TOM SAWYER ABROAD

going to come to any water any more. At last I

couldn’t stand it to look around on them baking plains;

I laid down on the locker, and give it up.

But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she

was! A lake, wide and shiny, with pa’m-trees leaning

over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as

soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything

look so good. It was a long ways off, but that

warn’t anything to us; we just slapped on a hundred-

mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes;

but she stayed the same old distance away, all the

time; we couldn’t seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as

far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn’t get

no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone!

Tom’s eyes took a spread, and he says:

“Boys, it was a MYridge!” Said it like he was

glad. I didn’t see nothing to be glad about. I says:

“Maybe. I don’t care nothing about its name, the

thing I want to know is, what’s become of it?”

Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn’t

speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he

could ‘a’ done it. Tom says:

“What’s BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it’s

gone.”

“Yes, I know; but where’s it gone TO?”

He looked me over and says:

“Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to!

Don’t you know what a myridge is?”

“No, I don’t. What is it?”

“It ain’t anything but imagination. There ain’t

anything TO it. ”

It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that,

and I says:

“What’s the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom

Sawyer? Didn’t I see the lake?”

“Yes — you think you did.”

“I don’t think nothing about it, I DID see it.”

“I tell you you DIDN’T see it either — because it

warn’t there to see.”

It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke

in and says, kind of pleading and distressed:

“Mars Tom, PLEASE don’t say sich things in sich an

awful time as dis. You ain’t only reskin’ yo’ own

self, but you’s reskin’ us — same way like Anna Nias

en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah — I seen it jis’ as plain

as I sees you en Huck dis minute.”

I says:

“Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one

that seen it first. NOW, then!”

“Yes, Mars Tom, hit’s so — you can’t deny it. We

all seen it, en dat PROVE it was dah.”

“Proves it! How does it prove it?”

“Same way it does in de courts en everywheres,

Mars Tom. One pusson might be drunk, or dreamy

or suthin’, en he could be mistaken; en two might,

maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing,

drunk er sober, it’s SO. Dey ain’t no gittin’ aroun’

dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom.”

“I don’t know nothing of the kind. There used to

be forty thousand million people that seen the sun

move from one side of the sky to the other every day.

Did that prove that the sun DONE it?”

“Course it did. En besides, dey warn’t no ‘casion

to prove it. A body ‘at’s got any sense ain’t gwine to

doubt it. Dah she is now — a sailin’ thoo de sky,

like she allays done.”

Tom turned on me, then, and says:

“What do YOU say — is the sun standing still?”

“Tom Sawyer, what’s the use to ask such a jackass

question? Anybody that ain’t blind can see it don’t

stand still.”

“Well,” he says, “I’m lost in the sky with no

company but a passel of low-down animals that don’t

know no more than the head boss of a university did

three or four hundred years ago.”

It warn’t fair play, and I let him know it. I

says:

“Throwin’ mud ain’t arguin’, Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious,

dah’s de lake agi’n!” yelled Jim, just then. “NOW,

Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?”

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