that you know something about.”
“Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can’t mean to say I
don’t know about shirts, when, goodness knows, I’s
toted home de washin’ ever sence –”
“I tell you, this hasn’t got anything to do with
shirts. I only –”
“Why, Mars Tom, you said yo’self dat a letter –”
“Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I
only used it as a metaphor.”
That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then
Jim says — rather timid, because he see Tom was get-
ting pretty tetchy:
“Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?”
“A metaphor’s a — well, it’s a — a — a metaphor’s
an illustration.” He see THAT didn’t git home, so he
tried again. “When I say birds of a feather flocks
together, it’s a metaphorical way of saying –”
“But dey DON’T, Mars Tom. No, sir, ‘deed dey
don’t. Dey ain’t no feathers dat’s more alike den a
bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches
dem birds together, you’ll –”
“Oh, give us a rest! You can’t get the simplest
little thing through your thick skull. Now don’t bother
me any more.”
Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased
with himself for catching Tom out. The minute Tom
begun to talk about birds I judged he was a goner,
because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us
put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and
hundreds of them, and that’s the way to find out
about birds. That’s the way people does that writes
books about birds, and loves them so that they’ll
go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to
find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornitholo-
gers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself,
because I always loved birds and creatures; and I
started out to learn how to be one, and I see a bird
setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head
tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I
fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down
from the limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked
him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my
hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like
his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin
over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side
of his head; and, laws! I couldn’t see nothing more
for the tears; and I hain’t never murdered no creature
since that warn’t doing me no harm, and I ain’t going
to.
But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted
to know. I got the subject up again, and then Tom
explained, the best he could. He said when a person
made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of
the people made the welkin ring. He said they always
said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so
he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well,
that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and
said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good
humor again, and he says:
“Well, it’s all right, then; and we’ll let bygones
be bygones. I don’t know for certain what a welkin
is, but when we land in London we’ll make it ring,
anyway, and don’t you forget it.”
He said an erronort was a person who sailed around
in balloons; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be
Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom Sawyer the
Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the
world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn’t
give shucks to be a traveler now.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we got every-
thing ready to land, and we felt pretty good, too, and
proud; and we kept watching with the glasses, like
Columbus discovering America. But we couldn’t see
nothing but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the
sun shut down, and still there warn’t no land any-
wheres. We wondered what was the matter, but