaves. The death of Clemens's father in 1847, however, left the family in hardship. Clemens left school, worked for a printer, and, in 1851, having finished his apprenticeship, began to set type for his brother Orion's newspaper, the Hannibal Journal. But Hannibal proved too small to hold Clemens, who soon became a sort of itinerant printer and found work in a number of American cities, including New York and Philadelphia. While still in his early twenties, Clemens gave up his printing career in order to work on riverboats on the Mississippi. Clemens eventually became a riverboat pilot, and his life on the river influenced him a great deal. Perhaps most important, the riverboat life provided him with the pen name Mark Twain, derived from the riverboat leadsmen's signal—“By the mark, twain”—that the water was deep enough for safe passage. Life on the river also gave Twain material for several of his books, including the raft scenes of Huckleberry Finn and the material for his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi (1883). In 1863, Clemens began to sign articles with the name Mark Twain.

Throughout the late 1860s and 1870s, Twain's articles, stories, memoirs, and novels, characterized by an irrepressible wit and a deft ear for language and dialect, garnered him immense celebrity. His novel The Innocents Abroad (1869) was an instant bestseller, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) received even greater national acclaim and cemented Twain's position as a giant in American literary circles. As the nation prospered economically in the post-Civil War period—an era that came to be known as the Gilded Age, an epithet that Twain coined—so too did Twain. His books were sold door-to-door, and he became wealthy enough to build a large house in Hartford, Connecticut, for himself and his wife, Olivia, whom he had married in 1870.
Twain began work on Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to Tom Sawyer, in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of the earlier novel. This new novel took on a more serious character, however, as Twain focused increasingly on the institution of slavery and the South. Twain soon set Huckleberry Finn aside, perhaps because its darker tone did not fit the optimistic sentiments of the Gilded Age. In the early 1880s, however, the hopefulness of the post-Civil War years began to fade. Reconstruction, the political program designed to reintegrate the defeated South into the Union as a slavery-free region, began to fail. The harsh measures the victorious North imposed only embittered the South. Concerned about maintaining power, many Southern politicians began an effort to control and oppress the black men and women whom the war had freed.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

-(often shortened to Huck Finn) is a novel written by Mark Twain and published in 1884. It is commonly regarded one of the Great American Novels, and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing a Southern antebellum society that was already anachronistic at the time of its publication, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
The book has been popular with young readers since its publication and is taken as a sequel to the comparatively innocuous The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics. The book was criticized upon release because of its coarse language, and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur, "nigger".

Plot and structure:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing us with the events of the novel that preceded it, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which lies on the banks of the Mississippi River. At the end of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good, found a robber's stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of money, which the bank held for him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson.
As Huckleberry Finn opens, Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and school. However, he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom Sawyer, who tells him that in order to take part in Tom's new “robbers' gang,” Huck must stay “respectable.” All is well and good until Huck's brutish, drunken father, Pap, reappears in town and demands Huck's money. The local judge, Judge Thatcher, and the Widow try to get legal custody of Huck, but another well-intentioned new judge in town believes in the rights of Huck's natural father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow's attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps Huck and holds him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg. Whenever Pap goes out, he locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk, he beats the boy. Tired of his confinement and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck escapes from Pap by faking his own death, killing a pig and spreading its blood all over the cabin. Hiding on Jackson's Island in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on the island, he encounters Jim, one of Miss Watson's slaves. Jim has run away from Miss Watson after hearing her talk about selling him to a plantation down the river, where he would be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children. Huck and Jim team up, despite Huck's uncertainty about the legality or morality of helping a runaway slave. While they camp out on the island, a great storm causes the Mississippi to flood. Huck and Jim spy a log raft and a house floating past the island. They capture the raft and loot the house, finding in it the body of a man who has been shot. Jim refuses to let Huck see the dead man's face. Although the island is blissful, Huck and Jim are forced to leave after Huck learns from a woman onshore that her husband has seen smoke coming from the island and believes that Jim is hiding out there. Huck also learns that a reward has been offered for Jim's capture. Huck and Jim start downriver on the raft, intending to leave it at the mouth of the Ohio River and proceed up that river by steamboat to the free states, where slavery is prohibited. Several days' travel takes them past St. Louis, and they have a close encounter with a gang of robbers on a wrecked steamboat. They manage to escape with the robbers' loot. During a night of thick fog, Huck and Jim miss the mouth of the Ohio and encounter a group of men looking for escaped slaves. Huck has a brief moral crisis about concealing stolen “property”—Jim, after all, belongs to Miss Watson—but then lies to the men and tells them that his father is on the raft suffering from smallpox. Terrified of the disease, the men give Huck money and hurry away. Unable to backtrack to the mouth of the Ohio, Huck and Jim continue downriver. The next night, a steamboat slams into their raft, and Huck and Jim are separated. Huck ends up in the home of the kindly Grangerfords, a family of Southern aristocrats locked in a bitter and silly feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons. The elopement of a Grangerford daughter with a Shepherdson son leads to a gun battle in which many in the families are killed. While Huck is caught up in the feud, Jim shows up with the repaired raft. Huck hurries to Jim's hiding place, and they take off down the river. A few days later, Huck and Jim rescue a pair of men who are being pursued by armed bandits. The men, clearly con artists, claim to be a displaced English duke (the duke) and the long-lost heir to the French throne (the dauphin). Powerless to tell two white adults to leave, Huck and Jim continue down the river with the pair of “aristocrats.” The duke and the dauphin pull several scams in the small towns along the river. Coming into one town, they hear the story of a man, Peter Wilks, who has recently died and left much of his inheritance to his two brothers, who should be arriving from England any day. The duke and the dauphin enter the town pretending to be Wilks's brothers. Wilks's three nieces welcome the con men and quickly set about liquidating the estate. A few townspeople become skeptical, and Huck, who grows to admire the Wilks sisters, decides to thwart the scam. He steals the dead Peter Wilks's gold from the duke and the dauphin but is forced to stash it in Wilks's coffin. Huck then reveals all to the eldest Wilks sister, Mary Jane. Huck's plan for exposing the duke and the dauphin is about to unfold when Wilks's real brothers arrive from England. The angry townspeople hold both sets of Wilks claimants, and the duke and the dauphin just barely escape in the ensuing confusion. Fortunately for the sisters, the gold is found. Unfortunately for Huck and Jim, the duke and the dauphin make it back to the raft just as Huck and Jim are pushing off. After a few more small scams, the duke and dauphin commit their worst crime yet: they sell Jim to a local farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway for whom a large reward is being offered. Huck finds out where Jim is being held and resolves to free him. At the house where Jim is a prisoner, a woman greets Huck excitedly and calls him “Tom.” As Huck quickly discovers, the people holding Jim are none other than Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle, Silas and Sally Phelps. The Phelpses mistake Huck for Tom, who is due to arrive for a visit, and Huck goes along with their mistake. He intercepts Tom between the Phelps house and the steamboat dock, and Tom pretends to be his own younger brother, Sid. Tom hatches a wild plan to free Jim, adding all sorts of unnecessary obstacles even though Jim is only lightly secured. Huck is sure Tom's plan will get them all killed, but he complies nonetheless. After a seeming eternity of pointless preparation, during which the boys ransack the Phelps's house and make Aunt Sally miserable, they put the plan into action. Jim is freed, but a pursuer shoots Tom in the leg. Huck is forced to get a doctor, and Jim sacrifices his freedom to nurse Tom. All are returned to the Phelps's house, where Jim ends up back in chains.
When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals that Jim has actually been a free man all along, as Miss Watson, who made a provision in her will to free Jim, died two months earlier. Tom had planned the entire escape idea all as a game and had intended to pay Jim for his troubles. Tom's Aunt Polly then shows up, identifying “Tom” and “Sid” as Huck and Tom. Jim tells Huck, who fears for his future—particularly that his father might reappear—that the body they found on the floating house off Jackson's Island had been Pap's. Aunt Sally then steps in and offers to adopt Huck, but Huck, who has had enough “sivilizing,” announces his plan to set out for the West.

Characters:

Huckleberry Finn: The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Frequently forced to survive on his own wits and always a bit of an outcast, Huck is thoughtful, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society's norms. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom.
Tom Sawyer: Huck's friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel to which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel. In Huckleberry Finn, Tom serves as a foil to Huck: imaginative, dominating, and given to wild plans taken from the plots of adventure novels, Tom is everything that Huck is not. Tom's stubborn reliance on the “authorities” of romance novels leads him to acts of incredible stupidity and startling cruelty. His rigid adherence to society's conventions aligns Tom with the “sivilizing” forces that Huck learns to see through and gradually abandons.
Widow Douglas and Miss Watson: Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house in St. Petersburg and who adopt Huck. The gaunt and severe Miss Watson is the most prominent representative of the hypocritical religious and ethical values Twain criticizes in the novel. The Widow Douglas is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has more patience with the mischievous Huck. When Huck acts in a manner contrary to societal expectations, it is the Widow Douglas whom he fears disappointing.
Jim: One of Miss Watson's household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than anyone else in the novel. Jim's frequent acts of selflessness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the mercy of almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous and degrading situations.
Pap: Huck's father, the town drunk and ne'er-do-well. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel, with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap disapproves of Huck's education and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the general debasement of white society and the failure of family structures in the novel.
The duke and the dauphin: A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Although Huck quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as Huck is only a child and Jim is a runaway slave. The duke and the dauphin carry out a number of increasingly disturbing swindles as they travel down the river on the raft.
Judge Thatcher: The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding the money that Huck and Tom found at the end of Tom Sawyer. When Huck discovers that Pap has returned to town, he wisely signs his fortune over to the Judge, who doesn't really accept the money, but tries to comfort Huck. Judge Thatcher has a daughter, Becky, who was Tom's girlfriend in Tom Sawyer and whom Huck calls “Bessie” in this novel.
The Grangerfords: A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft, separating him from Jim. The kindhearted Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons. Twain uses the two families to engage in some rollicking humor and to mock a overly romanticizes ideas about family honor. Ultimately, the families' sensationalized feud gets many of them killed.
The Wilks family: At one point during their travels, the duke and the dauphin encounter a man who tells them of the death of a local named Peter Wilks, who has left behind a rich estate. The man inadvertently gives the con men enough information to allow them to pretend to be Wilks's two brothers from England, who are the recipients of much of the inheritance. The duke and the dauphin's subsequent conning of the good-hearted and vulnerable Wilks sisters is the first step in the con men's increasingly cruel series of scams, which culminate in the sale of Jim.
Silas and Sally Phelps: Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally encounters in his search for Jim after the con men have sold him. Sally is the sister of Tom's aunt, Polly. Essentially good people, the Phelpses nevertheless hold Jim in custody and try to return him to his rightful owner. Silas and Sally are the unknowing victims of many of Tom and Huck's “preparations” as they try to free Jim. The Phelpses are the only intact and functional family in this novel, yet they are too much for Huck, who longs to escape their “sivilizing” influence.
Aunt Polly: Tom Sawyer's aunt and guardian and Sally Phelps's sister. Aunt Polly appears at the end of the novel and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom, and Tom, who has pretended to be his own younger brother, Sid.

Setting:

The Mississippi River along Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas sometime in the 1830s-40s

Point of view:

First Person (Central Narrator)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is defined by its first person narrator, Huck Finn. His youthful voice allows the novel to deliver a rather serious scrutiny of racism and slavery in a package of exuberance and vernacular. Because everything is filtered through Huck, we have to rely on him to interpret the story and present it to us. This subjectivity means taking the narration with a grain of salt, but Huck’s earnest approach removes any suspicions that he’s elaborating on the truth.

Style:

Informal, Youthful, Colloquial, Illustrative
Twain’s style is original. Twain’s choice of a colloquial style makes perfect sense. The grammar isn’t perfect, and clearly Twain writes the way Huck Finn talks (hence all the apostrophes subbing for unpronounced letters). Besides nailing Huck’s education level, social background, and personality, Twain succeeded in telling the story convincingly through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old.

Tone:

Moralistic, Introspective, Tongue-In-Cheek
Twain’s attitude is clearly a moralistic one: he has a point to make and he’s going to get it across. He does this with the story’s plot line as well as through Huck’s explanation of his inner thoughts.

Theme(s), subjects:

Race - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is set in antebellum (pre-Civil War) South and features a friendship between a white boy (Huck) and the black slave (Jim) who is escaping to freedom. The book focuses on issues of race, particularly making the point that the institution of slavery is immoral. Twain ups the satire in the novel to extreme levels to show how hypocritical the South (and America in general) had been to allow slavery in the supposed "land of the free." More subtly, the novel asks whether the abolition of slavery is a sufficient action, particularly when racism remained so predominant in the decades after the Civil War.
Morality and Ethics - Thirteen-year-old Huck Finn’s narration in this novel focuses largely on his internal moral struggles. Forced to reconcile his personal feelings of friendship for an escaped slave with what society has told him is "right," Huck learns through the course of the story to trust his moral instincts. Despite his actions, however, the question remains at the end of novel as to whether Huck is truly able to overcome the pervading ethos of the pre-Civil War South. You could argue either way. Huck was amazingly strong-willed and in touch with his own personal sense of morality to turn away from society’s pressures and the law’s threats. But the end of the novel is somewhat ambiguous. To complicate matters, throughout the story Huck does tend to think one thing and then turn right around and believe another.
Rules and Order - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn presents a slew of conflicting rules. Narrator Huck Finn struggles in choosing between religious rules, his own moral instincts, the country's laws, and the relativist justifications of the conmen called the duke and king. From rules of honor and principle amidst feuding families to childlike views of the world as something fantastical, Huck Finn explores the contradictions between these different systems and the effect such conflict can have on a young boy. When thinking about the big decisions Huck is faced with, we can’t help but think of one of those posters hanging on middle school wall: "What’s popular is not always right, what’s right is not always popular." We think Huck would agree with that. We could also edit that maxim to say that the law isn’t always right, and Tom Sawyer isn’t always right, and preachers aren’t always right... but Huck has to figure out what is the right thing to do.
Lies and Deceit - Deception takes many different forms in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Sometimes it is used for benevolent purposes (to save a man’s life, or shield someone from pain), sometimes for harmless fun (to play pranks), and sometimes also for self-serving manipulation (the duke and the king). Narrator Huck Finn seems to enjoy lying at any and all opportunities, but he’s thirteen and is still just a child. This novel seems to draw a thick line between harmless lies and morally corrupt ones. For instance, someone with hurtful or selfish intentions will be caught and punished for their wrongdoing; individuals with benevolent aims never cause any real harm.
Religion - Religion seems to be a constant target for criticism in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Those who are religious are often painted as overzealous, and many of them are manipulated because of their faith. It seems that Twain places organized religion in opposition to his central anti-racism theme; Huck feels like he has to renounce religion in order to help Jim escape to freedom.

Twain might have painted religion in such a negative way for several reasons:

1) his own personal views on religion;

2) the common belief in the antebellum Southwas that God had made black people naturally inferior, and that slavery was OK; 

3) the church was an easy target for satire. We think, most likely, it was some sort of combination of the three.

Friendship - The developing friendship between a white boy (Huck) and a black slave (Jim) is the main driving force of this novel. It is this friendship that makes Huck’s decision of whether to help Jim escape slavery so difficult. Huck's ultimate choice pits him against everything had previously known to be right. Huck makes several comments throughout the book that let us know how seriously he takes his friendships. He values loyalty most highly, and that leads him to stick with Jim (who proves his loyalty to Huck several times) to the end. Throughout the course of the story, many friendships are tested again and again, but whether or not the ideal of friendship prevails at the end of the day is subject to debate.
Youth - Huck Finn’s youthful naiveté is part of the charm of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Because of his young age, he is able to approach conflict with an innocence and curiosity that an older protagonist might lack. Too young to be fully indoctrinated with the values of antebellum (pre-Civil War) South, Huck gets to examine issues in light of his own still-evolving moral compass. Tom Sawyer’s runaway imagination adds another layer of adventurousness to the plot, and Huck’s contentment with the simple things in life remind us we’re not dealing with somebody who’s got a ton of personal baggage. Lastly, the playful tone of Huck’s narration strikes an interesting balance with the weightier topics of the novel, such as slavery, morality, and racism.
Foolishness and Folly - For the most part, characters in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are made fools by other characters. Pranks, cons, tricks, and deceptions seem to be everyone’s stock and trade in this novel, which means a healthy supply of gullible nitwits is in demand. And there seems to be no shortage. As one character succinctly remarks (shortly before being made into an utter fool himself), the group of fools in any town always comprises the majority. True – at least as far as the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is concerned.
Man and the Natural World - One of Huck Finn’s struggles in this book is whether he prefers the world of civilization to living in the woods. Often it seems he is a wild, unkempt thirteen-year-old boy who would rather spend his day catching snakes than washing up for supper. He declares several times that he’s happiest when he’s alone with nature (or alone with Jim and nature). However, it is also clear that Huck craves the structure and caring of a family household. He strongly admires some aspects of the cultural world, and seems to respect (and sometimes envy) others’ choice to follow rules and social norms. The tension between Huck’s desire for a free, unencumbered life and the pull towards family structure and cultural refinement is one of Huck’s central battles.
The Supernatural - Belief in the supernatural and superstition in general are the marks of multiple characters in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s their mutual belief in certain superstitions that originally draws Huck and Jim together. Neither has a strong religious faith, and their belief in certain superstitions help both Jim and Huck explain things that they cannot otherwise explain. It is possible that the novel parodies religion by comparing it to mere superstition, since some characters take advantage of both belief systems to manipulate and deceive. Often, superstitions are used as attempts to explain why bad things happen. When a character gets rewarded, or when something good happens, most would like to take credit for that positive outcome. But when someone is punished, or something terrible happens...well, it’s a lot more comforting to blame that on plain old rotten luck.
Family - During his adventures on the Mississippi River Huck Finn encounters one family after another. Having left an abusive father behind, Huck appears to be trying out various familial situations as he travels. It seems like he’s pretty keen on getting a family of his own because most of Huck’s deceptions involve him making up a fictitious "family" of his own that fits in with the story. He develops many pseudo-family relationships during his travels. Interestingly, the strongest family-like bond he creates is with his own friends, and particularly with Jim and Tom. It remains unclear whether or not Huck realizes and accepts this fact, but he definitely recognizes the unmatchable strength of the bonds he and his friends share. As a semi-orphan, Huck replaces his missing family with his friends.
Drugs and Alcohol - Alcohol use in Huck Finn is usually portrayed as compulsive and excessive, and it’s always a harmful activity. Huck’s father is an abusive alcoholic, and therefore his son can see nothing positive about the substance in any given situation. Every time a man touches a drop of alcohol in the novel, needless harm comes to him and/or innocent bystanders. Besides Pap’s drunken abuse of Huck, the king sells Jim back into slavery in order to get cash for a whiskey binge. Even a harmless town alcoholic gets killed because he directs one of his drunken rants at the wrong guy.

Symbolism, allusions, myth:

The Mississippi River
Huck wouldn’t have had much of an adventure at all if the mighty Mississippi weren’t involved. Thank heavens Mr. Twain did decide to put Huck and Jim in a raft and push them out into the rapids, because the Mississippi River serves as the driving force behind the novel’s plot development. Pretty much everything that happens – from the moment that Huck hatches his escape-from-Pap plan to, finally, Tom’s scheme to set Jim free – happens because the river is involved. We could look at this famous waterway as simply a means of transportation; after all, that is the way in which Huck and Jim use it. But let’s face it: that river means a lot more to our heroes than just a route for transportation – it’s their key to freedom.

Genre:

Adventure, Coming-of-Age
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can be a tricky book to nail down. On one very shallow level, you could read it as a book of adventures. Kid on a raft, bad guys, several snake-related incidences.

My own interpretation:

The novel ends with Huck continuing down the Mississippi River to wherever it takes him. Huck has come a long way by himself, and I think that this suits him most. Huck is a quiet individual with himself in mind. As Huck throughout the whole story conquers many challenges, it all relates to one thing, theMississippi River.Huck's true, inner emotions come about on that quite, long river. This is where Huck can find refuge from the ever so changing world. Huck is your typical American, looking onward to see what life has next in store in this beautiful world. As he later comes across and sees how true America is like, Huck does not like it and continues down on the river. Huck is a true self individual and does not want to be involved in this time period's issues and matters. The Mississippi throws natural challenges at Huck, yet also is a relaxation place for him. Where ever the river takes Huck, is where he wants to go, which is anywhere. Huck is too wild to be told what to do. Huck sleeps, eats, stops anything whenever he wants, and society will "sivilize" him if he lets it. Twain is letting Huck free now, and its for the best, both himself and America.

Quotations:

“The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; 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 again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.”

“I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there wasn't a home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft doesn’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

“But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I’ve been there before.”