MINERVA

im the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home. Huck’s face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He said: “Don’t talk about it, Tom. I’ve tried it, and it don’t work; it don’t work, Tom. It ain’t for me; I ain’t used to it. The widder’s good to me, and friendly; but I can’t stand them ways. She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won’t let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don’t seem to any air git through ’em, somehow; and they’re so rotten nice that I can’t set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher’s; I hain’t slid on a cellar-door for—well, it ’pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons! I can’t ketch a fly in there, I can’t chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.” “Well, everybody does that way, Huck.” “Tom, it don’t make no difference. I ain’t everybody, and I can’t _stand_ it. It’s awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy—I don’t take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I got to ask to go in a-swimming—dern’d if I hain’t got to ask to do everything. Well, I’d got to talk so nice it wasn’t no comfort—I’d got to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or I’d a died, Tom. The widder wouldn’t let me smoke; she wouldn’t let me yell, she wouldn’t let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks—” [Then with a spasm of special irritation and injury]—“And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a woman! I _had_ to shove, Tom—I just had to. And besides, that school’s going to open, and I’d a had to go to it—well, I wouldn’t stand _that_, Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It’s just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar’l suits me, and I ain’t ever going to shake ’em any more. Tom, I wouldn’t ever got into all this trouble if it hadn’t ’a’ been for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your’n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes—not many times, becuz I don’t give a dern for a thing ’thout it’s tollable hard to git—and you go and beg off for me with the widder.” “Oh, Huck, you know I can’t do that. ’Tain’t fair; and besides if you’ll try this thing just a while longer you’ll come to like it.” “Like it! Yes—the way I’d like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I’ll stick to ’em, too. Blame it all! just as we’d got guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to come up and spile it all!” Tom saw his opportunity— “Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain’t going to keep me back from turning robber.” “No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?” “Just as dead earnest as I’m sitting here. But Huck, we can’t let you into the gang if you ain’t respectable, you know.” Huck’s joy was quenched. “Can’t let me in, Tom? Didn’t you let me go for a pirate?” “Yes, but that’s different. A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. I