TOM SAWYER ABROAD

England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and all

Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of the

brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under

the Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000

square miles of sand left.”

“Well,” I says, “it clean beats me. Why, Tom,

it shows that the Lord took as much pains makin’ this

Desert as makin’ the United States and all them other

countries.”

Jim says: “Huck, dat don’ stan’ to reason. I

reckon dis Desert wa’n’t made at all. Now you take

en look at it like dis — you look at it, and see ef I’s

right. What’s a desert good for? ‘Taint good for

nuthin’. Dey ain’t no way to make it pay. Hain’t

dat so, Huck?”

“Yes, I reckon.”

“Hain’t it so, Mars Tom?”

“I guess so. Go on.”

“Ef a thing ain’t no good, it’s made in vain, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain?

You answer me dat.”

“Well — no, He don’t.”

“Den how come He make a desert?”

“Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?”

“Mars Tom, I b’lieve it uz jes like when you’s buildin’

a house; dey’s allays a lot o’ truck en rubbish lef’ over.

What does you do wid it? Doan’ you take en k’yart

it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? ‘Course.

Now, den, it’s my opinion hit was jes like dat — dat

de Great Sahara warn’t made at all, she jes HAPPEN’.”

I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it

was the best one Jim ever made. Tom he said the same,

but said the trouble about arguments is, they ain’t

nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don’t prove

nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell,

when you are tuckered out butting around and around

trying to find out something there ain’t no way TO find

out. And he says:

“There’s another trouble about theories: there’s

always a hole in them somewheres, sure, if you look

close enough. It’s just so with this one of Jim’s.

Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How

does it come that there was just exactly enough star-

stuff, and none left over? How does it come there

ain’t no sand-pile up there?”

But Jim was fixed for him and says:

“What’s de Milky Way? — dat’s what I want to

know. What’s de Milky Way? Answer me dat!”

In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It’s only

an opinion, it’s only MY opinion and others may think

different; but I said it then and I stand to it now — it

was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed

Tom Sawyer. He couldn’t say a word. He had that

stunned look of a person that’s been shot in the back

with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for people

like me and Jim, he’d just as soon have intellectual

intercourse with a catfish. But anybody can say that

— and I notice they always do, when somebody has

fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that

end of the subject.

So we got back to talking about the size of the

Desert again, and the more we compared it with this

and that and t’other thing, the more nobler and bigger

and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunt-

ing among the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it

was just the same size as the Empire of China. Then

he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on

the map, and the room she took up in the world.

Well, it was wonderful to think of, and I says:

“Why, I’ve heard talk about this Desert plenty of

times, but I never knowed before how important she

was.”

Then Tom says:

“Important! Sahara important! That’s just the

way with some people. If a thing’s big, it’s important.

That’s all the sense they’ve got. All they can see is

SIZE. Why, look at England. It’s the most important

country in the world; and yet you could put it in

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