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