Mark Twain Quotes

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

“Jim said that bees won’t sting idiots, but I didn’t believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn’t sting me.”

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

“I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.”

“I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.”

“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

“What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”

“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”

“Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.”

“You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.”

“The average man don’t like trouble and danger.”

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

“I don’t want no better book than what your face is.”

“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”

“All right then, I’ll go to hell”

Tom told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it.

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?” The brush continued to move. “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said: “Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

“Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”

“You ought never to “sass” old people—unless they “sass” you first.”

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don’t read.”

“When in doubt, tell the truth.”

“Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?” “What’s that?” “Why, engaged to be married.” “No.” “Would you like to?” “I reckon so. I don’t know. What is it like?” “Like? Why it ain’t like anything. You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.”

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.”

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

“Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart . . . There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.”

“There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy’s soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings.”

“Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.”

“But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of his life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? . . . [H]e would join the Indians . . . He would be a pirate! That was it! Now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor.”

“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”

“I was mighty down-hearted; so I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was to blame, somehow.”

“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly.”

“I knowed very well why [the words] wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all.”

“Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

“I ain’t doing my duty by that boy, and that’s the Lord’s truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He’s full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks.”

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

“Tom was a glittering hero once more-the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”

“There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only “hooking,” while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.”

“I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”

“He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though--and loathed him.”

“Oh, they just have a bully time - take ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch, it, and kill everybody in the ships - make ‘em walk a plank. they don’t kill the women - they’re too noble. And the women’s always beautiful, too.”

“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”

“The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”

“You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.”

“They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”

“Here was a gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindnesses to these poor lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being indulged: and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was concerned. This was fine. It was worth being a pirate, after all.”

“Huckleberry 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, and wished they dared to be like him.”

“The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”

“Look here, if you’re telling the truth you needn’t be afraid--nobody’ll hurt you.”

“It’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most.”

“A person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”

“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to: but a hog is different.”

“Loose him and forbear!”

“What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou.”

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

“He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal.”

“By and by Tom’s reading wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously. His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. But Tom’s influence among these young people began to grow, now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being.”

“But hunger is pride’s master.”

“Explosive and was expected to blow him up.”

“I am not in the humor for it.”

“Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”

“It does us all good to unbend sometimes.”

“Let us change the tense for convenience.”

“Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!”

“Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.”

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”

“What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient”

“But when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere.”

“By and by Tom’s reading wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously. His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. But Tom’s influence among these young people began to grow, now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being.”

“And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.”

“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”

“Their garment? Have they but one?” “Ah, good your Worship, what would they do with more? Truly they have not two bodies each.”

“Yes, King Edward VI lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily.”

“That which I have seen, in that little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till I die. Would God I had been blind!”

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.”

“Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.”

“Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. Most are here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at dawn.”

” Each human being shall have all of these in him, and they will constitute his nature. In some, there will be high and fine characteristics which will submerge the evil ones, and those will be called good men; in others the evil characteristics will have dominion, and those will be called bad men.”

″ It shows you that when people have left a reproachful vacancy in a contract they can be as shady about it in Bibles as elsewhere.”

“The human being is a machine. An automatic machine. It is composed of thousands of complex and delicate mechanisms, which perform their functions harmoniously and perfectly, in accordance with laws devised for their governance, and over which the man himself has no authority, no mastership, no control.”

“What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.”

“Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed --naked and pure-minded; and no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They have entered it modest. ”

“Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a short cut.”

“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. [...] Death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.”

“Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time.

“He is a marvel -- man is! I would I knew who invented him.”

″ It is curious -- the way the human mind works. The Christian begins with this straight proposition, this definite proposition, this inflexible and uncompromising proposition: God is allknowing, and all-powerful.”

“Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind.

″ Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble.”

“No. No creature can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature -- the Law of God.”

″ Man is without any doubt the most interesting fool there is. Also the most eccentric. He hasn’t a single written law, in his Bible or out of it, which has any but just one purpose and intention -- to limit or defeat the law of God.”

“The Bible has this advantage over all other books that teach refinement and good manners: that it goes to the child. It goes to the mind at its most impressible and receptive age -- the others have to wait. ”

“As you perceive, the only person responsible for the couple’s offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.”

“It is most difficult to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmness; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindness repented of in permanent malignities.”

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

“Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.”

“The tiger -- yes. The law of his nature is ferocity. The law of his nature is the Law of God. He cannot disobey it.”

″... no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”

“He brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He’s an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid he’s too flighty.”

“Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eye-water, from eye-water to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these fascinations.”

“He has no traditions to bind him or guide him; and his impulse is to break away from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for himself.”

″... a woman will never do again what has been done before.”

“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises.”

“A woman’s intuition is better than a man’s.”

“An ugly woman would ruin me, the disease would be sure to strike in and kill me at the sight of her. I think a pretty physician, with engaging manners, would coax a fellow to live through almost anything.”

“And one of the first and most startling things you find out is, that every individual you encounter in the City of Washington ... from the highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs Department halls, the night watchmen of the public buildings... represents Political Influence.”

“If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.”

“Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his ‘influence’ in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington.”

“Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.”

“I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”

“To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are innumerable and all open; There is invitation in the air and success in all his wide horizon.”

″... Miss Alice is a great friend of Harry’s, who is always trying to build a house by beginning at the top.”

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like and do what you’d rather not.”

″‘And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over Europe, all over the world. Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,’ Satan said, ‘sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war in the history of the race.‘”

“I said it was a brutal thing.” “No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it.”

“Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those.”

″... every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

“Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after.”

“Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is.”

“You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it.”

“It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.”

″... we had taken his silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a disappointment to us, for it showed we had made no impression upon him... we knew then how the missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted.”

“Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick--and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life.”

“To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus’s chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America.”

“In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.”

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”

“Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable. But lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? No! By the soul of St. Swithin, no! This is the true prince, gone mad.”

“To the rest of the world the name of Henry VIII brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure, the figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and affection. He called to mind a long succession of loving passages between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart.”

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

“He is mad; but he is my son, and England’s heir; and, mad or sane, still shall reign!”

“In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were upon him again, and he realized that he was no longer a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves.”

“It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it maybe that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it.”

″‘Then shall the king’s law be law of mercy from this day, and never more be law of blood! Up from thy knees and away! To the Tower and say the king decrees the duke of Norfolk shall not die!’ The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another prodigious shout burst forth— ‘The reign of blood is ended! Long live Edward, King of England!‘”

“Death—and a violent death—for these poor unfortunates! The thought wrung Tom’s heart-strings. The spirit of compassion took control of him, to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had inflicted upon their victims, he could think of nothing but the scaffold and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. His concern made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of a king, not the substance.”

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”

“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”

“As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.”

“Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.

“Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

“The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’d luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”

“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said ‘Faith is believing what you know ain’t so’.”

“All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.”

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”

“Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket” - which is but a matter of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET.”

“There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.”

“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?”

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.”

“But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can’t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. ”

“If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.”

“Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of Tom’s statement true. When she found the entire fence white-ashed, and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable.”

“Well, I never! There’s no getting round it, you can work when you’re a mind to, Tom.”

“He said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.”

And thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down?

And you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it’s what makes great men and good men; you’ll be a great man and a good man yourself, some day, Thomas...”

“But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? So all this row was because you thought you’d get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness.”

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was the only vacant place on the girls’ side of the school-house. He instantly said:

″‘It’s easy,’ whispered Tom, ‘I’ll learn you.‘”

″‘Becky Thatcher. What’s yours? Oh, I know. It’s Thomas Sawyer.’ ‘That’s the name they lick me by. I’m Tom when I’m good. You call me Tom, will you?‘”

“Church ain’t shucks to a circus.”

“Like? Why it ain’t like anything. You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.”

“Now it’s all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain’t ever to love anybody but me, and you ain’t ever to marry anybody but me, ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I’ll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I’ll never marry anybody but you—and you ain’t to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“She would be sorry some day—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die _temporarily_!”

“What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas—and never came back any more! How would she feel then!”

″‘Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?’ ‘I wisht I knowed. It’s awful solemn like, _ain’t_ it?‘”

“And the two clung together with beating hearts.”

“Joe, I never meant to—‘pon my soul and honor, I never meant to, Joe.”

“Oh, I didn’t know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon.”

“No, you’ve always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I won’t go back on you. There, now, that’s as fair as a man can say.”

“Oh, Joe, you’re an angel. I’ll bless you for this the longest day I live.”

“Tom, we got to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak ‘bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take and swear to one another—that’s what we got to do—swear to keep mum.”

“Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little rubbishy common things—specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huff—but there orter be writing ‘bout a big thing like this. And blood.”

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn’t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday-schools!”

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys’ souls once more.

Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver God’s lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed.

And when he had finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner’s life faded and vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.

He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again.

“Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t anything mean about me; but if you find you don’t like it, you mustn’t blame anybody but your own self.”

“Deed I don’t know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they’re having a good time.”

“I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done _him_ good, too. I never see him get around so since—”

″‘Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names.’ ‘Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas.‘”

“anyways, I’m suited. I don’t want nothing better’n this. I don’t ever get enough to eat, gen’ally—and here they can’t come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”

“I’d a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I’ve tried it.”

“Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make ‘em walk a plank.”

“Boys, I know who’s drownded—it’s us!”

“Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don’t know how to give him up! I don’t know how to give him up! He was such a comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, ‘most.”

“Not a word against my Tom, now that he’s gone! God’ll take care of _him_—never you trouble _your_ self, sir!”

“Oh, if it was to do over again I’d hug him and bless him for it.”

“Tom was snuffling, now, himself—and more in pity of himself than anybody else.”

“He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself than ever before.”

“Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt’s grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy—and the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.”

“Then with a mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other’s arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted.”

“But Joe’s spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay very near the surface.”

“Well, we’ll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won’t we, Huck? Poor thing—does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like it here, don’t you, Huck? We’ll stay, won’t we?”

“Why, many a time I’ve looked at people smoking, and thought well I wish I could do that; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.

“Well, I don’t say it wasn’t a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody suffering ‘most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn’t dead, but only run off.”

“It would have been something if you’d cared enough to think of it, even if you didn’t do it.”

“A body does just the same in a dream as he’d do if he was awake.”

I’m thankful to the good God and Father of us all I’ve got you back, that’s long-suffering and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though goodness knows I’m unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there’s few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long night comes.

“Becky’s lips trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and had what her sex call “a good cry.”

“Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from Jackson’s Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn’t ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow.”

″‘What did you kiss me for, Tom?’ ‘Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry.‘”

“It’s a good lie—it’s a good lie—I won’t let it grieve me.”

“I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I’m so sorry. I won’t ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever I live—please make up, won’t you?”

“What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school! Shucks! What’s a licking! That’s just like a girl—they’re so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted.”

“Tom stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky’s eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings.”

There were some boys-and-girls’ parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

“Talk? Well, it’ís just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so’s I want to hide som’ers.”

“Most always—most always. He ain’t no account; but then he hain’t ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk on—and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do that—leastways most of us—preachers and such like. But he’s kind of good—he give me half a fish, once, when there warn’t enough for two; and lots of times he’s kind of stood by me when I was out of luck.”

“You’ve been mighty good to me, boys—better’n anybody else in this town. And I don’t forget it, I don’t. Often I says to myself, says I, ‘I used to mend all the boys’ kites and things, and show ‘em where the good fishin’ places was, and befriend ‘em what I could, and now they’ve all forgot old Muff when he’s in trouble; but Tom don’t, and Huck don’t—_they_ don’t forget him,’ says I, ‘and I don’t forget them.‘”

“Speak out, my boy—don’t be diffident. The truth is always respectable. What did you take there?”

“As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world’s credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.”

“Daily Muff Potter’s gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.”

“Tom, I don’t like to fool around much where there’s dead people. A body’s bound to get into trouble with ‘em, sure.”

“Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right chance at that job; accidents might happen; ‘tain’t in such a very good place; we’ll just regularly bury it—and bury it deep.”

“Now what’s the use of all that? If it’s anybody, and they’re up there, let them stay there—who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes—and then let them follow us if they want to. I’m willing. In my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. I’ll bet they’re running yet.”

“But shucks! Your mother won’t know, and so what’s the harm? All she wants is that you’ll be safe; and I bet you she’d ‘a’ said go there if she’d ‘a’ thought of it. I know she would!”

“My boy, don’t be afraid of me. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head for all the world. No—I’d protect you—I’d protect you.”

“Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man’s pocket, because it cut down the doctor’s bill like everything.”

“Tom, Tom, we’re lost! we’re lost! We never can get out of this awful place! Oh, why did we ever leave the others!”

“Becky’ s frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown thread-bare with use, and sounded like sarcasms.”

“He tried to get Becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone.”

″‘Earnest, Huck—just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?’ ‘I bet I will! I will if it’s where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost’.”

“Money. You make them raise all they can, off’n their friends; and after you’ve kept them a year, if it ain’t raised then you kill them. That’s the general way. Only you don’t kill the women. You shut up the women, but you don’t kill them. They’re always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. They ain’t anybody as polite as robbers—you’ll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they’ve been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn’t get them to leave. If you drove them out they’d turn right around and come back. It’s so in all the books.”

″‘Why, it’s real bully, Tom. I believe it’s better’n to be a pirate.’ ‘Yes, it’s better in some ways, because it’s close to home and circuses and all that.‘”

“Sid, there’s only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and that’s you. If you had been in Huck’s place you’d ‘a’ sneaked down the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can’t do any but mean things, and you can’t bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. There—no thanks, as the widow says”

“Huck’s got money. Maybe you don’t believe it, but he’s got lots of it. Oh, you needn’t smile—I reckon I can show you. You just wait a minute.”

“I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons!”

“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.”

“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—”

“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.”

″‘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.‘”

“Yes, but that’s different. A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is— as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.”

“It’s to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang’s secrets, even if you’re chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang.”