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INTRODUCTION

In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Saw­yer and in the same year he began vvhat he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that he had undertaken it “more to be at work than anything else.” His heart was not in it—“I like it only tolerably well as far as I have got,” he said, “and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done.” He pigeonholed it long before it was done and for as much as four years. In 1880 he took it out and carried it forward a little, only to abandon it again. He had a theory of unconscious composition and believed that a book must write itself; the book which he referred to as “Huck Finn’s Autobiography” refused to do the job of its own creation and he would not coerce it.

But then in the summer of 1881 Mark Twain was possessed by a charge of literary energy which, as he wrote to a friend, was more intense than any he had experienced for many years. He worked all day and every day, and periodically he so fa­tigued himself that he had to recruit his strength by a day or two of smoking and reading in bed. It is impossible not to suppose that this great creative drive was connected with—was perhaps the direct result of—the visit to the Mississippi he had made earlier in the year, the trip which forms the matter of the second part of Life on the Mississippi. His boyhood and youth on the river he so profoundly loved had been at once the happiest and most significant part of Mark Twain’s life; his return to it in middle age stirred vital memories which revived and refreshed the idea of Huckleberry Finn. Now at last the book was not only ready but eager to write itself. But it was not to receive much conscious help from its author. He was always full of second-rate literary schemes and now, in the early weeks of the summer, with Huckleberry Finn wait­ing to complete itself, he turned his hot energy upon several of these sorry projects, the completion of which gave him as.

EXPLANATORY

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Mis­souri negro dialect; the extremist form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but pains­takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

The Author

CONTENTS

Notice……………………………………….. xix

Explanatory……………………………….. xx

1. I Discover Moses and the Bulrushers…………… 1
2. Our Gang’s Dark Oath……………………………… 4
3. We Ambuscade the A-rabs…………………………. 10
4. The Hair-ball Oracle………………………………… 15
5. Pap Starts in on a New Life……………………….. 18
6. Pap Struggles with the Death Angel……………. 23
7. I Fool Pap and Get Away………………………….. 3°
8. I Spare Miss Watson’s Jim…………………………. 36
9. The House of Death Floats By…………………….47
10. What Comes of Handlin’ Snake-skin………….. 51
11. They’re After Us!……………………………………. 55
12. “Better Let Blame Well Alone”…………………. 63
13. Honest Loot from the “Walter Scott”………….70
14. Was Solomon Wise?……………………………….. 76
15. Fooling Poor Old Jim…………………………….. 80
16. The Rattlesnake-skin Does Its Work…………….86
17. The Grangerfords Take Me In…………………… 95
18. Why Harney Rode Away for His Hat………….. 104
19. The Duke and the Dauphin Come Aboard….. 117
20. What Royalty Did to Parkville…………………… 125
21. An Arkansaw Difficulty……………………………. 134
22. Why the Lynching Bee Failed…………………… 145
23. The Orneriness of Kings………………………….. 150
24. The King Turns Parson…………………………… 156
25. All Full of Tears and Flapdoodle……………… 163
26. I Steal the Kings Plunder…………………………. 170
27. Dead Peter Has His Gold………………………… 179
28. Overreaching Don’t Pay………………………….. 186
29. I Light Out in the Storm…………………………… 196
30. The Gold Saves the Thieves……………………….206
31. You Can’t Pray a Lie……………………………… 209
32. I Have a New Name………………………………… 219
33. The Pitiful Ending of Royalty……………………..225
34. We Cheer up Jim……………………………………. 232
35. Dark, Deep-laid Plans…………………………….. 238
36. Trying to Help Jim………………………………….. 246
37. Jim Gets His Witch-pie…………………………….. 251
38. “Here a Captive Heart Busted”………………… 258
39. Tom Writes Nonnamous Letters………………… 265
40. A Mixed-up and splendid Rescue………………. 270
41. “Must V Been Sperits”……………………………. 276
42. Why They Didn’t Hang Jim……………………… 283

Chapter the Last. Nothing More to Write…………. 292