I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson because of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t say nothing, only cleaned off the mud and clay, and looked so sad that I thought I would try to be good for a while if I could.
Then Miss Watson took me in a room and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray, and whatever I asked for I'd get. But it wasn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It was no good to me without hooks. I tried praying for them three or four times, but one way or another I couldn’t make it work. By and by, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said that was foolish. She never said why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.
I sat down one time back in the trees, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pigs? Why can’t the widow get back her silver tobacco box that was robbed? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up? No, says I, there ain’t nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the only thing a body could get by praying was "spiritual gifts." This was too much for me, but she told me the deeper mean- ing -- I must help other people, and do everything I could for them, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. Miss Watson had to be one of them, as I took it. I went out in the trees and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no point of it -- only for the other people; so at last I said I wouldn’t worry about it no more, but just let it go.
Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about God giving things in a way to make a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two ways God could give things, and a poor boy would stand a much better show with the widow’s way, but if Miss Watson got him there weren’t no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and thought I would belong to the widow’s God if he wanted me, but I couldn’t make out how he was going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so kind of low-down and bad.
Pap hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was okay by me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always hit into me when he wasn’t drunk and could get his hands on me; but I used to take to running into the trees most of the time when he was around.
Well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was in old dirty clothes, and had hair that was too long, which was all like pap; but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it wasn’t much like a face at all. They said he was lying on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the beach. But I wasn’t comfortable, because I knowed mighty well that a drowned man don’t lie in the water on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this wasn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, but I wished he wouldn’t.
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I quit. All the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any people, but only just acted like we did. We used to jump out of the bushes and go running down on people driving pigs and women in wagons taking garden food to market, but we never took any of them. Tom Sawyer called the pigs "gold," and he called the vegetables "jewelry," and we would go to the cave and talk over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn’t see no good in it.
One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a burning stick, which he said was the sign for the gang to get together, and then he said he had got secret news that next day a whole group of Spanish businessmen and rich Muslims was going to camp on Cave Beach with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand donkeys, all weighed down with diamonds, and they didn’t have only four hundred soldiers to protect them, and so we would surprise them, and kill the lot and take the things. He said we must clean up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never would go after even a potato cart but he must have the swords and guns all cleaned up for it, even if they was only flat sticks and broom-sticks, and you might wash them until you died, and even then they wasn’t worth a mouth full of ashes more than what they was before. I didn’t believe we could win against such a crowd of Spanish men and Muslims, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the hiding place; and when we got the word we raced out of the trees and down the hill. But there weren’t no Spanish people or Muslims, and there weren’t no camels or no elephants. It weren’t anything but a Sunday-school outing, and only the littlest children at that.
We broke it up, and the children ran up the beach; but we never got anything but some biscuits and jam, and Ben Rogers found a cloth doll, and Jo Harper got a song-book. But then the teacher ran in, and made us drop everything and cut.
I didn’t see no diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was barrels of them there; and he said there was Muslims there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He said if I wasn’t so stupid, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by magic. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and great wealth, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into little Sunday-school children, just to hurt us. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was stupid.
"Why," says he, "a magician could call up a lot of spirit people, and they would cut you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They're tall as a tree and big around as a church."
"Well," I says, "what if we got some spirit people to help us -- can’t we win against the other crowd then?"
"How you going to get them?"
"I don’t know. How do they get them?"
"Why, they rub an old tin lantern or an iron ring, and then the spirit people come pouring out, with lightning shooting around and smoke everywhere; and anything they’re told to do they up and do it. They don’t think nothing of pulling a whole brick tower up by the roots, and hitting a Sunday-school teacher over the head with it -- or any other person."
"Who makes them run around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lantern. They belong to whoever rubs the lantern or the ring, and they’ve got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a king’s palace forty miles long out of diamonds, and fill it full of lollies, or whatever you want, and bring a king’s daughter from China for you to marry, they’ve got to do it -- and they’ve got to do it before the sun comes up the next morning, too. And more: they’ve got to dance that house around over the country wherever you want it, you understand."
"Well," says I, "I think they're a gang of empty heads for not keeping the palace themselves instead of giving it away like that. And what’s more -- if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I'd drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lantern."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d have to come when he rubbed it, if you wanted to or not."
"What! and I as tall as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I would come; but I promise I’d make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country."
"Shoot, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, for some reason. You’re a perfect air head."
I thought this over for a few days, and then I thought I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lantern and an iron ring, and went out in the trees and rubbed and rubbed until I was as hot as an Indian, planning to build a palace and sell it; but it weren’t no use, none of the spirit people come. So then I judged that all that talk was just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I could see that he believed in the Muslims and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school story.
