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 THE ADVENTURES OF
HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®,

GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation

Mark Twain

PSAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship
Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT is a registered trademark of the College
Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE, AP and Advanced Placement are registered
trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT is a
registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book
nor endorses this book, LSAT is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither
sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved.
 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®,
GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation

Mark Twain

PSAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit
Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT® is a registered trademark of the
College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are
registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book,
GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated
with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council
which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved.
 ICON CLASSICS

Published by ICON Group International, Inc.

7404 Trade Street
San Diego, CA 92121 USA

www.icongrouponline.com

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®,
GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation

This edition published by ICON Classics in 2005

Printed in the United States of America.

Copyright ©2005 by ICON Group International, Inc.

Edited by Philip M. Parker, Ph.D. (INSEAD); Copyright ©2005, all rights reserved.

All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Copying our publications in whole or in part, for whatever reason, is a violation of copyright laws
and can lead to penalties and fines. Should you want to copy tables, graphs, or other materials, please
contact us to request permission (E-mail: [email protected]). ICON Group often grants
permission for very limited reproduction of our publications for internal use, press releases, and
academic research. Such reproduction requires confirmed permission from ICON Group
International, Inc.

PSAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the
National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book;
SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses
this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the
Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT® is a
registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither
affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law
School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights
reserved.

ISBN 0-497-25299-6
 iii

Contents
PREFACE FROM THE EDITOR .......................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER I I DISCOVER MOSES AND THE BULRUSHES ................................................. 3
CHAPTER II OUR GANG’S DARK OATH ............................................................................ 7
CHAPTER III WE AMBUSCADE THE A-RABS.................................................................. 15
CHAPTER IV THE HAIR-BALL ORACLE .......................................................................... 21
CHAPTER V PAP STARTS IN ON A NEW LIFE ................................................................. 25
CHAPTER VI PAP STRUGGLES WITH THE DEATH ANGEL ............................................. 31
CHAPTER VII I FOOL PAP AND GET AWAY..................................................................... 39
CHAPTER VIII I SPARE MISS WATSON’S JIM ................................................................. 47
CHAPTER IX THE HOUSE OF DEATH FLOATS BY ......................................................... 59
CHAPTER X WHAT COMES OF HANDLIN’ SNAKESKIN................................................... 65
CHAPTER XI THEY’RE AFTER US! ................................................................................. 69
CHAPTER XII ”BETTER LET BLAME WELL ALONE” ....................................................... 77
CHAPTER XIII HONEST LOOT FROM THE WALTER SCOTT ............................................ 85
CHAPTER XIV WAS SOLOMON WISE? ........................................................................... 91
CHAPTER XV FOOLING POOR OLD JIM......................................................................... 97
CHAPTER XVI THE RATTLESNAKE SKIN DOES ITS WORK .......................................... 105
CHAPTER XVII THE GRANGERFORDS TAKE ME IN ..................................................... 115
CHAPTER XVIII WHY HARNEY RODE AWAY FOR HIS HAT........................................... 125
CHAPTER XIX THE DUKE AND THE DAUPHIN COME ABOARD ................................... 139
CHAPTER XX WHAT ROYALTY DID TO PARKVILLE...................................................... 149
CHAPTER XXI AN ARKSANSAW DIFFICULTY ............................................................... 159
CHAPTER XXII WHY THE LYNCHING BEE FAILED....................................................... 169
CHAPTER XXIII THE ORNERINESS OF KINGS ............................................................. 175
CHAPTER XXIV THE KING TURNS PARSON ................................................................. 181
CHAPTER XXV ALL FULL OF TEARS AND FLAPDOODLE ............................................. 189
CHAPTER XXVI I STEAL THE KING’S PLUNDER........................................................... 197
CHAPTER XXVII DEAD PETER HAS HIS GOLD ............................................................ 207
CHAPTER XXVIII OVERREACHING DON’T PAY ............................................................ 215
CHAPTER XXIX I LIGHT OUT IN THE STORM .............................................................. 225
CHAPTER XXX THE GOLD SAVES THE THIEVES ........................................................ 237
CHAPTER XXXI YOU CAN’T PRAY A LIE ....................................................................... 241
iv
CHAPTER XXXII I HAVE A NEW NAME ........................................................................ 251
CHAPTER XXXIII THE PITIFUL ENDING OF ROYALTY .................................................. 259
CHAPTER XXXIV WE CHEER UP JIM........................................................................... 267
CHAPTER XXXV DARK, DEEP-LAID PLANS.................................................................. 275
CHAPTER XXXVI TRYING TO HELP JIM ....................................................................... 283
CHAPTER XXXVII JIM GETS HIS WITCH PIE ............................................................... 289
CHAPTER XXXVIII ”HERE A CAPTIVE HEART BUSTED”............................................... 297
CHAPTER XXXIX TOM WRITES NONNAMOUS LETTERS .............................................. 305
CHAPTER XL A MIXED-UP AND SPLENDID RESCUE ................................................... 311
CHAPTER XLI ”MUST ‘A’ BEEN SPERITS”..................................................................... 319
CHAPTER XLII WHY THEY DIDN’T HANG JIM .............................................................. 327
CHAPTER XLIII NOTHING MORE TO WRITE................................................................. 337
GLOSSARY ................................................................................................................... 341
 Mark Twain 1

PREFACE FROM THE EDITOR

Designed for school districts, educators, and students seeking to maximize performance on
standardized tests, Webster’s paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently
assigned readings in English courses. By using a running thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this
edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was edited for students who are
actively building their vocabularies in anticipation of taking PSAT®, SAT®, AP® (Advanced
Placement®), GRE®, LSAT®, GMAT® or similar examinations.1

Webster’s edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of
synonyms and antonyms for difficult and often ambiguous English words that are encountered in
other works of literature, conversation, or academic examinations. Extremely rare or idiosyncratic
words and expressions are given lower priority in the notes compared to words which are “difficult,
and often encountered” in examinations. Rather than supply a single synonym, many are provided
for a variety of meanings, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of the English language,
and avoid using the notes as a pure crutch. Having the reader decipher a word’s meaning within
context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not
already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not noted on a page, chances are that it
has been highlighted on a previous page. A more complete thesaurus is supplied at the end of the
book; Synonyms and antonyms are extracted from Webster’s Online Dictionary.

Definitions of remaining terms as well as translations can be found at www.websters-online-

dictionary.org. Please send suggestions to [email protected]

The Editor
Webster’s Online Dictionary
www.websters-online-dictionary.org

1
PSAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit
Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT® is a registered trademark of the
College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are
registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book,
GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated
with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council
which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved.
 Mark Twain 3

CHAPTER I

I DISCOVER MOSES AND THE BULRUSHES

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by
Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he
stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody
but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe
Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas
is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers,
as I said before.%
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars
apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well,
Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a
day apiece all the year round-- more than a body could tell what to do with. 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

Thesaurus
apiece: (adj, adv) each; (adj) one by one; black, dim, dull. ANTONYMS: (adj) rags: (adj) refuse, rubble, scourings,
(pron) all, both, each one; (adv) bright, happy, lively, uplifting, sweepings, trash, waste; (n) clothing,
individually, singly, for each, for sunny, pleasant, light, cheery, strong, tatter, orts, odds and ends, dress.
each one, from each one, to each one. soulful, wonderful. stretched: (adj) extended, stiff, tight,
ANTONYM: (adv) together. dollars: (n) bread. tense, stretched out, strained,
cave: (n) lair, hole, grotto, hollow, don't: (adv) not; (n) taboo, prohibition. expanded, outstretched, elongated,
cove, den, cell, grot, nest; (v) hunted: (adj) coursed, afraid, wanted, outspread, prolonged. ANTONYMS:
undermine, calve. ANTONYMS: (n) required, sought, sought after; (n) (adj) loose, short.
hump; (v) withstand. victim. widow: (n) woman, relict, widower,
dismal: (adj) cheerless, dejected, lied: (n) song, hymn. adult female, widow woman, war
dreary, gloomy, desolate, piled: (adj) heaped, dense, aggregate, widow, nobbled line; (adj) widowed,
disconsolate, depressing, melancholy, collective, concentrated, cumulous. additional; (v) leave behind.
4 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be
respectable. So I went back.%
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called
me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in
them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel
all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a
bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you
couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her
head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything
the matter with them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a
barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of
swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it
out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no
more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she
wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not
do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a
thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about
Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet
finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And
she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just
come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling- book. She
worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease
up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I
was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, "Don't put your feet up there,
Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry--set up straight;" and
pretty soon she would say, "Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why
don't you try to behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I

Thesaurus
cramped: (adj) cramp, limited, close, safety glasses, goggle, swimming unreasonably.
constrained, contracted, crowded, goggles, face mask, eyeglass. scrunch: (v) crumple, crunch, crinkle,
narrow, poky, restricted, small, tight. grumble: (n, v) mutter, gripe, growl, hunker down, crease, pucker,
ANTONYMS: (adj) roomy, open, moan, rumble, mumble, groan, roar; wrinkle, mash, munch, fold, crouch.
uncrowded, vast, liberated. (v) complain, grouch; (n) complaint. ANTONYMS: (v) smooth, relax.
fidgety: (adj, n) nervous; (adj) unquiet, ANTONYMS: (n, v) praise; (v) snuff: (v) smell, kill, douse, slay, scent,
fretful, fussy, anxious, hasty, jittery, compliment, rejoice. snuffle, bump off, smother, snort;
jumpy, mercurial, restive; (n) middling: (adj) indifferent, average, (adj) tobacco, nicotine.
apprehensive. ANTONYMS: (adj) mediocre, medium, intermediate, victuals: (n) food, fare, viands, victual,
relaxed, calm. common, passable, standard; (adv) edible, provender, grub, sustenance,
goggles: (n) eyeglasses, spectacles, fairly, passably; (adj, adv) clean. support, diet, nutriment.
barnacles, specs, bifocals, monocle, ANTONYMS: (adj) excellent; (adv) worked: (adj) elaborated, beaten.
 Mark Twain 5

wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted
was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it
was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she
was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage
in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I
never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.%
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long
with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never
said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said
not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me
to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By
and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off
to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table.
Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something
cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The
stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I
heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a
whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the
wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it
was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I
heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about
something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest
easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so
down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider
went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and
before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me
that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was
scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my
tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little

Thesaurus
budge: (adj, v) move, go; (v) stir, iterate, restate, reiterate, retell. shriveled: (adj) wizened, shrivelled,
agitate, change, sway, dislodge, lonesome: (adj) lone, desolate, forlorn, shrunken, parched, sere, dried, thin,
bump, rouse, push; (adj) flit. dreary, dismal, solitary, secluded, withered, attenuated, sear, tabid.
ANTONYMS: (v) remain, stay. gloomy, unfrequented; (adj, n) ANTONYM: (adj) smooth.
flipped: (adj) manic, rabid, delirious, isolated, alone. ANTONYM: (n) foe. tiresome: (adj) tedious, dull, laborious,
crazy, inverse, fierce. mournful: (adj) sad, miserable, irksome, monotonous, annoying,
grieving: (adj) sorrowful, bereft, melancholy, funereal, dolorous, dark, slow, dreary, bothersome; (adj, v)
bereaved, mournful, aggrieved, sad, pensive, gloomy, lugubrious, wearisome, troublesome.
teenful, despondent; (v) grief, lamentable; (adj, n) plaintive. ANTONYMS: (adj) stimulating, fun,
affliction; (n) sorrow. ANTONYMS: (adj) joyful, happy, varied, soothing, pleasant, brisk,
harp: (n) lyre, harmonica, harper, lute, emotionless. exciting, convenient, refreshing.
mouth harp; (v) dwell, ingeminate, shivers: (n) cold, jitters. tracks: (n) network.
6 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence.
You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it
up over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off
bad luck when you'd killed a spider.%
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the
house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after
a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom--boom--boom--
twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap
down in the dark amongst the trees-- something was a stirring. I set still and
listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there.
That was good! Says I, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out
the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down
to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom
Sawyer waiting for me.

Thesaurus
horseshoe: (n) bow, arc, arch, carve, miscellaneous, knotted, jumbled. active; (n) agitation; (v) eventful,
crescent, arcade, loop, curve, brake shed: (v) discard, drop, moult, scatter, brisk. ANTONYMS: (adj) depressing,
shoe, lunule, vault. exuviate, molt, cast off, dismiss; (n) boring, inactive, dull, conciliatory,
lock: (n, v) bar, hug; (v) close, latch, shack, hut, cabin. ANTONYMS: (v) asleep, uninspiring, unimpressive; (n)
fasten, engage, hold; (adj, n) hair; (n) keep, cover; (adj) persistent. suppression.
curl, padlock, hook. ANTONYMS: (v) snap: (v) bite, nip, snarl; (adj, v) break; thread: (n) screw thread, yarn, rope,
open, undo, disengage, flex; (n) key; (n, v) photograph, fracture, clack, go; wire, twine, ligature; (adj, n, v) line,
(adv) partially, partly. (n) pushover, picnic, catch. file; (n, v) string together; (adj, v)
pipe: (n) conduit, duct, flue, passage, ANTONYMS: (adj) roundabout, range; (v) penetrate.
pipage; (n, v) channel, cry; (v) squeak, considered. twig: (n) sprig, bough, limb, shoot,
sing, peep, screech. stirring: (adj) lively, exciting, alive, offshoot, spray, branchlet, scion,
scrambled: (adj) twisted, snarled, rousing, spirited, touching, thrilling, stalk; (n, v) stick; (v) grasp.
 Mark Twain 7

CHAPTER II

OUR GANG’S DARK OATH

WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of
the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our
heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise.
We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim, was
setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a
light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening.
Then he says:
"Who dah?"%
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right
between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and
minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was
a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear
begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd
die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you
are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't
sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will
itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

Thesaurus
ankle: (n) knuckle, kimbo, crane, ANTONYMS: (n) aversion, mark; (v) rub, pare, rake, grate, chafe,
fluke, crutch, crotch, zigzag, groin, disinclination. abrade; (n) abrasion.
sickle, scythe, malleolus. itching: (n) pruritus, prickle, sting, scratch: (n, v) mark, graze, notch,
begun: (adj) present. cupidity, cutaneous sensation, shiver; scrape, nick, scrabble, dent, scar; (v)
branches: (n) branch, brushwood. (adj) itchy, prurient, anxious, creepy, rub, chafe, rake. ANTONYM: (v)
funeral: (n) entombment, interment, enterprising. soothe.
sepulture, funeral rite, wake, pyre, nigger: (adj) blackamoor, Negro, man stooping: (adj) hunched, crooked,
observance, funeral sermon, funeral of color; (n) darky, spade, darkie, asymmetrical, not erect, not straight,
pile; (adj) sepulchral; (v) bury. boy, jigaboo, black person, Ethiop, corrupt; (n) patronage.
itch: (n) urge, desire, impulse, scabies; nigra. upwards: (adj, adv) upwardly, up;
(v) irritate, prickle, tingle, scratch, noticed: (adj) noted. (adv) over; (adj) improving, open.
chafe; (adj) itchy; (n, v) wish. scrape: (n, v) scratch, graze, score, ANTONYM: (adv) down.
8 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn't hear sumf'n. Well, I
know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it
agin."
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of
mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I
dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching
underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went
on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was
itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a
minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun
to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon comfortable
again.%
Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he
might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. Then
Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get
some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But
Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid
five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away;
but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands
and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while,
everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house.
Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over
him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches
be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then
set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.
And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after

Thesaurus
betwixt: (n) midst; (prep) among, creeping: (n) creep, crawl, locomotion, extremity, offshoot, part, leg, wing,
amid; (adv) atwixt. spreading; (v) lentor; (adj) reptile, appendage, edge.
cats: (n) Felidae, cates, public, people, slow, reptant, reptatory, serpiginous, miserableness: (n) melancholy.
order Carnivora, fissiped mammal, moving. stirred: (adj) excited, agitated, moved,
fissiped, Carnivora, bears, badgers, disturbance: (n, v) commotion, brawl; affected, aroused, emotional, aflame,
family Felidae. (n) disorder, turmoil, upset, Stirn, horny, susceptible, stirred up.
crawl: (adv, v) grovel, lag; (n, v) derangement, dislocation, disruption, trance: (adj, n) ecstasy; (n, v) coma,
clamber, climb; (v) sneak, fawn, tumult, din; (adj, n, v) trouble. charm; (n) fascination, daze, dream,
cringe, teem, swarm, scramble, inch. ANTONYMS: (n) stillness, peace, captivation, spell, stupor,
ANTONYMS: (v) fly, rush, hurry, satisfaction, serenity, respect, accord. obstupefaction; (v) capture.
hasten, dart, dash, lead, soothe, hears: (v) hear. ANTONYMS: (n) loyalist, reality,
speed. limb: (n) arm, branch, member, bough, alertness.
 Mark Twain 9

that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they
rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all
over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't
hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about
it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange
niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he
was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the
kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such
things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and
that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-
center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give
to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch
witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told
what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give
Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't
touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a
servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been
rode by witches.%
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was
sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by
the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We
went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more
of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the
river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the
bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We
went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about
amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't

Thesaurus
ashore: (adv, pron) aground; (adj) apex; (adj) outdoor. boat, wherry, small boat, lerret, coble,
beached, stranded; (adv) aland, on monstrous: (adj) huge, atrocious, cog, dingy.
land, onto land, toward land. heinous, monster, immense, gigantic, sparkling: (adj, v) effervescent; (adj)
clump: (n, v) cluster, bundle; (n) lump, grievous, ugly, flagitious, dreadful; bright, brilliant, radiant, glittery,
group, clot, knot, tuft, chunk, clod, (adj, v) grotesque. ANTONYMS: (adj) bubbly, glittering, scintillating,
ball; (v) plod. tiny, minute, beautiful, good, small, shining, scintillant; (n) sparkle.
corked: (adj) bad. lovely, attractive. ANTONYMS: (adj) dull, dirty,
folks: (n) people, folk, tribe, relations, scar: (n, v) mark, blemish, seam, stain, lifeless, lethargic.
household, house, relatives, relative, brand; (n) cicatrix, cicatrice, defect, twinkling: (n) moment, jiffy, minute,
kindred, lineage, kin. scratch, injury; (v) disfigure. second, flash, trice, twinkle, wink,
hilltop: (n) brow, peak, summit, top, ANTONYM: (v) enhance. split second, breath; (adj) sparkling.
pinnacle, hill, acme, height, zenith, skiff: (n) gig, cockleshell, punt, funny, ANTONYM: (adj) dull.
10 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a
kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:
"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."
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote
the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell
any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band,
whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he
mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in
their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to
the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it
again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the
secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the
ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and
never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot
forever.%
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of
his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and
robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets.
Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers
says:
"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?"
"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.
"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to
lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for
a year or more."
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said
every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and

Thesaurus
ashes: (n) dust, cinders, remains, curse: (n, v) blight, plague; (n) oath: (n) expletive, malediction,
cinder, clay, earth, embers, clinker; anathema, blasphemy, malediction, imprecation, promise, affidavit, cuss,
(adj) scoriae, mother, precipitate. denunciation; (adj, v) beshrew; (v) swearing, pledge, assurance,
breasts: (n) chest, booby. swear, ban, damn, vituperate. asseveration; (v) swear.
burnt: (adj) adust, heated, baked, ANTONYMS: (n) blessing, secrets: (n) secrecy.
torrid, sunburnt, seared, scorched, benediction, making; (v) sweaty: (adj) sweating, perspiring,
well done, tempered, overdone, communicate. damp, warm, humid, sticky,
combust. ANTONYMS: (adj) hacked: (adj) incensed, furious, toilsome, laborious, close, sweltering,
underdone, unburned, wet. drained, anxious. moist. ANTONYMS: (adj) dry, cool,
carcass: (n) body, frame, corpse, hogs: (n) Suidae, boars, family Suidae, fresh.
cadaver, framework, shell, carrion, stock. whichever: (adv) any; (adj) a few, one,
remains, dead body, skeleton, bomb. mentioned: (adj) spoken. several, some.
 Mark Twain 11

square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do--everybody
was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a
way, and so I offered them Miss Watson--they could kill her. Everybody said:
"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made
my mark on the paper.%
"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.
"But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--"
"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," says Tom
Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We
stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and
take their watches and money."
"Must we always kill the people?"
"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's
considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave here, and
keep them till they're ransomed."
"Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so of course
that's what we've got to do."
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"
"Why, blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do
you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all
muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these
fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? --that's the
thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"
"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it
means that we keep them till they're dead."
Thesaurus
carriages: (n) carriage. reckon: (v) estimate, judge, hold, delayed, fast; (adj, adv) aground; (n)
cattle: (n) stock, cows, neat, bull, beef, compute, guess, calculate, gauge, stuck ware, thrust, sticking; (v)
bovine, livestock, ox, kine, cow, oxen. rate; (n, v) enumerate, count, number. sticked, fasten, attach. ANTONYMS:
fellows: (n) fellow, membership, robbery: (n) depredation, pillage, (adj) unstuck, loose.
faculty. piracy, plunder, looting, burglary, stumped: (adj) bewildered, confused,
muddled: (adj) bewildered, theft, holdup, thieving, freebooting; at sea, without an answer, thrown,
disorganized, messy, addled, (v) rob. mystified, having difficulties,
disordered, incoherent, bemused, stealing: (n) pilferage, larceny, theft, flummoxed, dumbfounded, baffled,
unintelligible, chaotic, upset, steal, burglary, misappropriation, at a complete loss.
jumbled. ANTONYMS: (adj) embezzlement, stolen, thievery, till: (conj, prep) until, unto; (v) plow,
organized, precise, lucid, coherent, pilfering, thieving. hoe, farm, dig; (adj) up to; (n) tiller,
distinct, clear. stuck: (adj) stranded, jammed, drawer; (adv) so far; (prep) to.
12 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that
before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot
they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get loose."
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"
"A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never
get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a
body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want
to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the
people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you
reckon you can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on
and ransom them in the regular way."
"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the
women, too?"
"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the
women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them
to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in
love with you, and never want to go home any more."
"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty soon
we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be
ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got
nothing to say."
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to
be a robber any more.%
So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him
five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and
rob somebody and kill some people.

Thesaurus
anyhow: (adv) somehow, at any rate, jumbled, messy, muddled, intense, high, big, forcible, strong,
in any case, whatever, in any event, disordered, all over the place, messed large, great; (adj, adv) powerful.
regardless, however, though, besides, up, littered, in disarray, in a state. ANTONYMS: (adj) puny, tiny, weak,
nonetheless, one way or another. ANTONYM: (adj) tidy. insignificant.
bothersome: (adj) annoying, irritating, foolishness: (n) folly, fatuity, ransom: (v) redeem, repair, extricate;
worrying, worrisome, importunate, craziness, nonsense, stupidity, (n, v) rescue, blackmail, repurchase;
trying, vexatious, disagreeable, indiscretion, ineptitude, mistake, (n) deliverance, ransom money,
plaguy, plaguey, tiresome. fatuousness, irrationality; (adj, n) assessment, benevolence, excise.
ANTONYMS: (adj) desirable, helpful, silliness. ANTONYMS: (n) prudence, robber: (n) highwayman, bandit,
welcome, agreeable, delightful, sense, sensibleness, understanding, mugger, outlaw, plunderer, pillager,
pleasant, pleasing. forethought, responsibility. burglar, pirate, crook, filcher, spoiler.
cluttered: (adj) disorderly, chaotic, mighty: (adj) immense, huge, grand, women: (n) sex, gentle sex.
 Mark Twain 13

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to
begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday,
and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as
they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second
captain of the Gang, and so started home.%
I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.
My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog- tired.

Thesaurus
breaking: (n) breakage, breach, voted, appointed. ANTONYM: (adj) commonplace, trite, banal, haggard,
violation, infringement, autocratic. stock, jaded. ANTONYMS: (adj)
contravention, smash, rift, scutching, greased: (adj) greasy. invigorated, alert, refreshed,
shift, intermission; (v) deaden. settled: (adj) definite, set, firm, energetic, original, strong, awake,
clayey: (adj) heavy, weighty, permanent, certain, calm, established, energized, lively, rested, relaxed.
ponderous, strong, backbreaking, decided, formed, defined, finished. wicked: (adj) bad, sinful, atrocious,
compacter, compact, cloggy, ANTONYMS: (adj) unsettled, evil, vile, depraved, mischievous,
burdensome, burdened, bolar. exciting, temporary. immoral, unholy, nasty, naughty.
ANTONYM: (adj) arenaceous. started: (adv) happening, in progress, ANTONYMS: (adj) innocent, pure,
elected: (adj) adopted, selected, ongoing; (v) stert, leaped. pious, moral, kind, admirable,
chosen, regenerated, inspired, tired: (adj, v) fatigued, weary, kindhearted, helpful, decent,
justified, sanctified, unearthly, select, exhausted, stale; (adj) threadbare, assisting, aiding.
 Mark Twain 15

CHAPTER III

WE AMBUSCADE THE A-RABS

Well, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the
grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave awhile if I
could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing
come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get
it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any
good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but
somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to
try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make
it out no way.%
I set down one time back in the woods, 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 pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver
snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to my self,
there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the
thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." This was too many
for me, but she told me what she meant--I must help other people, and do
everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never

Thesaurus
awhile: (adj) in transitu, en passant; grease: (n, v) oil, lubricating oil; (n) praying: (n) prayer.
(adv) briefly. bribe, butter, ointment, soil, stain; (v) scold: (v) reprimand, chide, berate,
cleaned: (adj) purified, spick-and- boodle, anoint, graft, lubricate. rebuke, abuse, lecture, reproach, rail,
span; (n) cleaner, curried. hooks: (n) maulers, meat hooks. grouch; (n, v) nag; (adj, n) shrew.
closet: (n) cupboard, cubicle, cell, pork: (n) pig, hog, swine, pork barrel, ANTONYMS: (v) praise, compliment,
latrine, bathroom, wardrobe, water porc, red meat, white meat, animal approve.
closet; (adj) clandestine, confidential, protein, appropriation, beef, cochon snuffbox: (n) snuff box.
secret, private. ANTONYM: (adj) de lait. stole: (n) wrap, stolen, scarf, stolon,
open. pray: (v) beg, implore, entreat, crave, stealing, robe, alb, tunicle, surplice,
going-over: (n) search, checking, invite, plead, beseech, appeal, alba, cassock.
inspection, examination, rehearsal, importune, adjure, invoke. took: (adj) taken; (v) receive.
lecture. ANTONYM: (v) reject. went: (v) walked, proceeded.
16 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

think about myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in
the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no
advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't
worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me
one side and talk about Providence 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 Providences, and a poor chap would stand
considerable show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him
there warn't no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would
belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was
a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so
ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.%
Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for
me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was
sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of
the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river
drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was
him, anyway; said this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and
had uncommon long hair, 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 warn't much
like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took
him and buried him on the bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I
happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man
don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap,
but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I
judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he
wouldn't.
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the
boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just
pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-
drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived

Thesaurus
charging: (n) filling, feeding, power lurid, paltry, unjust, wicked; (n) fleeced, borrowed, bereft.
drive, decree. direction. sober: (adj, v) grave, sedate; (adj) sane,
ignorant: (adj) unconscious, unwitting, pretended: (adj, v) sham, mock, earnest, quiet, solemn, moderate,
rude, illiterate, uneducated, blind, counterfeit, pseudo, spurious; (adj) modest, serene, dull, somber.
dull, unaware, uninformed, assumed, fake, feigned, fictitious, ANTONYMS: (adj) intoxicated,
unlearned, innocent. ANTONYMS: bogus, affected. unrestrained, drunk, playful,
(adj) conscious, versed, cultured, ragged: (adj, n) shabby; (adj) seedy, sensational, emotional, cheerful,
educated, informed, wary, literate, worn, hoarse, jagged, scruffy, torn, frivolous, funny, muddled, delirious.
aware, polite. untidy, unkempt; (adj, v) threadbare; whale: (n) monster, leviathan, blower,
killed: (n) casualty; (adj) fallen. (n) harsh. ANTONYMS: (adj) smart, behemoth, hulk, heavyweight,
low-down: (adj) contemptible, shabby, elegant, smooth, new, even. narwhal, narwal; (v) thrash, beat;
sordid, squalid, wretched, ugly, robbed: (adj) plundered, rubato, (adj) cachalot.
 Mark Twain 17

any %of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips
and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had
done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no
profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick,
which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and
then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of
Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two
hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter"
mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four
hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the
lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get
ready. He never could go after even a turnip- cart but he must have the swords
and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and
you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful
of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a
crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so
I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word
we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards
and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but
a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and
chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some
doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a
hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop
everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said
there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too,
and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I
warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know
without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was
hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had
enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an
infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do
was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

Thesaurus
ambuscade: (n, v) ambush, trap; (v) mules: (n) mule, scuffs, carpet slipper, scour: (v) scrub, ransack, burnish,
waylay, bushwhack, lurk, lie in wait, scuff. abrade, furbish, polish, search,
scupper; (n) bushment, lying in wait, numskull: (n) loggerhead, blockhead, cleanse, graze, buff; (adj, v) flush.
ambuscado. dummy, ass, bonehead, dolt, ANTONYM: (v) dirty.
busted: (v) broke, out of commission; dunderhead, booby, dullard, fool, scoured: (adj) worn, windswept,
(adj) broken down, damaged, burst, stupid. wrinkled, weathered, tough, gnarled,
ruined, not working, destitute, powwow: (n) conference, council fire, battered, craggy.
disrepair, had it, impaired. primary, convention, talk, rally, turnip: (n) rutabaga, Swede, root
elephants: (n) Elephantidae. meeting; (n, v) huddle; (v) discuss, vegetable, cruciferous vegetable,
lath: (n) fillet, spline, batten, plank, confer, consult. white turnip, clock.
list, ribbon, strip, rod, flat timber, rotted: (adj) roted, crappy, icky, lousy, turnips: (n) root crop, brassica, genus
spill; (v) frame. rotten, unsound. brassica, cauliflowers, potatoes.
18 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would
hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as
a tree and as big around as a church."%
"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help us--can't we lick 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 lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come
tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-
rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think
nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school
superintendent over the head with it--or any other man."
"Who makes them tear around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the
lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build
a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or
whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to
marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning,
too. And more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country
wherever you want it, you understand."
"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the palace
themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's more--if I was one
of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come
to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it,
whether you wanted to or not."
"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I would
come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the
country."

Thesaurus
belting: (n) textile, material, fabric, speed, dash. grinding, detrition, rub, grip,
cloth, belt, belt material. lightning: (n) levin, electricity, resistance, chafe, sweat, travail,
fooling: (n) farce, tomfoolery, thunderbolt, Leven, ignis fatuus, heat massage. ANTONYM: (n)
horseplay, joking, prank; (adj) casual, lightning, forked lightning, fetter, smoothness.
accidental, everyday, effortless, dart, chain lightning; (adj) wind. tearing: (adj) fierce, violent, vehement,
cursory. magician: (n) enchanter, conjurer, furious, ripping, ferocious; (n)
hash: (adj, n) muddle, muss; (v) illusionist, wizard, conjuror, lachrymation, lacrimation, riving
mangle, chop, hackle, mince, discind, thaumaturge, magicians, performer, ahead, tear, lancination.
chop up, gash; (adj, v) mash; (n) magus, necromancer, prestidigitator. waltz: (n) minuet, valse, tango, tap,
hashish. roots: (n) heredity, family, origin, line, polka, ballroom dance, music; (v) trip
lick: (n, v) lap; (v) clobber, thrash, extraction, ancestry. the light fantastic, zip, oscillate, waltz
drub, beat, bat, defeat; (n) biff, jab, rubbing: (n) friction, abrasion, around.
 Mark Twain 19

"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know
anything, somehow--perfect saphead."%
I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see
if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out
in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to
build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I
judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he
believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had
all the marks of a Sunday-school.

Thesaurus
calculating: (adj) scheming, sly, lamp: (n) light, lantern, beacon, attrite, marked, accomplished,
shrewd, crafty, calculative, wily, headlight, flashbulb, flashgun, table fretten.
wary, discreet, devious; (n) lamp, oil lamp, storm lantern; (n, v) sweat: (n, v) work, toil, struggle; (v)
calculation; (adj, v) wise. look; (v) behold. perspire, drudge, exude; (n)
ANTONYMS: (adj) uncalculating, marks: (v) score; (n) first baron marks perspiration, lather, sudor, effort;
unassuming, reckless, artless, rash, of Broughton, footprint, imprints, (adj) perspiring. ANTONYMS: (v)
guileless, candid, unconscious. inscription, path, script, Simon ignore; (n) entertainment, ease,
iron: (v) firm, flatten; (n) Fe, chain, cast marks, symbols, trace, track. relaxation.
iron, irons; (adj) hard, adamant, steel, palace: (n) castle, mansion, hall, woods: (n) forest, woodland, grove,
harsh, tenacious. alcazar, chateau, palazzo, house, timber, jungle, sir Henry wood,
judged: (n) judging; (adj) guilty, palaces, regime, fortress, serai. vegetation, timberland, Natalie
deliberate, legal, lawful. rubbed: (adj) polished, refined, terse, wood, virgin forest; (adj) wooden.
 Mark Twain 21

CHAPTER IV

THE HAIR-BALL ORACLE

Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I
had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a
little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five,
and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I
don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.%
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I
got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me
good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I
was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on
me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly,
but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes,
and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked
the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure,
and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I reached
for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the
bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. She says,
"Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!" The
Thesaurus
ashamed: (adj) hangdog, guilty, multiplication: (n) augmentation, dormancy, noctambulism,
embarrassed, sheepish, remorseful, increase, generation, expansion, rise, quiescence, quiescency, short sleep.
regretful, bashful, disconcerted, doubling, propagation, increment, ANTONYMS: (adj) active; (n)
contrite, chagrined; (v) dashed. reproduction; (n, v) addition; (adj) waking.
ANTONYMS: (adj) proud, arrogant, pullulation. ANTONYM: (n) uncommon: (adj) extraordinary,
unremorseful, unashamed, pleased, decrease. peculiar, scarce, singular, strange,
blatant, bold, happy, unabashed, raspy: (adj) harsh, gravelly, rasping, special, exceptional, infrequent, odd,
unrepentant. hoarse, rough, gravel, gruff, crude, unusual, unaccustomed.
hiding: (n) covering, concealment, techy, jarring, strident. ANTONYM: ANTONYMS: (adj) typical, usual,
concealing, beating, screening, (adj) harmonious. normal, familiar, poor, ordinary, bad,
thrashing, flogging, rout, burial, sleeping: (adj) asleep, inactive, latent, imperfect, customary, accustomed,
drubbing, ambush. sleepy, vegetive, vegetative; (n) frequent.
22 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck,
I knowed that well enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and
shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to
be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them
kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on
the watch-out.%
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground,
and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood
around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was
funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I couldn't make it out. It
was very curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down
to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There
was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my shoulder
every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick
as I could get there. He said:
"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?"
"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?"
"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite
a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand,
because if you take it you'll spend it."
"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all-- nor the six
thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you--the six thousand
and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says:
"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it --won't
you?"

Thesaurus
devil: (n) fiend, demon, ghost, invest: (n, v) empower, endow, vest, wobbly, tottery, trembling; (adj, v)
monster, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, dress; (v) clothe, commit, enthrone, crazy, broken. ANTONYMS: (adj)
deuce, daemon; (v) torment, rag. endue, crown, indue, adorn. steady, stable, strong, watertight,
ANTONYM: (n) angel. low-spirited: (adj) downcast, sound, hard, composed, alert, safe,
fence: (n, v) hedge, wall, bar; (n) depressed, melancholy, dejected, secure, promising.
barrier, hurdle, pale, boundary; (v) despondent, downhearted, down in stile: (n) bar, flight of stairs, upright,
quibble, enclose, parry, contend. the mouth, sad. vertical, step, barrier, montant.
ANTONYMS: (v) challenge, face, quarry: (n) prey, game, pit, target, stooped: (adj) hunched, stoop,
confront. stone pit, victim, fair game, lode, stooping, crooked, bended, not
inch: (n) in, bit, column inch, morsel; butt; (n, v) dig; (v) excavate. straight, inclined, not erect, arched,
(v) crawl, creep, ease; (adj) tatter, shaky: (adj) precarious, ramshackle, asymmetrical, droopy.
mite, seed, shive. insecure, unsafe, unstable, unsteady,
 Mark Twain 23

He says:
"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to tell no
lies."
He studied a while, and then he says:
"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me--not give it.
That's the correct idea."
Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:
"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have bought it of
you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it."
So I signed it, and left.%
Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been
took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said
there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that
night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What
I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim
got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and
dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim
tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on
his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use; he said it
wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I
had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass
showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass
didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it
every time. (I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the
judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it,
because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and
rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good.
He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between
and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it

Thesaurus
counterfeit: (adj, n, v) sham; (n, v) ANTONYM: (adj) lean. rolled: (adj) rolling, furled, involute,
copy, duplicate; (adj, v) mock, falsify; nohow: (adv) in no way, not at all, scroll, coiled, resonant, trilled,
(adj) false, artificial, assumed; (adj, n) noway. reverberative, reverberating,
imitation; (v) forge, ape. potato: (n) murphy, white potato, resounding, spiral.
ANTONYMS: (adj) genuine, real, tater, spud, potato-ball, Solanum slick: (adj) clever, glib, glossy, silky,
authentic, true, actual; (n) original. tuberosum, vine, tuber, bittersweet, adroit, foxy, silken, crafty, cunning,
fist: (n, v) hand; (n) duke, clenched eggplant, white potato vine. artful; (adj, v) smooth. ANTONYMS:
fist, feist, manus, grip, index; (v) puzzled: (adj) bewildered, confused, (adj) dry, rough, unsophisticated,
finger, paw, neif, neaf. baffled, nonplussed, doubtful, shoddy, hesitant, dull.
greasy: (adj) fatty, dirty, oily, tallowy, bemused, at a loss, curious, smelt: (v) fuse, temper, anneal, to
slick, sebaceous, unclean, unctuous, mystified, nonplused, dazed. smelt, distill, refine, heat; (n)
slippery, adipose, oleaginous. ANTONYM: (adj) clear. sparling, capelan, caplin, capelin.
24 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute,
let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had
forgot it.%
Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again.
This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole
fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told
it to me. He says:
"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec
he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to res' easy en let de
ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv
'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him to go right a
little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which
one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have
considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git
hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well
agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one
is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de
rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en
don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung."
When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his
own self!

Thesaurus
bills: (n) currency, folding money. get, attract; (adj, n) feint. sweep, travel. ANTONYM: (v)
bust: (adj) broke; (n, v) arrest, tear, fortune: (n) estate, fate, fluke, destiny, struggle.
capture, raid; (adj, v) bankrupt; (v) luck, accident, means, assets, riches, shiny: (adj, v) lustrous; (adj) glossy,
break, burst; (n) flop, thorax, heart. abundance, doom. ANTONYM: (n) smooth, sleek, slick, brilliant,
ANTONYMS: (adj) solvent; (v) mend, design. glistening, clear, shining, sheeny,
fix, exonerate, aid, help, free, repair. marry: (n, v) wed, espouse; (v) get polished. ANTONYMS: (adj) rough,
candle: (n) candela, light, taper, married, link, conjoin, wive, splice, unglazed, matt, coarse.
bougie, CD, candlepower, lamp, wax tie, unite, couple; (n) marriage. spec: (n) speculation, venture, gamble,
light, Standard candle; (v) examine, ANTONYMS: (v) divorce, separate, description, investment, network
illuminate. split. architecture, computer architecture,
fetch: (v) carry, bring, bring in, sail: (n, v) cruise, float, voyage, sheet; naming explicitly; (v) speculate,
convey, draw, elicit, deliver, catch, (v) navigate, run, glide, drift, cross, wager.
 Mark Twain 25

CHAPTER V

PAP STARTS IN ON A NEW LIFE

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used to be
scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared now,
too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after the first jolt, as you may
say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away
after I see I warn't scared of him worth bothring about.%
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was
behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers.
There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like
another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's
flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes--just rags,
that was all. He had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was
busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then.
His hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a
lid.
I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted
back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up; so he had
clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says:
Thesaurus
color: (n, v) flush, blush, tint, tinge, disconnected, upside-down. tanned: (adj) bronzed, suntanned,
paint, stain; (adj, n, v) colour; (v) slouch: (v) droop, slump, sprawl; (adj, browned; (n) brunette. ANTONYMS:
redden; (n) guise, complexion; (adj, n) v) lag; (adj) crouch, dawdle, hang (adj) pale, untanned.
tone. ANTONYMS: (v) discolor, pale, back, drawl, droil; (n) lazybones, tilted: (adj) leaning, slanting, inclined,
show, whiten, untwist, denote, stoop. oblique, crooked, slanted, atilt,
depict, represent, blanch, blench. tangled: (adj) involved, complex, askew, sloping, at an angle, uneven.
hung: (n) hanging; (v) Heng; (adj) knotted, intricate, complicated, ANTONYM: (adj) upright.
fatigued, puzzled, decorated. entangled, knotty, convoluted, whiskers: (n) fuzz, goatee, hair,
jolt: (n, v) jerk, shake, jog, jar, bump, disheveled, tousled, matted. imperial, face fungus, beaver,
push, knock, thrust, shock; (n) hustle; ANTONYMS: (adj) tidy, mustache, moustache, sideburns,
(v) agitate. straightforward, untangled, neat, facial hair, sideboards.
mixed-up: (adj) disconcerted, simple.
26 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug, don't you?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.%
"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on considerable
many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with
you. You're educated, too, they say--can read and write. You think you're
better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'll take it out of you.
Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told
you you could?"
"The widow. She told me."
"The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?"
"Nobody never told her."
"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that school,
you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father
and let on to be better'n what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that
school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write,
nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died. I can't; and
here you're a- swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you
hear? Say, lemme hear you read."
I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his
hand and knocked it across the house. He says:
"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here;
you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty; and if
I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion,
too. I never see such a son."
He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says:
"What's this?"
"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good."

Thesaurus
airs: (n, v) pretension; (n) affectation, whatchamacallit, sundry, sundries, mop; (n) excavator, digger, shovelful,
pride, pose, pretensions, attitude; stuff, garnishes, garnishing, dipper, power shovel, poker.
(adj, n) arrogance; (v) precisianism, adornment, gimcrackery. smarty: (n) smart aleck; (adj) cocky.
euphuism, purism, pedantry. lessons: (n) classes, coaching, tuition, swelling: (n) protuberance, lump,
ANTONYMS: (n) humility, schoolwork, revision, learning, swell, intumescence, growth,
personality, realness, truthfulness, education, training. projection, prominence, bulge,
honesty. meddle: (v) intervene, interfere, dropsy; (adj, v) inflated; (adj)
cows: (n) cattle, cow, bull, ox, oxen, intrude, monkey, interpose, fiddle, growing. ANTONYM: (n) decline.
Bos Taurus, bullock, beef, Cowes, pry, dabble, interlope; (n) whack: (n, v) bang, wallop, knock, hit,
steer, milker. interference; (adj) moil. ANTONYM: bash, crack, strike, smash, punch,
doubts: (adj) doubting. (v) disregard. cuff, thump.
frills: (n) falderal, folderol, whatsis, shovel: (v) dig, rake, broom, delve,
 Mark Twain 27

He tore it up, and says:

"I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide."%
He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:
"Ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a
look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father got to sleep
with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet I'll take some o' these
frills out o' you before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no end to your airs--
they say you're rich. Hey?--how's that?"
"They lie--that's how."
"Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can stand
now--so don't gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I hain't heard
nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard about it away down the river, too.
That's why I come. You git me that money to-morrow--I want it."
"I hain't got no money."
"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it."
"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell you the
same."
"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know the reason
why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it."
"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--"
"It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it out."
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down
town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got
out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and
trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back and
put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was
going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop that.

Thesaurus
bedclothes: (n) bedspread, cover, capital, fine, peachy. ANTONYMS: back talk, impudence, insolence,
linen, bed linen, bed clothing, litter, (adj) terrible, ghastly, awful, inferior. effrontery, brim, oral fissure; (n, v)
clothes, throw, spread, quilt, puff. dollar: (n) greenback, note, coin, reply; (v) retort.
carpet: (v) cover, drape, rebuke, cartwheel, clam, bill, dollars, silver shell: (n) rind, sheath, case, casing,
encase, row, chew out; (n) rug, dollar, sterling coin, symbol, bullet, bark, shot, crust; (n, v) bomb,
carpeting, tapis, runner, covering. currency. pod; (v) bombard. ANTONYM: (n)
cussed: (adj) contrary, accursed, gimme: (adj) desirable; (n) free ride. middle.
cursed, obstinate, obdurate, restive, pocket: (v) take, appropriate, steal, lift, sweet-scented: (adj) fragrant.
stubborn, ill-natured, hateful, vicious, catch; (n, v) sack, pouch; (n) cavity, tore: (v) tare; (n) moulding, molding.
crabbed. hole, hollow; (adj) digest. whisky: (adj, v) usquebaugh; (v) rye,
dandy: (n) beau, fop, coxcomb, dude, ANTONYM: (v) return. sherry, rum, schnapps, peg, sling,
buck, clipper, cockscomb; (adj) nifty, sass: (n) backtalk, lip, impertinence, highball, xeres; (n) liquor, coach.
28 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he
swore he'd make the law force him.%
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from
him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just
come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and
separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away
from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I
was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three
dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing
around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over
town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they
had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So
he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him
to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him,
so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such
things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life;
but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't
be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on
him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife
she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood
before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man
wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried
again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand,
and says:
"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There's a hand
that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's

Thesaurus
bedtime: (n) night, gloaming, going drinker. ANTONYMS: (adj) straight, confused.
down of the sun, dewy eve. clearheaded; (n) teetotaler. quit: (adj, n, v) leave; (v) go, drop,
borrowed: (adj) foreign, rubato, gentlemen: (n) sirs, messieurs. break, cease, give up, depart, end,
secondary. interfere: (n, v) interpose; (v) discontinue; (adj, v) discharge; (n, v)
cowhide: (v) trounce, lambaste, flog; intercede, obstruct, disturb, conflict, part. ANTONYMS: (v) stay, occupy,
(n) leather, knout, bullwhip, lash, impede, hinder, meddle, intervene; enter, maintain, start, come, arrive.
whip, strap, thong. (n) interference; (adj, v) intermeddle. temperance: (n) moderation,
cussing: (n) curse, execration, jailed: (adj) captive, confined, fenced abstinence, abstemiousness, control,
profanity, swear word. in, enraptured, deeply moved, in restraint, moderateness, soberness,
drunk: (adj) tipsy, wet, tight, blotto, captivity, locked up, unfree; (v) forbearance, measure, gravity,
drunken, inebriated; (adj, n) inebriate; behind bars. asceticism. ANTONYMS: (n)
(n) boozer, dipsomaniac, drunkard, misunderstood: (adj) mistreated, intemperance, wildness.
 Mark Twain 29

started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words--
don't forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard."
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife
she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made his mark. The judge
said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked
the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night
some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid
down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back
again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again,
drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places,
and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And
when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before
they could navigate it.%
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the
old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.

Thesaurus
daylight: (n) dawn, daybreak, light, manoeuvre, journey. healthy, pleased, comfortable.
morning, sunrise, clearance, sunup, porch: (n) lobby, hall, vestibule, soundings: (adj) submersion, water.
daytime, broad daylight, first light, veranda, door, entrance, deck, stanchion: (n) brace, stake, pillar,
afternoon. ANTONYMS: (n) night, gallery, portico, balcony, inlet. buttress, stay, pole, crutch, post,
sunset, dusk, dark, sundown, shotgun: (n) shooting iron, shooter, banister, handhold stanchion,
twilight, darkness, nightfall. scattergun, hackbut, pellet gun; (v) baluster.
fiddler: (n) Fiddler's money, watch, shield, safeguard, look out, thirsty: (adj) eager, arid, parched, avid,
trumpeter, fifer, instrumentalist, protect, oblige. keen, athirst, greedy, absorbent,
musician, player, piper, violin player, sore: (adj, n, v) hurt; (adj) sensitive, ambitious; (v) craving, hungry.
twiddler, tinkerer, drummer. angry, grievous, raw; (n) injury, ANTONYMS: (adj) quenched,
navigate: (v) cruise, guide, sail, fly, lesion, cut, boil; (v) acute; (adj, v) satisfied, disinterested, wet.
voyage, navigating, move, pilot, ride, sharp. ANTONYMS: (adj) happy, traded: (adj) listed.
 Mark Twain 31

CHAPTER VI

PAP STRUGGLES WITH THE DEATH ANGEL

WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went
for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went
for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and
thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him
most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go
now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business--appeared like they warn't
ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I'd borrow two or three
dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he
got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around
town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited--this kind
of thing was right in his line.%
He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last
that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well,
wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he
watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the
river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it
was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the
timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

Thesaurus
borrow: (v) adopt, lend, appropriate, outgo, outdistance, beat, distance. shutdown, padding, fillet,
to borrow, assume, take, accept, shore: (n) coast, edge, beach, seashore, suspension, stay, discontinuance,
acquire, plagiarize, cadge, get. stay, seaside, brace, margin; (n, v) abeyance, interruption; (adv)
ANTONYMS: (v) give, invent, loan, prop, land, buttress. ANTONYM: (n) haltingly.
originate, return. sea. timber: (n) lumber, forest, plank,
courts: (n) judges. spite: (n) malice, grudge, hatred, beam, girder, rafter, tree, woodland,
hanging: (n) execution, curtain, arras, malevolence, rancour, venom, rancor, timberland, boards, coulisse.
wall hanging; (adj) suspended, maliciousness, ill will, animosity; (n, woody: (adj) arboreous, ligneous,
pendent, pendant, pendulous, hung, v) pique. ANTONYMS: (v) please; (n) wooden, forested, woodsy,
pending; (n, v) suspension. benevolence, goodwill, love, arboraceous, arboreal, harder, hard,
outrun: (v) surpass, outdo, exceed, affection, harmony. lignified, nemorous.
outride, outstep, outleap, outjump, stopping: (n) stoppage, cessation,
32 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We
lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his
head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and
hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and
went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for
whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me.
The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try
to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after
that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part.%
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and
fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes
got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the
widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed
and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss
Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had
stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again
because pap hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods
there, take it all around.
But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I
was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once
he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he
had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I
made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out
of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to
it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too
narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave
a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the
place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because
it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at
last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a
rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There

Thesaurus
bothering: (v) teasing, tormenting, drenched, drent. licked: (adj) dumbfounded.
carking; (n) harassment, provocation. jolly: (adj) gay, cheerful, happy, locking: (n) lockup, bolting,
comb: (v) brush, ransack, search, festive, genial, bright, cheery, merry, interlocking, engagement, cordoning
dress, eliminate, groom; (adj) weed; jocund; (v) chaff; (adv) lively. off, closing off, binding, guarding.
(n) crest, combing, caruncle, ANTONYMS: (adj) gloomy, nights: (adj) nightly; (n) night.
currycomb. miserable, serious. rafter: (n) balk, girder, timber,
dirt: (n, v) soil, grime; (n) filth, dust, lazy: (adj) indolent, inert, idle, inactive, raftsman, joist, baulk, summer, trave,
scandal, garbage, ground, earth, crap, shiftless, slothful, faineant, slow, Travis, transom, lintel.
mire, contamination. ANTONYMS: sluggish; (adj, n) drowsy, dull. rusty: (adj) ancient, out of practice,
(n) cleanness, purity, luxury, ANTONYMS: (adj) diligent, active, intractable, old, corroded, deaf to
cleanliness, newness. prompt, vigorous, industrious, keen, reason, exceptious, cantankerous; (v)
drowned: (adj) prostrate, sunken; (v) productive. moldy, raw, mildewed.
 Mark Twain 33

was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting
the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to
saw a section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. Well, it
was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap's
gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket
and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.%
Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. He said he was
down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he
would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but
then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to
do it. And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from
him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win
this time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the
widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then
the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think
of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and
after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a
considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called
them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his
cussing.
He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out,
and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or
seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they
couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I
reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance.
The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There
was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a
four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding,
besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of
the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the

Thesaurus
ammunition: (n) ammo, munition, court case, legal action, causa, plea. amateur, awkward, unsophisticated.
cartridge, shot, weaponry, bullet, nailed: (adj) fixed, tight, stationary, sack: (v) plunder, dismiss, ransack,
weapons, missile, armament, arms, stable, secure, decided, firm, despoil, rob; (n, v) bag, discharge,
shell. immobile. fire; (n) pocket, sac, pouch.
blowing: (n) processing, insufflation, parcel: (n) bale, pack, bundle, package, ANTONYMS: (v) hire, detain.
bravado; (v) fanning, blow out; (adj) packet, section, division, batch; (n, v) stow: (v) cram, house, load, charge,
windy, breezy. portion; (v) distribute, apportion. store, place, squeeze, deposit, set,
cuss: (v) blaspheme, swear, imprecate; polished: (adj) glossy, cultured, crush, put.
(n) malediction, blighter, chap, finished, refined, smooth, lustrous, wadding: (n) filling, stuffing, packing,
expletive, oath, bloke, lad, fellow. genteel, courtly; (adj, v) courteous, wad, pad, packing material; (adj, n)
lawsuit: (n) suit, cause, action, trial, civil, polite. ANTONYMS: (adj) padding, cushion; (adj) pillow,
prosecution, proceedings, litigation, rough, coarse, shoddy, unpolished, feather bed, down.
34 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I
wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night
times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man
nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and
leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full
of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked
me whether I was asleep or drownded.%
I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was
cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and
went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter
all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam--
he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went
for the govment, this time he says:
"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law
a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a man's own son, which he
has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just
as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to
do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they
call that govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher
up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law does: The
law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an
old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a
hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this.
Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can
tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never
come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat--if you call it a
hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and
then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a
jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I-- such a hat for me to wear--one of the
wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

Thesaurus
blamed: (adj) goddamned, goddamn, guessed: (adj) rude, inscrutable. staying: (n) stays, arrest; (adj)
damned, goddam, infernal, gutter: (n) groove, trough, ditch, drain, continual, old, left.
damnable, ageless, answerable, chute, trench, canal, furrow, conduit, swig: (n, v) drink, swallow, sip; (v)
beatified, blessed, aeonian. waterway, gully. quaff, imbibe, slog, slug; (n) draught,
cabin: (n) booth, cabana, cot, lodge, jams: (n) bathing suit, pajamas. draft; (adj, v) guzzle; (adj) swill.
stall, shed, chamber, bothy, room, liquor: (n) fluid, broth, alcohol, booze, ANTONYM: (v) regurgitate.
apartment, cell. ANTONYMS: (n) brew, brandy, arrack, spirits, tramp: (n) bum, hobo, beggar; (n, v)
chateau, mansion, palace. schnapps; (n, v) drink; (adj, n) liquid. walk, trudge, vagabond, ramble,
cooking: (adj) culinary; (n) cuisine, ripping: (adj) splitting, great, terrific, march; (v) roam, range, plod.
food, browning, broiling, culinary glorious, wonderful, exquisite, ANTONYMS: (n, v) loyalist; (n)
art, preparation, gastronomy, chow, superb, splendid, excellent; (n) tear, resident.
frying, groceries. scarifying. warmed: (adj) warmer, warm, baked.
 Mark Twain 35

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There
was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He
had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a
man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold
watch and chain, and a silver- headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob
in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college,
and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the
wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out.
Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just
about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told
me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed
out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me;
and the country may rot for all me --I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to
see the cool way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't
shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at
auction and sold?--that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they
said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months,
and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now--that's a specimen. They call
that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months.
Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and
thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before
it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger,
and--"%
Pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking
him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both
shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language--mostly
hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along,
here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and
then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let
out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it
warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes
leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a
Thesaurus
headed: (n) maturer; (adj) oriented. unseaworthy, blabbermouthed. shin: (v) clamber, shinny, make
ANTONYM: (adj) unheaded. limber: (adj, v) flexible, pliable; (adj) unintelligible, abrade, bark, beat; (n)
hottest: (adj) most modern, most supple, lithe, agile, flexile, elastic, tibia, shinbone, leg, alphabetic
recent, newest, latest. ductile, svelte, willowy, lissome. character, body part.
howl: (n, v) cry, roar, scream, bark, ANTONYMS: (adj) stiff, inflexible. stock-still: (adj) motionless, quiescent,
shout, yell, bay, yelp; (v) bawl, growl, nabob: (n) Croesus, capitalist, immobile, stationary, frozen.
yawl. ANTONYM: (v) laugh. millionaire, satrap, Timon of Athens, thieving: (n) larceny, stealing, robbery,
infernal: (adj) devilish, fiendish, Idas, Plutus, magnate, viceroy, embezzlement, misapplication,
diabolical, demonic, damned, cursed, khedive, hospodar. misappropriation, peculation,
blasted, unholy, wicked; (adj, v) rattling: (adj) lively, brisk, racy, defalcation, burglary, thievery; (adj)
diabolic, satanic. marvelous, fantastic, zippy, snappy, thievish. ANTONYMS: (adj)
leaking: (n) leak, leakage; (adj) spanking, merry; (adv) very, real. philanthropic, benevolent.
36 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his
toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.
He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his
best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it
on, maybe.%
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two
drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he
would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw
myself out, one or t'other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his
blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but
was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for
a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do,
and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle
burning.
I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful
scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every
which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs;
and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the
cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes. He started and run round and round the
cabin, hollering "Take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" I never
see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell
down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every
which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming
and saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still
a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. I could hear the
owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was
laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his
head to one side. He says, very low:
"Tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're coming
after me; but I won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me-- don't! hands off--
they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!"

Thesaurus
delirium: (n) craze, insanity, mania, roaring, call, boom, hollo, roar, cry, cumulus, mess.
disturbance, fever, ecstasy, yowl, holloa. skipping: (n) jumping, leaping,
derangement; (adj, n) fury; (adj) furor, moaning: (n, v) lamentation; (adj) absenteeism; (adv) skippingly,
rage, distraction. ANTONYMS: (n) groaning, whining, funereal, leapingly.
indifference, dejection. inarticulate, dirgeful; (n) snakes: (n) Ophidia, suborder
devils: (n) unclean spirits. complaining, mourning. Serpentes, subclass Lepidosauria,
fagged: (adj) exhausted, fatigued, panting: (adj) gasping, breathless, suborder Ophidia, Lepidosauria.
tired, drained physically, worn out, blown, winded, puffed; (v) tumbled: (adj) disordered.
weary, all in, bleached, bushed, palpitation; (n) heaving, gasp, yelling: (adj) crying, howling,
completely exhausted, faded. asthma, heave, puff. fantastic, noisy, marvelous,
grabbing: (n) seizure; (adj) acquisitive. piling: (n) pile, stacking, pillar, spile, marvellous, instant, insistent, rank;
hollering: (n) holla, holler, bellow, heap, buttress, caking, stack, stilt, (n) screaming, noise.
 Mark Twain 37

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him
alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old
pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through
the blanket.%
By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see
me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-
knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I
couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he
laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me
up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and
got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid
out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired
out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a
minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep
and get strong, and then he would see who was who.
So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair and
clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I
slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the
turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to
stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along.

Thesaurus
barrel: (n) vessel, keg, roll, barrels, incomplete, partial, specific. lacking, unloaded, innocent,
barrelful, tun, vase, cask, vat, chasing: (n) chase, engraving; (v) impoverished.
container, hogshead. follow, pursue. pine: (v) languish, long, ache, droop,
begging: (n) mendicancy, request, grab: (n, v) catch, arrest, snatch, flag, crave, fade; (n) fir; (n, v) yearn,
plea; (v) asking, beg; (adj) beseeching, capture; (v) get, grapple, clutch, sink; (adj) peak.
entreating, mendicant, imploring, clasp, seize, fascinate, appropriate. pointing: (n) punctuation, indication,
suppliant, vagabond. ANTONYMS: (v) surrender, baulk, scoring.
blanket: (adj) sweeping, overall, repel. ramrod: (n) superintendent, rammer,
comprehensive, global, wholesale, loaded: (adj) full, flush, moneyed, rod, cleaning rod, overseer.
generic; (n, v) cloak; (n) sheath, sheet, wealthy, affluent, rich, tipsy, tight, screechy: (adj) squeaky, screaky,
bedding; (v) clothe. ANTONYMS: intoxicated, charged; (adj, prep) creaky, creaking, squealing, higher,
(adj) uncomprehensive, discerning, burdened. ANTONYMS: (adj) empty, high, squeaking.
 Mark Twain 39

CHAPTER VII

I FOOL PAP AND GET AWAY

"Git up! What you 'bout?"%

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was
after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking
sour and sick, too. He says:
"What you doin' with this gun?"
I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:
"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him."
"Why didn't you roust me out?"
"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you."
"Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and
see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a minute."
He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed some
pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I
knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I
was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as
soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log

Thesaurus
bark: (n, v) skin, yelp, snarl, cry, rind, (adj, adv) aimless; (adj) current, loose, ferment. ANTONYMS: (adj) kindly,
shout; (v) growl, roar; (n) bay, peel, moving, fluid, in circulation, going pleasant, bland, amiable, fresh,
crust. ANTONYMS: (n, v) whisper. about, flying, light. mature, mild, kind; (v) sweeten,
breakfast: (n) repast, banquet, laying: (n) egg laying, placing, enhance.
dejeuner, mealtime, feast, meal; (v) parturition, place, repose, setting, sprinkling: (n) sprinkle, scattering,
sup, take tea, eat, have a meal, dine. put, position, lay, oyster park, touch, aspersion, smack, spray, bit,
cleared: (adj) absolved, clean, empty, oviposition. scatter, watering; (adj, n) spice; (adj)
exculpated, bleak, innocent, exempt, roust: (n) rost; (v) stir, arrest, provoke, drop.
vindicated, exonerated, guiltless, let rid. unlocked: (adj) unbarred, unlatched,
off. ANTONYMS: (adj) full, sour: (adj, n) morose, harsh; (adj, v) unbolted, not closed, loose,
uncleared, guilty. acid; (adj) bitter, rancid, gruff, grim, unsecured, ajar, wide open,
floating: (adv) afloat; (adj, v) buoyant; glum, dour; (adj, n, v) severe; (v) unguaranteed.
40 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

rafts--sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and
sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.%
I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for
what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a
beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I shot
head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the
canoe. I just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people
often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it
they'd raise up and laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe
sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will
be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore pap
wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all
hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea: I judged I'd hide her
good, and then, 'stead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the
river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough
time tramping on foot.
It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming
all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around a bunch of
willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead
on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything.
When he got along I was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. He abused me a
little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made
me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking
questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home.
While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out,
I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from
trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far
enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen.
Well, I didn't see no way for a while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to
drink another barrel of water, and he says:

Thesaurus
bead: (n, v) drop; (n) astragal, beading, creek: (n) brook, cove, bay, stream, chanty, hutch, booth, bothy, chalet,
pearl, dot, necklace, pellet, droplet, inlet, river, bayou, rivulet; (v) burn, stall, shed.
beadwork, bubble; (v) beautify. runnel, beck. thirteen: (n) long dozen, large integer.
canoe: (n) dugout, pirogue, canoes, fourteen: (adj, n) XIV. tramping: (adj) moving.
caique, birchbark, dugout canoe, frog: (n) frogs, toad, chamois, epaulet, trusting: (adj) credulous,
birchbark canoe, felucca; (adj) self- crapaud, batrachian, anuran, aigulet, unsuspecting, naive, confident,
sufficient. grasshopper, Frenchman, shoulder confiding, simple, innocent, gullible,
catfish: (n) wolffish, mudcat, bullhead, knot. reliant, give, easy to fool.
flathead catfish, spoonbill catfish, gully: (n) channel, conduit, gorge, ANTONYMS: (adj) distrustful,
shovelnose catfish, goujon, valley, dingle, drain, trough, ravine, suspicious, doubtful, hesitant,
malacopterygian, channel catfish, canyon, trench, groove. protective, shrewd, disingenuous,
Atlantic catfish, wolf fish. shanty: (n) cabin, hovel, cot, shack, smart, jaded.
 Mark Twain 41

"Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you
hear? That man warn't here for no good. I'd a shot him. Next time you roust me
out, you hear?"
Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been
saying give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so
nobody won't think of following me.%
About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river
was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by
along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. We went out with the skiff
and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but pap would a waited and
seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. Nine
logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he
locked me in and took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past
three. I judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had
got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log again.
Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the hole; him and his raft was
just a speck on the water away off yonder.
I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and
shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the
side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and
all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; I took a
dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the
coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and matches and other things--everything that was
worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only
the one out at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I
fetched out the gun, and now I was done.
I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out
so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering
dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. Then I
fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one
against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch

Thesaurus
cent: (adj) picayune, mill, pistareen; (n) lot, plenty, muckle, pile, slew, stack, (adj, n) elegance, delicacy.
subunit, rupee, red cent, centime. wad. ANTONYMS: (n) resistance,
dipper: (n) shovel, spoon, Big Dipper, shove: (n, v) thrust, jostle, poke, elbow, unevenness, hesitation, dampness,
scoop, butterball, bufflehead, Little prod, boost, hustle; (v) press, impel, awkwardness, harshness, hesitancy.
Dipper, plough, duck, oscine, shift, stuff. ANTONYMS: (v) pull, speck: (adj, n) point, atom, particle; (n)
thimble. leave. blot, flaw, smudge, blotch, blemish,
driftwood: (n) wood, refuse, debris. skillet: (n) pan, frypan, saucepan, grain, mote, dot. ANTONYM: (n) lot.
gourd: (n) bottle gourd, pumpkin, casserole, tumbler, bowl, spider, towing: (n) hauling, fettling.
melon, Lagenaria, gord, vine, noddle, basin, crucible, posnet, cup. yonder: (adv) beyond, further, farther,
exploding cucumber, fruit, flask, smoothness: (n) slipperiness, abroad, thither, further away, at that
calabash tree. slickness, sleekness, evenness, polish, place; (adj) distant, yond, furious,
raft: (n, v) float; (n) deal, flock, heap, glossiness, softness, silkiness, grace; fierce.
42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

ground. If you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you
wouldn't never notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't
likely anybody would go fooling around there.%
It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. I followed around to
see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river. All safe. So I took the
gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds
when I see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got
away from the prairie farms. I shot this fellow and took him into camp.
I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerable
a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked
into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleed; I say
ground because it was ground--hard packed, and no boards. Well, next I took an
old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it--all I could drag--and I started it from the
pig, and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and
dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something
had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed
he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy
touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.
Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck
it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and
held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) till I got a good piece
below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of
something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the
canoe, and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand,
and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and
forks on the place-- pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking.
Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the
willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of
rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough or a
creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don't know
where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all

Thesaurus
bleed: (v) run, ooze, phlebotomize, dumped: (adj) discarded, vacant, darned, distressed.
leak, percolate, shed blood, trickle, derelict, deserted. slough: (n) bog, fen, quagmire,
hemorrhage, fleece; (n) ache, smart. hunting: (n, v) chase; (v) battue; (n) morass, mire, swamp, marish,
bottoms: (n) swamp, lees, residue. exploration, pursuit, search, ducking, sludge; (v) shed, exuviate, cast.
carried: (adj) conveyed, imported. beagling, coursing, frisking, venery, smashed: (adj) drunk, inebriated,
drip: (n, v) drop, trickle, leak, escape; shooting. intoxicated, broken, sloshed,
(n) leakage; (v) distill, weep, seep, prairie: (n) meadow, lea, grassland, plastered, crushed, tipsy, blotto,
trill, fall, percolate. ANTONYMS: (v) field, savanna, steppe, heath, bush, besotted, tight.
flow, pour, surge, flood. jungle, desert, pampas. sunk: (adj) sunken, undone, finished,
ducks: (n) geese, family Anatidae, ripped: (adj) rent, blasted, lacerated, ruined, profound, immersed,
birds, Anseriformes, Anatidae, game drugged, depressed, desolate, damaged, lowed, lying flat; (v) cut
birds, order Anseriformes, wildfowl. desolated, deuced, devastated, up, dashed.
 Mark Twain 43

the way to the lake. I dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had
been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it
wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.%
It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some
willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to
a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to
smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'll follow the track of that
sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. And they'll follow
that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to
find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the
river for anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't
bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson's
Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever
comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and
pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place.
I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up
I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little
scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon
was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black
and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it
looked late, and smelt late. You know what I mean--I don't know the words to
put it in.
I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when
I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It
was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks
when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it
was--a skiff, away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-
coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it.
Thinks I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me
with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water,

Thesaurus
abreast: (adv) opposite, acquainted, leak: (n) crevice, disclosure, breach, fight shy, shy.
off, au fait, alongside, on one side, hole, chink; (v) leak out, dribble, unhitch: (v) unyoke, unharness,
abeam; (adj) near, aligned, reveal, disclose, trickle; (n, v) release. loosen, unfasten, detach, unyoked.
knowledgeable; (prep) against. ANTONYM: (v) flood. whetstone: (n) oilstone, rub, friction,
ANTONYMS: (adv) uninformed, lost, paddle: (n) blade, vane, oar, rowing; fault, imperfection, chance,
unaware. (v) dabble, dodder, row, pull, spank, caoutchouc, failing, hindrance,
bite: (n, v) nip, cut, taste, hurt, pain; (v) toddle, totter. whetstone test, unevenness.
pinch, chew, erode, gnaw, eat; (n) sackful: (n) sack, pouch, bag, pocket, willow: (n) willow tree, black willow,
morsel. ANTONYMS: (n) lot, whole, poke, sac, dismission, discharge, arctic willow, arroyo willow, balsam
mildness. release, carrier bag, containerful. willow, bay willow, bearberry
browsing: (n) feeding, eating, reading, slink: (n, v) sneak; (v) creep, lurk, slip, willow, white willow, silver willow;
bruting. prowl, steal, glide, slide; (n) flinch, (adj) mourning, weeds.
44 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it
was pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.%
I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream soft but
quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a
quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I
would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me. I got
out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and
let her float. I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe,
looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when
you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And
how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the
ferry landing. I heard what they said, too--every word of it. One man said it was
getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said this
warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it
over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told
him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said
let him alone. The first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she
would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he
had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he
hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk
got further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I
could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long
ways off.
I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson's Island,
about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up out of
the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any
lights. There warn't any signs of the bar at the head--it was all under water now.
It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the
current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side
towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I

Thesaurus
brisk: (adj) bracing, agile, alive, bright, ferry: (n) ferryboat, boat, pass, ship, moonshine: (adj, n) moonlight,
lively, acute, alert, energetic, passage, ford; (v) convey, transport, rubbish; (adj) moonbeam, bosh,
sprightly; (adj, v) quick, smart. transfer, take, bring. moonglade; (n) bootleg, moon, rot, all
ANTONYMS: (adj) soporific, float: (v) drift, swim, waft, hover, ride, talk, corn liquor, nonsense.
sluggish, hesitant, tedious, fly; (n, v) buoy, blow; (n) raft, floater, mumble: (n, v) murmur, whisper,
temperate, inactive, civil, torpid, bobber. ANTONYM: (v) reject. hum, rumble; (v) grumble, chew,
slack, serious, lethargic. hail: (v) address, cry, acclaim, mutter, jabber, talk, utter, verbalize.
dent: (v) indent, cut; (n, v) hollow, applaud, summon, accost, fall, cheer, o'clock: (n) period, hours.
nick, dint, pit, impress; (n) recess, salute; (n, v) call; (n) greeting. steamboat: (n) liner, steamer, steam
depression, indentation, blemish. ANTONYMS: (v) ignore, criticize. boat, steamship, cruise ship, ocean
ANTONYMS: (v) bolster, repair, fill; landed: (adj) land, territorial, allodial, liner.
(n) hump, boost, lump. predial. timbered: (adj) wooden, forested.
 Mark Twain 45

knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in; and when I made fast
nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside.%
I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on
the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile
away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber-
raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the
middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of
where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars, there! heave her head to
stabboard!" I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side.
There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and laid
down for a nap before breakfast.

Thesaurus
gray: (adj) dull, dim, bleak, gloomy, lantern: (n) beacon, light, dormer, intelligible, apparent, manifest,
pale, grizzled, hoary, leaden, old, tube, lighting fitting, bedside light, obvious, clear, simple; (adj, n) flat,
overcast; (n) grizzle. ANTONYMS: street light, street lamp, oil lamp, homely, humble. ANTONYMS: (adj)
(adj) sunny, cheerful, clear, youthful. lime light, lanthorn. elaborate, unclear, multicolored,
heard: (n) hearing. lights: (n) illumination, burn, lung, mottled, ornate, concealed, attractive,
heave: (n, v) cast, fling, raise, gasp, spacing material. confused, fussy, obscure, patterned.
toss, lift; (v) chuck, haul, elevate, mile: (n) MI, nautical mile, land mile, stepped: (v) advanced, gone, stopen.
pitch, billow. ANTONYMS: (v) push, knot, Swedish mile, international stream: (adj, n, prep, v) current, course;
drop. nautical mile, Admiralty mile, air (n, prep, v) flood; (n, v) brook, run,
laid: (adj) layed, lay, place, placed, put, mile, geographical mile, Roman mile; crowd, jet, gush; (n) river; (v) pour,
situated, arranged, determined, (v) furlong. swarm. ANTONYMS: (n) shortage;
dictated, hardened, ordered. plain: (adj) ordinary, comprehensible, (v) drizzle.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 LECTURE VI.

THE GREAT TOWNS, THEIR INDUSTRIES

AND
COMMERCE.
1. Five hundred, six hundred, and seven hundred years
Group of Tin ago Britain was what Australia is now. It supplied
Miners. nearly the whole of Europe with wool. As we have
2. seen in the last lecture, the agriculture and the
Tin Mine Shaft. pasture of Britain are still important, but now, of
course, Britain’s fame is chiefly as a mining, an
3. industrial, and a commercial country. Even in
Four Hundred
Fathom Level, antiquity there was one part of the land which was
Dolcoath. important on account of its mines. The oldest mines
of Britain are tin mines, and they are still worked,
4.
although the tin of the world is now mainly got in the
Tin Mine Boring Malay Peninsula, and the neighbouring islands.
Machine. Singapore is now the great tin port of the world, but
5. at no very distant time tin was obtained almost
In a Tin Mine. exclusively in Britain—in that part of it which forms
the rocky peninsula of Cornwall stretching out into
the western seas. The Cornish miners, though they no longer find
much employment in Cornwall, are the most skilled miners of gold in
South Africa. So we find within the British Empire three districts
which are very closely related to one another by the bond of tin:
Cornwall in England, the Malay Peninsula, and the gold mines of
South Africa. Here is a group of Cornish miners, men from whose
race have come not a few leaders in other parts of the Empire.
These are two of them descending a shaft into the depths of the
earth to work for tin. One of the deepest mines in the world is in
Cornwall. And here is a passage in the depths of the earth with rails
laid for trolleys to run along, carrying the ore which is to be raised to
the surface and there treated, so that from rock is obtained shining
metallic tin. In this slide we see miners at work on the face of the
rock, drilling holes in the hard stone into which explosives are
inserted with the object of shattering the stone and splitting the ore
into fragments that can be handled. Observe with how little clothing
they work, for at these depths the temperature is high. Our final
scene in a tin mine is comparatively near to the surface.

6. But, although some tin is still got, tin mines are

Map showing now relatively unimportant in the life of the country.
Coalfields of There has developed in Britain in the last century and
United
Kingdom.
a-half a vast system of industries based, not merely
on the use of human muscles, but on power derived
7. from the burning of coal. Here is a map showing, in
Map showing
distribution of
black, the coalfields of Britain. They lie chiefly in
Population South Wales, in the Midlands, in the North of
about the England, and in Central Scotland. Those of Ireland
Coalfields.
produce but little. Compare this map with the next,
which shows, in red, all the districts of denser population. It is
obvious that of all the larger areas coloured red, only the London
district is devoid of coal, and coal can easily be brought to London
by sea. These facts tell us at once that in their modern growth the
activities of the British population are based chiefly upon coal.
Three-quarters of all the people in Britain live within the areas
coloured pink, which measure not more than about one-twentieth of
the British Isles. In the main, therefore, Britain is a country of town
and factory populations, and in lesser degree only of agricultural and
fishing people. A hundred years ago the population of the whole
British Islands was not more than 16 millions, and it was mainly
agricultural. To-day it numbers 43 millions, and is mainly industrial.

8. Coal is won from the depths of the earth, where it

A seam at is laid in great sheets, which are known as coal
 Glasgow seams, and these are underlaid and overlaid by the
dissected to
show the origin solid rock. Immediately under each coal seam there
of Coal. is usually a layer of clay, and if you examine that clay
you will often find in it, here and there, threads of
coal penetrating downward from the seam above. These are
obviously the blackened roots of trees. Sometimes, in the coal itself,
you will find complete stumps of trees preserved. For, in fact, the
coal seams are nothing more than the buried, rotten forests of vastly
ancient times. You know that in our great tropical forests when the
wood rots it turns brown, and even black. Wherever wood grows old
in the use of men it darkens. So we see that though the climate of
Britain is cold, and though vegetation does not grow with the same
colossal power as when driven by tropical rain and heat, yet buried
deep in the rocks of Britain there is compensation in the shape of
ancient timber called coal. The sunshine and rain of far-off times are
thus the chief bases of British prosperity, just as the sunshine and
rain of to-day are the chief bases of our prosperity in the tropics.
Most of the industries of Britain are in the North or North
Midlands. In these parts, you will remember, we are mainly away
from the better agricultural districts. The smiling fertile cornfields
and rich lowland meadows are replaced by bleak uplands with stone
walls and few trees.

9. Here is a row of cottages where dwell colliers of

Colliers’ houses. the north of England. What a contrast with the
homes of the agricultural labourers which we saw in
the last lecture! And yet the colliers who work in the coal mines are
much better paid than the labourers on the farms.

10. This is a coal mine, or, as it is called, a colliery.

View of Colliery Here is the chimney of the pumping station which
above ground. lifts water from the mine, lest it should be flooded by
underground springs. The same engine is used to
raise the coal to the surface.
Next we come into the yard of the colliery, to the pit-mouth itself.
These colliers have done their spell of work, and have just come to
 11. the surface again, all blackened and grimy with coal
The Pit-mouth. dust. Each of them holds a small lamp of a special
kind. It is so made that the flame cannot pass out,
even though the lamp be upset. The object is to prevent explosions
of the coal gas which is often disengaged in the mine. Occasionally
the colliers are careless and open the lamps, and as a consequence
we sometimes hear of a terrible explosion with great loss of life.

12. This is the cage ascending to the surface, bringing

In the Cage. miners begrimed with coal dust, and each carrying
his lamp and his can of liquid needed for drink in the
13. depths of the earth, because the heat is there great,
At work on a
four-foot Seam. and there is much perspiration from labour. Next we
see the actual working of the mine. The roof is
14. supported by timbers, which are now brought to
Levelling in a
Coal Mine. Britain from foreign countries in great quantity,
because Britain is so populous that men cannot
afford the space for the forests in which to grow the wood needed
for the mines. Note the vertical thickness of the coal. It is to this that
the towering forest of former times has been compressed in its ruin.
Here with his lamp hung to one of the posts is the miner, stripped to
his work, using his pickaxe to detach the lumps of coal. And here,
finally, with the seam of coal more plainly visible than in the darker
corner we have just left, are miners occupied in levelling, and so
guiding the course of the tunnel. The coal is taken in trucks from the
face where it is worked to the foot of the shaft, and thence raised to
the surface.
We must now consider the uses to which the coal of England is
put. We have already seen it exported to drive British ships in
foreign seas. We have also noted the chimneys to the houses in
Britain, which are warmed by coal fires. But the chief use is in the
industries which give employment to so many millions of the British
people.

15. Now, the industries are chiefly textile, or of iron

Rope making. and steel. Men require clothing, and this is mostly
woven or textile; and they require tools with which to work, and
these are chiefly of iron and steel. Here is the simplest form of
textile industry—the manufacture of ropes and mats. All the textiles
are made of fibres, which are mostly got either from the stalks and
other fibrous parts of plants, or from the wool and hair of animals.
In olden times men clothed themselves with skins, and still do in
some barbarous lands; but in these days nearly all the world wears
clothes that are woven, that is to say, that are made of fibres laid
across one another and interlaced so that they form a sheet of
material. The roughest fibres are fit for the making of rope. By the
weaving of rope, mats of one sort or another are manufactured.
Here we have a factory for rope and mat making. The fibres are
being laid straight, and side by side, in the machinery. We notice
that the machines are driven by endless straps, worked from a long
shaft running through the top of the shed. The shaft is rotated by
the action of a steam engine, which is, of course, driven by the
burning of coal. Now, since the machinery was made with the help
of coal-heat, it follows that coal has been utilised twice over in this
process—for the making and also for the driving of the machinery.
One other thing we notice, the number of women employed to
control the machinery. Women used formerly to spin and weave
cloth in their own homes. With the introduction of machinery and
steam-power they now have to perform the same work in factories.

16. There are two essential processes in all textile

Linen Spinning manufacture—spinning and weaving. In its simplest
Mill. form spinning is the making of rope, and weaving is
17. the interlacing of rope in two directions for the
Dobbie Loom. purpose of making a mat. When the rope is a
delicate thread we call it yarn, and when the mat is a
18. fine cotton or linen fabric we call it cloth. Here we
Jacquard Loom.
have a linen mill seen from outside, and here a loom
for the weaving of the spun flax. A power loom driven by steam can
do the work of very many pairs of hands. See the spindles on which
the yarn is wound, and the cloth coming from the loom. In a hand
loom there would be but a single spindle. So that you can imagine
the immense multiplication of power due to machinery. Here is
another kind of loom. Note, again, the endless straps and the
overhead shafting connected with the engine.

19. Let us glance for just a moment at this larger mill,

A Bradford Mill. at this wool-spinning room, and at this cotton-
spinning room. They require no further description,
20. for they merely differ in scale from those we have
Wool Spinning.
already studied.
21.
Cotton
And now we will turn from the making of textiles,
Spinning. which employs several millions of the inhabitants of
Britain, and gives rise to perhaps the largest single
22. trade of Britain, the cotton trade. Let us turn from
Glass Blowing.
that to consider the other great group of the
23. industries, those which are based essentially on the
Glass Blowing. melting of metals by the heat got from coal. One of

the simplest and one of the oldest forms of this is the making and
blowing of glass. It is true that glass is not a metal, but for industrial
purposes it has many properties somewhat similar to those of
metals. It can be melted, for instance, and worked while hot. Here
we have a man engaged in blowing glass which has been melted by
the use of coal. And here, when he has blown the bottle, he is
shaping it with tools.

24. A somewhat similar industry, although not

Pottery making. involving the melting of the material in the first
instance, is the making of pottery. Pottery was
25.
Pottery making.
formerly made in the homes of the people, and the
potter’s wheel was worked by the foot, as it still is in
the East. But nowadays the wheels upon which the pots are shaped
are driven by steam. Here we have women at work upon pottery.
And in the next slide are men engaged upon a similar process, but
their tools are driven by the foot. The pottery that is being made in
this instance is of the costly kind, which is produced in small
quantity, and demands artistic labour. It requires so little power that
it is not worth while to drive the machinery by steam. In large
measure steam has not replaced human skill for the very finest
work.
But the most important by far of the industries which are based on
the use of coal for the melting of the raw material are those which
deal with iron and steel.

26. Here we have a group of blast furnaces, where the

Blast Furnace. iron ore is mixed with coal and burnt. The molten
iron flows out from the bottom of the furnace and
27. cools into long blocks known as “pigs.” It would be
Rolling Steel.
impossible to show all the processes through which
the pig iron is passed in the manufacture of the many wares made
of iron and steel. Let us glance at a very few. Here we have a man
inserting a white-hot, thick, short block of metal into a machine. He
will lift it from that plate with his pincers and will insert it under the
roller. The roller, crushing it, will reduce it in thickness and will
greatly elongate it to this hot flexible rope. When cold, a steel rod
will be the result.

28. Next we see a great sheet of steel coming out of

Making an the furnace, not melted but white hot. This is to be
Armour Plate. used as an armour plate on a battleship. We see how
that the men are clothed and masked for the purpose
of standing the heat, and how that they are armed with tools
appropriate for the handling of the hot metal.
29. In this slide hot blocks of metal are being
Steam Hammer. hammered under a steam hammer. Again we notice
that the man is clothed and masked in order that the
heat may not injure him. The hammer is descending rapidly with
repeated blows upon these two pieces of white hot metal, and,
striking them as a blacksmith will strike two pieces of iron on his
anvil, it forces them together and welds them into a single piece.
Now we must remember that coal is here used no less than four
times. It heats the metal to be forged, it raises the hammer, and
beforehand it was used in the smelting of the metal from its ore, and
also in the making of the hammer.
 30. But the rolling of plates and bars of steel, and the
Boring a large hammering of blocks of hot metal together, are but
Gun. the first and roughest processes in the highly
31. complicated industries whereby from rocks of the
Building an earth are obtained those wonderful complicated tools
Ironclad. of civilization which we call railways, and bridges,
and locomotive engines, and mail steamers, and
32.
S.S. “Oceanic” battleships, and guns, and—perhaps most delicate of
in Dock. all—the machine-tools used in factories for the
making of machinery. Let us consider a few instances
33.
The launching
of these more advanced processes. Here we see one
of an Ironclad. of the finest exhibitions of power—the boring of a
steel gun while cold. Next we see the building of a
battleship, also made of steel. Then follows the sight of the screws
of a great ship. These screws are made of the most finely tempered
metal, lest they should break under the constant strain to which they
are exposed. Finally we have here the launching of a battleship—an
occasion of rejoicing and holiday at the close of a year’s task. As she
floats she displaces perhaps 15,000 tons of water. The great ship is
of steel from end to end. It is the product of the work of thousands
of people—the colliers who got the coal from the colliery; the miners
who got the iron ore from the mine; the makers of iron who smelted
the iron from the ore; the makers of steel who converted the iron
into steel; the rollers of bars and plates, the builders of the ship and
the builders of the engines. Presently there will have to be added
also the builders of the guns. Then we must not forget the people
who made the machinery wherewith these people worked, and also
the people who built the houses, and made the clothes, and grew
the food, which they needed for their living. Thus a whole society of
people is required to construct the ships which defend the Empire of
the King.
Let us turn for a moment to consider the large towns in which the
British industries are carried on. We have here a phase of the
national life very different from the quiet existence of the little
market towns which we saw in the last Lecture. Outside London,
there are some twenty very large towns in the British Isles. There
are three of them—Glasgow, Liverpool-Birkenhead, and Manchester-
Salford, each of which has a million people.

34. This is a crowd of workers, pouring out of a factory

Men Leaving at the close of their work. Do you note the tall
Works. chimneys of the factory in the background? There are
35. probably a hundred other factories in the
A Hospital neighbourhood. You may imagine the organisation
Interior. that is needed to supply the wants of these great
populations. Food must be gathered from the country
36.
A School districts and from distant parts of the world, and
Interior. must be brought in daily to the crowded areas where
millions of men live and little or no food is grown.
37.
And all the wants of the people must be attended to
A Public Park. on a similar great scale. Here, for instance, is a
hospital, in which the workers who chance to be
38. injured in the pursuit of their daily duties are tended.
The Municipal
Buildings, Do you see the nurses moving about between the
Glasgow. beds? This is a school where the children are taught.
Every child is compelled by law to receive instruction.
And this is a park such as have been provided for recreation in the
great provincial towns—Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham,
Glasgow, and others. Here, finally, we have the Town Hall in the
centre of one of these towns, whence a million of people are
governed, and where in these times even the generation of
electricity for the supply of the factories is organized. Note the
monuments erected to commemorate the services of those citizens,
who either locally in the town, or in the Government in London, or in
the parts of the Empire beyond the seas, have deserved well of
people and King.
One thing more remains to be considered. We have seen
something of the metropolis, something of the rural districts, the
small country towns, the fishing ports, and the great industrial
towns. But, in these days, the whole land of Britain is knit closely
into a single community by the facts that the greater part of its food
and raw material for manufacture must be distributed from the
seaports, that modern means of communication have so reduced
space within the islands that almost every village has a telegraph
office, and that the extreme ends of the island are not more than 24
hours apart by express train. Let us look at a few aspects of these
most recent developments.

39. Here is a large corn mill, and here the interior of

Corn Mill, such a mill. The grain is lifted from the importing ship
exterior. and carried on these straps, running on rollers, to the
40. place where it is to be stored. And here is a scene of
Corn Mill, interest to all Britons who go to the remoter frontiers
interior. of the Empire. It represents the packing of biscuits in
tin boxes for export. The food having been imported
41.
Packing is carried into all the land by railways. The British
Biscuits at railways are, of course, relatively short, but run
Reading. through dense populations, and are probably the
42. most efficient in the world. Here is a recent express
Locomotive engine capable of hauling a passenger train without
Engine, Great stopping for 300 miles. Next we see such an express
Western
Railway.
running on a four-line track and picking up water for
its boiler from troughs laid between the rails. Time is
43. very valuable in Britain. Here, as an instance, is the
Four-line Track
with London
interior of a travelling post office, which runs on
and North express trains. The letters are sorted on the road,
Western and the mail bags thrown out and caught up at fixed
Express.
points while the train runs.
44. Perhaps the grandest feat of engineering in
In a Travelling
Post Office.
connection with the British railways is the Forth
Bridge. See how small the houses appear when
45. compared with it.
The Forth
Bridge. But another revolution in all the conditions of
British life is now preparing. Electricity is being used
46.
Electric Power to distribute power from great fixed engines, and
locomotive steam engines have already been
 Station, displaced on the shorter lines. Here is part of the
Chelsea.
interior of the largest power station in the world,
47. where is generated the electricity for four railways
Electric Train which traverse London. This is the boiler house, with
on Metropolitan
District
automatic stokers. And last we have an electric train.
Railway. You note the absence of a locomotive.
Thus we see how the 43 million people of Britain co-operate in a
single vast complex machine. But we must remember that it is not
only the present generation which has made Britain such as we see
it, but many millions in the past, the results of whose work we of to-
day have inherited.
 LECTURE VII.

THE DEFENCES OF THE EMPIRE.

Though we are so many miles away, I think you will agree that in the
past six Lectures we have seen something of the two islands which
are the centre of the British Empire. These islands are interesting to
us because the great Empire of which we are a part has grown from
them. Let us devote this last Lecture to the Empire as a whole. Let
us learn how it is held together, and how it is defended, so that
there may be peace and justice in all its parts.

1. In this map we see once more that the British

Map of Empire Empire consists of a large number of separate lands
with Naval scattered over the world. We have first of all the two
Bases.
British Islands set in the sea off the coast of Europe.
They are separated by water from the military powers of Europe,
and have no land frontier over which invasion may come. Then we
have in North America the great Dominion of Canada, encompassed
on the east and north and on most of the west by the ocean, with
land frontiers only towards the United States. Next we have the
Australasian Colonies, all of them islands, as in the case of the
Mother Country. There are four considerable islands in the South
Seas—Australia, Tasmania, and the North Island and the South
Island of New Zealand. Crossing the Indian Ocean we come to South
Africa, with water on three sides. Although South Africa appears to
be neighboured by other States on the north, yet it is wholly
different from India or Canada, or one of the great powers of
Europe, because the adjacent territories are only thinly peopled,
mainly by savages. South Africa is, therefore, isolated almost as
effectively as is Australia. Then we come to India with ocean to the
south-east and to the south-west, with the bleak tableland of Tibet
to the north-east, and with accessible neighbours only to the north-
west. Even Egypt and the Soudan, which appear to have great
lengths of land frontier, are in effect detached by the desert, and
hardly less secure than if they were surrounded by water. Lastly, we
have on either side of the Atlantic West Africa and the West India
colonies. These are the larger lands which form the British Empire,
or are protected by it. In addition, there are many islands—some of
them wealthy and important out of all proportion to their size,
because they are trade centres or are covered with tropical
plantations.

2. But the mere enumeration of the lands of the

The Cables of British Empire gives little idea of what that Empire
the Indian really is. All these lands, severed by ocean and
Ocean.
mountain and desert, would be separate countries
were they not tied together by some 9,000 steamers and many
thousand miles of submarine electric cable. Therefore, the steamers
upon the ocean and the cables upon the bed of the ocean must be
counted as important elements in the material fabric of the Empire.
It is they, and they alone, which give it unity.
Now it is clear that for practical purposes the British Empire has
only two land frontiers—the one on the north-west of India, the
other on the south of Canada. It is therefore obvious that an attack
upon any other part of the Empire must be conducted over the
water. Even if there were attack upon the land frontiers, the enemy
would undoubtedly operate also upon the ocean for the purpose of
breaking the communications between the different parts of the
Empire. He would seek to destroy the steamers and cables, so that
one part of the Empire might not send help to another part. The first
interest, therefore, of every section of the British Empire, is that
there should be peace upon the ocean, so that the steamers may ply
regularly and that the cables may not be disturbed. If the British
Navy were defeated, the Empire could no longer exist.
 Do you remember the map which was shown early in the first
lecture, giving the lands of the world in black so that they might
contrast with the blue sea? And do you remember that the object of
that map was to prove that all the lands of the world, even the
greatest continents, are surrounded by the ocean, and are in reality
islands? The ocean, therefore, is a single vast sheet of water
covering three-quarters of the globe. A squadron of ships can in a
voyage of about a month go to any point on the coasts of the world.
Clearly then one Navy will suffice for the sea defence of every land
in the British Empire, for if the enemy’s fleet is attacking one part, a
British fleet can go to that part, sure that the opponent fleet is not in
any other part of the world. But if the enemy divided his fleet then
the British fleet can be divided to meet him. The battleships of
Britain are moving fortresses, which can be carried over three-
quarters of the world instead of being fixed at a single point as they
would be if they were on land.
I need hardly remind you, however, that a ship can only keep the
sea while it has coal and food. Therefore, although one Navy is
enough—providing it be strong—for the defence of every part of the
British Empire, yet it is essential that wherever a British fleet may go
it should find at no great distance British ports ready from time to
time to equip it afresh. It is in Britain’s power in one short month to
send a great fleet of battleships to any part of the ocean where they
may be required. They would arrive ready for action, because at
each stage of their journey there would be British harbours to
replenish their stores and to make good defects. On the direct route
to India, for instance, we have Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden. On the
alternative route, round the Cape of Good Hope, are Sierra Leone,
Ascension, St. Helena, Simonstown, and Mauritius. Therefore, while
the Navy defends all parts of the Empire, each part has also a duty
to the Navy.
The most necessary lesson to learn in regard to the sea power of
Britain is that even though no battle fleet should during long years
visit our own waters, yet our commerce and our peace depend upon
the Navy. Owing to the British sea power Hong Kong, for instance,
now stands fourth among all the ports of the world in the tonnage of
its shipping. It is solely because the battleships of the world, except
those of our ally, Japan, are at present in western waters that the
British battleships are concentrated there to watch them.
Do you realise the economy of the British Empire? One Navy
defends one-fifth of all the lands on the globe. Were India and
Canada and Australia and South Africa separate states, each must
maintain a navy, and the navy of each would be useless unless it
were strong enough to contend with the other great navies of the
world. Even the resources of India would not suffice to maintain a
great fleet without very heavy taxation. Indian security and
prosperity are at present wholly in the keeping of the British Navy.

3. Let us consider that Navy for a few moments as it

First-Class exists at the present time. It consists in the first
Battleship, place of battleships, each bearing a few powerful
H.M.S.
“Dreadnought.”
guns. The ship is partly clad in steel armour to resist
hostile shot. The guns can fire with accuracy to a
distance of several miles. The crew numbers some 800 skilled men.
The engines have the strength of 20,000 horses. The whole vast
fortress, with her regiment of men, can be propelled over the ocean
at the rate of 20 miles an hour. It is clear, however, that the
strongest battleship afloat would run the risk of defeat if she were
attacked simultaneously by several hostile battleships. Therefore, the
British battleships move in squadrons of six or eight, and to ensure
victory these squadrons are grouped in fleets, and all the battle-
fleets of the British Navy are now gathered in Atlantic and
Mediterranean waters, because it happens that just now all other
battle-fleets but that of our ally are collected in those waters. This is
the reason why the British battleships are not distributed—here a
ship and there a ship—over all the world, but are gathered together
in one part. Should occasion require it, they can go together to any
other part. Those, therefore, who ask that battleships should be
sent, a few here and a few there, to defend every threatened port,
do not know the first principle of success in war. If you divide your
force, even a small fleet—if very efficient—might defeat you by
fighting each of your divisions in turn. In war you must concentrate
to win.

4. So much for the battleship. But here is a ship

First-Class appearing as large and important as any battleship.
Cruiser. H.M.S. It is a first-class armoured cruiser. Her engines are, it
“Carnarvon.”
anything, even more powerful than those of a
battleship. She carries more coal and can keep the sea for a longer
time without returning to port, but her guns are not quite so
powerful as those of a battleship, nor is her armour quite so thick.
There are other cruisers, somewhat less powerful than armoured
cruisers, which are said to be protected, because they carry less
defence against shot, and there are still others known as scouts,
whose name reveals their special purpose. Now what is the object of
these cruisers? This is an important question, because the British
Navy contains more cruisers of one kind and another than
battleships, and yet victory in battle is determined by strength of
battleships more than of cruisers. The first object of a cruiser is to
obtain intelligence for the battleships. Although a battleship can
move fast, yet she cannot move so fast as ships that have not to
bear such vast weights. The cruisers find out for the battleships
what is going on in seas around, and whether the enemy is near. Of
course they must be prepared to fight the enemy’s cruisers, and to
prevent them from approaching to gain information for their own
admiral. In these days cruisers communicate with the battle-fleets by
wireless telegraphy, and by acting together, so that a message is
taken up and passed on by successive ships, an immense area of
sea may be covered, and even the distant position of the enemy’s
fleet may be ascertained.
But the cruisers have also another function, which is to defend
commerce. Here again you must not measure the protection given to
our commerce by the frequency with which you see our cruisers. In
time of war it would not as a rule be the duty of cruisers to
accompany or, as a phrase is, to convoy our merchant ships from
port to port. You will remember that we have 9,000 ocean-going
steamers, and we should have to build an immense and costly fleet
of cruisers, if we were going to protect them all by the method of
convoy. Let us try to understand the action of cruisers by comparing
them to policemen upon the land. In almost every community there
are a certain number of thieves, who from time to time break into
houses and steal, but we do not protect our houses by having a
policeman always on guard in each. Our method is to detect the
thieves and to arrest them. In other words, our aim is not so much
to defend our houses from robbery, as to remove the thieves from
society. Precisely in the same way our cruisers would not so much
defend our merchantmen, as hunt down and destroy the cruisers of
the enemy who broke the peace of the ocean. Our aim would be so
to clear the water of hostile cruisers that our liners might steam with
the same regularity and certainty in time of war as in time of peace.

5. Battles at sea are won by the use of battleships to

First-class fight and of cruisers to give information and to
Destroyer. prevent the enemy from gaining information. But
H.M.S.
“Derwent.”
near the coast, and even on the high seas when the
larger ships have been injured, there is scope for
6. smaller vessels, which launch torpedoes against the
Submarine Boat
enemy. Some of these vessels float on the surface
passing the
“Victory.” and are known as destroyers. They move with great
speed so as to avoid the enemy’s shot, and their best
opportunity is by night or in thick weather. Others dive below the
surface and are known as submarines. They seek to avoid the
enemy by passing out of his sight, and might thus deliver an attack
by day.
Now these are the parts of a fleet. The battleships which do the
serious fighting, the cruisers which cover the battleships, and the
torpedo craft which are used to complete the destruction of an
enemy’s fleet or to defend narrow and difficult waters, where ships
cannot move with speed and freedom.
We need not think, however, that a fleet must always fight. If it
were strong enough, the enemy would not risk a battle, but would
take refuge in his harbours. It would be the duty of a British fleet to
watch these harbours closely in order to attack the enemy at once if
he came out. Our commerce could then proceed peacefully, because
the enemy would have no ships in position to attack it. So you see
that a strong Navy makes for peace, whereas a weak Navy
challenges to battle.
Before we leave this picture of a submarine let us note alongside
the old sailing battleship, Nelson’s “Victory.” You see the three white
stripes along her sides, each pierced by many portholes. In the time
of Nelson there was a gun in each porthole, so that the old
battleship sailed upon the wind and fought with many small guns.

7. Nowadays a fleet moves by steam and consumes

Collier shipping much coal. The best coal for fighting purposes is that
Coal at Cardiff. which gives little smoke, and thus does not reveal a
fleet to the enemy or obscure tactical signalling.
Nearly all the smokeless coal of the world is got from South Wales in
the British Islands. Here is a steam collier shipping such coal at the
port of Cardiff. This vessel carries about 2,300 tons of coal, and can
be loaded in two hours. Each of the four tips which you see is
capable of shipping a 10-ton waggon every minute, so that the ship
receives 40 tons a minute. One of our great fleets, such as the
Mediterranean Fleet consumes about a shipload of coal every day.
Thus you realise of what significance would be coaling stations of
the Indian Ocean should it ever again be necessary to send a battle-
fleet into our waters.

8. Now let us go quickly through a few typical scenes

Quarter-deck of on a man-of-war and let us learn something of the
H.M.S. life of the sailors who navigate and fight her. This is
“Majestic”
showing 12- the quarter-deck of His Majesty’s Ship, “Majestic.”
inch guns. The two guns which you see have a bore 12 inches in
diameter. Here is a 6-inch quick firing gun with her
9.
Six-gun in
crew in battle position. Do you see the men to the
action. left who are hoisting the ammunition from the depths
of the ship? Here is a nearer view of the same gun.
And here yet another with the gun’s crew, this time not of
 10. bluejackets, but of marines. Every large man-of-war
The same. carries a certain number of men trained to act as
soldiers who are called marines. These help to fight
11. her guns and are sent ashore should it be necessary
Gun in action
(Marines.) to land a force to deal with some local difficulty. Here
we have yet another scene on deck where seamen,
12. or bluejackets as they are called, are hoisting
Hoisting
projectiles. ammunition from the magazine.

13. Men-of-war are built of steel. They are moved by

Officers of coal and steam, and their guns fire armour-piercing
H.M.S. “Fawn” projectiles and shells filled with high explosives. But
in oilskins.
there is one other substance essential to a fleet, and
14. that is brain. A gun, however powerful, is useless
Lieutenant of unless the gunner aims with accuracy. A ship,
H.M.S. “Fawn” however speedy, is comparatively useless unless
in lammy suit.
handled with skill. A fleet, however numerous, may
15. be defeated unless controlled by a good admiral.
Cleaning arms, Therefore the greatest importance is attached in the
H.M.S.
“Diadem.”
British Navy to the efficiency of the men and the
officers. It takes several years to make a seaman,
16. and a bluejacket serves for no less than 12 years, but
it takes longer to make an officer. He begins to learn
Morning Prayer.
as a boy, and he is always afterwards learning. He is
17. taught by his seniors in the service. Therefore you
Sub- will understand that no nation can build up an
Lieutenants at
Field-Gun Drill. effective navy very quickly. For, in the first instance, it
has no officers to teach those who come after. Even
at the end of several years it could only have a few officers of skill.
So you will understand that it has taken several generations to train
the great service to which the naval officers of Britain belong. Here
are four of them in their waterproofs on a wet or rough day. Here is
another in thick clothing for a colder day. Here, to the left of the
picture, is a warrant officer superintending his men while they clean
their rifles. And here, to give you an idea of the comradeship of the
men who spend their lives together in the small space of a ship and
in the presence of danger, is a scene on deck when the ship’s crew
are mustered for morning prayer. One last slide and we must turn
from the navy to the army. Here are some sub-lieutenants at field-
gun drill upon the land. It often happens that our ships must send
men ashore to fight in our land wars, because, naturally, our men-of-
war are very frequently first on the spot, and if the enemy does not
threaten a sea-fight, the sailors are free to defend or to attack
before the soldiers arrive. You may, perhaps, remember that in the
South African war there was a naval brigade at the defence of
Ladysmith.
If you have followed me thus far, I think that you will have little
difficulty in understanding the part in the defence of the Empire
which has to be played by our land forces. If you have fully realised
the necessity for concentrating battleships into great fleets, and for
using cruisers boldly to hunt down the commerce destroyers of the
enemy, you will have learnt that incidentally most of the shores of
the Empire are at times laid open, perhaps not to invasion in force,
but at least to raids by hostile cruisers and small military forces
escorted by them. It would be very costly to tie adequate fleets to
every threatened point. In nine cases out of ten the whole war
would go by, and the enemy would never come into the
neighbourhood of such a tied force. Moreover, defeat in the crucial
battle would be risked in this attempt to give to every commercial
centre the protection for which in panic it cried out.

18. The alternative is to free the fleet for its proper

Cape Town. purpose of attacking the enemy and clearing him
from the ocean, by providing such land forces in each
locality as shall suffice to deal with any likely attack. More especially
is it needful to protect the coaling and refitting stations of the fleet,
in order that in each sea the ships may find the refreshment they
require, and may not have to return to distant ports while the
enemy’s cruisers are left unwatched. Here, for instance, is Cape
Town, a quite likely refuge for our damaged ships in certain
contingencies. It might happen, though it is not very probable, that
Cape Town should be seized by a hostile raiding force, whose aim
was to injure the trade going round the Cape to Australia and New
Zealand. Now it is clear that if a British cruiser squadron had to
watch the Cape it could not hunt for the enemy’s cruisers in the
adjoining ocean. In time of war it might therefore be needful, under
certain circumstances, to maintain in Cape Town and its
neighbourhood such a land force as would suffice to deny the Cape
harbours to the enemy. This is called the local defence of the
Empire.

19. In various parts of British Territory we find local

New South armies intended for the purpose here described. In
Wales Lancers. this slide, for instance, we have a troop of New South

20. Wales Lancers, as typical of the Australian Forces of

Royal Canadian the King. In the next is a battery of Canadian Artillery
Artillery. passing through a street in Ottawa when the winter
snow is on the ground. Then we come to the great
21.
Indian Army. It is composed, as you know, of soldiers
A Bengal of many different races—of Englishmen and
Lancer. Scotchmen, who used formerly to fight with one
22. another in the British Isles—and of such peoples as
the Marathas and the Mohammedans, who used
Madras formerly to fight with one another in India. All are
Lancers.
now combined for the defence of the Empire, so that
23. there may be peace and order from the Himalayas to
Bombay the ocean. Here we have a Bengal Lancer, wearing a
Artilleryman.
medal which he has won in the service of the
24. Emperor; and here a group of Madras Lancers—as
A Goorkha. you see by their stripes non-commissioned officers.
Then follows a Bombay Artilleryman, with a whole
row of medals on his breast, a man who has seen repeated service
in the defence of his country. And then again we have a Goorkha.
These four representatives of the Indian Army, from the east, the
south, the west and the north, must suffice to remind us of the part
we play in the great defensive scheme of the Empire.

25. There are many other local forces in our various

Hong Kong lands. Here for instance are some Sikhs of the Hong
 Regiment. Kong Regiment, and then we have a private of the
26. Malay States Guides. Then, crossing half the world,
Malay States from the east to the west, we come to a soldier of
Guides. the West Indian Regiment, who serve both in the
27.
West Indies and in West Africa. This man we may
West India note is a sergeant, and he wears the Victoria Cross
Regiment. for conspicuous courage. The Victoria Cross may be
won either by an officer or a private, a soldier or a
sailor, of any race throughout the world which serves in the Armies
or the Navy of our Emperor.

28. There are other forces in West Africa besides the

West African West Indian Regiment. Here, for instance, is the
Frontier Force. Lagos Battalion of the West African Frontier Force
29. drawn up on the Parade Ground at Lagos. And here
Soldier of West is a soldier of the Gambia Company of the same
African Frontier force. There are frequent small wars in the wilder
Force.
parts of the West African Colonies and Protectorates,
30. one of which, Nigeria, is half as large as India,
Mounted though of course not so populous.
Infantry in the
Kano-Sokoto Here is a scene typical of the varied difficulties
Expedition, which have to be met by the very varied army of our
1903.
King. Mounted Infantry of West African soldiers,
commanded by white officers, have arrived at some wells, one of
which is to be seen at the foot of the officer on the right.
Unfortunately on this occasion a caravan with cattle had passed and
drawn all the water, so that the column had to move on another 10
or 12 miles. Such are the difficulties to be encountered on the
frontiers of the Empire. It is evident that local men will meet these
difficulties most easily. Each race knows its own land best.
Therefore, while the King has one Navy to defend the whole Empire,
he has many Armies in its different parts. Both the Navy and the
Armies are essential to one another. As long as the Navy keeps the
sea, no great force can invade the British Empire, except on its two
land frontiers. On the other hand, the Navy can only be free to
command the sea if the King’s subjects in each land are prepared to
defend the Naval Bases should it be necessary.

31. There is one thing more, however, to be added.

Map of World Battleships and cruisers can sail over all the ocean,
showing except where covered with the northern and the
position of
important
southern ice. Three-quarters of the world, therefore,
campaigns on lies open to them. But battleships and cruisers
land since cannot sail over the plains and the mountains. It is,
1660.
hence often necessary, when the enemy has been
defeated at sea, to land a British Army in order to achieve a given
end. In this map each red dot, and you see how many there are,
marks the position of a land campaign fought by Britain in the last
two centuries and a-half. The most striking fact is that no dot is
placed in the British Isles. There were a few small battles fought in
Britain during the first hundred years of this time, but no great
campaigns in the sense that there were British campaigns on the
mainlands of Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Had all the small
wars been inserted, some parts of the continents would have been
coloured red all over, for the dots would have joined. Now I think we
may draw this conclusion from the map—that the British Navy has
saved the British Isles from war on land, but that the British Army
has often carried war into the country of its opponents. The Army is
now stationed chiefly in India, because of the Indian Land Frontier in
the north-west, and in the British Isles, but portions of it are also in
Gibraltar, in Malta, in Egypt, in South Africa, and in other parts.
You will remember, of course, that when we visited London in the
second of these Lectures, we came repeatedly to the names
Trafalgar and Waterloo. Trafalgar was Britain’s culminating victory on
the ocean. It was fought by a fleet of battleships in order to free the
ocean from Britain’s enemies, and to allow her commerce to grow
and her Colonies to have peace, although there was war on the
continent of Europe. The battle of Waterloo was Britain’s great
victory on the land, fought in Europe by her Army and that of her
allies ten years after Trafalgar. The Colonies had peace by reason of
Trafalgar, but Waterloo brought the war to an end.
 32. Let us look for a moment at the kind of Navy and
Battle of Army which won these victories. Here is an old print
Trafalgar, of the Battle of Trafalgar, showing the sailing ships,
showing types
of ships.
and the many guns in their sides. Here is the copy of
a picture of the death of the great Admiral Nelson,
33. who fell in the moment of victory at Trafalgar, giving
Death of
Nelson,
his life for his King. Here next is a picture of
showing types Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. The battles of
of sailors. those days were strangely different from the battles
of our time, for rifles and guns had not then a
34.
Wellington at precise aim. Here, for instance, are the close ranks of
Waterloo. the British infantry, formed in square at Waterloo.
That is Wellington, on horseback, speaking to them.
35.
Battle of
Now look at the next picture. It is a battle-field in
Waterloo, South Africa. The men do not even stand up; they lie
British squares apart from one another, each taking shelter behind
prepared to
resist cavalry.
some convenient obstacle. In this particular case the
obstacles are ant-hills, which are frequent in the
36. veldt of South Africa. Here are other scenes in the
South African
Battlefield—
South African War. First we have South African Light
soldiers taking Horse crossing a river; then a field battery fording a
cover on the river. The uniforms of the men are not red, as we
Veldt.
saw them at Waterloo, but “khaki,” that they may be
37. indistinguishable from the ground, and may not
South African present a target for the hostile marksmen.
Light Horse
crossing a Here are Royal Engineers building a bridge, with
River. floating pontoons, in the case of a river which is too
38. deep to be forded. And so we come to scenes in
A Field Battery which greater and greater skill and science are
fording a River. needed and not courage alone. It is for this reason
that preparation is needful, and that the Army must
39.
Royal Engineers be trained and maintained during peace. We have,
building a for instance, here an armoured train on the railway,
Bridge. bearing an electric light, wherewith in the night-time
it searches the ground for opponents, and by throwing the beam of
 40. light on to the clouds, signals to friends in the
Night- distance. Here is the same train under attack.
Signalling from
an Armoured In the South African War more powerful guns were
Train. employed than ever before on land. Here is one
borrowed from a great cruiser for the defence of
41.
Armoured Train Ladysmith. Here, in contrast, is a charge of cavalry.
under Fire. The chief function of cavalry is to obtain information,
and to screen the movements of infantry by repelling
42.
Firing big Gun
hostile cavalry. In fact, the action of cavalry is not
on Land. very unlike that of cruisers at sea.
43. There is a splendid side to war. There are
Cavalry occasionally magnificent scenes in it. There is always
charging at room for skill and courage. But it is none the less
Laing’s Nek.
horrible. Some people have thought that it might be
possible to carry on government without wars and to maintain no
Navy or Army. Heavy taxation would be avoided and much suffering
escaped. As yet, however, no one has shown how this can be
accomplished. The map of the world which you had before you just
now, sprinkled with red dots, each marking a long campaign and
many battles, is evidence of what Britain has gone through in the
defence of her Empire during the last 250 years. The world changes
slowly, and there is at present no likelihood of wars ceasing. If that
be so, the wisest and the most humane course is to be strong so
that enemies may shrink from attack, and peace may be preserved.
It is for this reason that membership of the British Empire is a high
privilege.

44. Something, however, may be done to alleviate

Ambulance at sufferings in war, and by agreement among the
Magersfontein. nations a red cross on a white flag raised on the
battlefield secures the immediate neighbourhood
from being aimed at intentionally, for it indicates that the wounded
are collected there and that the surgeons are at work.

45. Lastly, let us look for a few moments, as we did in

Troops the case of the Navy, at the daily life of the soldier in
 embarking to peace time. We have him here leaving England in a
go Abroad.
trooping steamer for foreign service. Here is an
46. infantry battalion on parade at home, and here
Shropshire another battalion with its camp in the background.
Light Infantry
on Parade.
Next we have some men of the regiment called the
Black Watch. They wear a Scottish uniform—once the
47. garb of the Highlanders who dwell in those far
Northumberlan northern regions of Britain where, as we saw in the
d Fusiliers on
Parade. third Lecture, are still to be found the great red stag
and the golden eagle. This is a group of Artillery at
48. gun drill.
Black Watch— One fact more. The British Army is small among
Types of Men.
the armies of the world. The aim of Britain is not to
49. attack any other power, but merely to defend her
Royal Artillery— Empire. Moreover, Britain can perhaps afford to have
Gun Drill. a small army because she has a great fleet. Under
ordinary circumstances she may count on preventing an enemy from
invading most of her territories, in force at any rate, by the help of
her fleet alone. This is the basis of the British Peace. The use to
which Britain puts her strength is to carry the idea of justice, which
her children learn at home, through all the lands whose happiness
has, in the course of history, been entrusted to her.

50. The Army and the Navy, as everything else in the

Holyrood Empire, are headed by our Emperor-King. For one
Palace, with last moment let us return from the Empire to Britain
Troops on
Parade.
itself. Here is one of the King’s Highland Regiments
before his Scottish palace at Holyrood on his
51. birthday. Here on the same occasion are his Guards
Trooping of the
Colour.
in London, and here his sailors at Portsmouth. For
the sake of order, of justice, and of peace the
52. subjects of the King are loyal, and recognize the duty
Sailors of obedience. Here, finally, is our Emperor-King
Marching Past.
—Birthday Edward, as Admiral of the British Fleet.
Review.
 53. What is the chief lesson we should carry away
The Emperor- from these Lectures? Is it not that the Empire can
King in Naval only be defended as a whole, and with the full co-
Uniform.
operation of all its citizens? Surely then it is the duty
54. of each of us to uphold the flag and to learn
The Flag of the something of the defences of the Empire, and of the
British Empire.
way it should be guarded and its rights and honour
maintained before the world.

Waterlow & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London.

 Transcriber’s Notes

1. Inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling such as “battle-field/battlefield” and

“hay-stack/hay stack” have been maintained.
2. Multiple punctuation errors, such as missing periods, have silently been corrected.
3. On handheld devices a large font size can cause some sidenotes to be displayed
incorrectly in some paragraphs with many sidenotes. Reducing the font size should
correct the problem.
4. Contents: Changed page “22” to page “32”.
5. Page 2: Changed “moutains” to “mountains”.
6. Page 23: New paragraph created at "Next we have the Coronation" in order to
properly align sidenotes in ebook versions.
7. Page 27: Changed “Pekin” to “Peking”.
8. Page 27: New paragraph created at "Here, for instance" in order to properly align
sidenotes in ebook versions.
9. Page 32: Added “a” to “take train”.
10. Page 41: Changed “Phillipines” to “Philippines”.
11. Page 70: Changed “V irginia” to “Virginia”.
12. Page 90: Changed “closelv” to “closely”.
13. Page 93: Changed “snores” to “shores”.
14. Page 97: New paragraph created at "Here are Royal Engineers" in order to properly
align sidenotes in ebook versions.
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