He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:
“Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?”
I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said
nothing, and he went on:
“Well, we’re shut off the other way, too. If we go
back the way we’ve come, there’s the New York
custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others
put together, on account of the kind of cargo we’ve
got.”
“Why?”
“Well, they can’t raise Sahara sand in America, of
course, and when they can’t raise a thing there, the
duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent. on it if
you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it.”
“There ain’t no sense in that, Tom Sawyer.”
“Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me
like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing’s
got sense in it before you go to accusing me of say-
ing it.”
“All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry.
Go on.”
Jim says:
“Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything
we can’t raise in America, en don’t make no ‘stinction
‘twix’ anything?”
“Yes, that’s what they do.”
“Mars Tom, ain’t de blessin’ o’ de Lord de mos’
valuable thing dey is?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Don’t de preacher stan’ up in de pulpit en call it
down on de people?”
“Yes.”
“Whah do it come from?”
“From heaven.”
“Yassir! you’s jes’ right, ‘deed you is, honey — it
come from heaven, en dat’s a foreign country. NOW,
den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin’?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Course dey don’t; en so it stan’ to reason dat
you’s mistaken, Mars Tom. Dey wouldn’t put de tax
on po’ truck like san’, dat everybody ain’t ‘bleeged to
have, en leave it off’n de bes’ thing dey is, which
nobody can’t git along widout.”
Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him
where he couldn’t budge. He tried to wiggle out by
saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but they’d
be sure to remember about it, next session of Con-
gress, and then they’d put it on, but that was a poor
lame come-off, and he knowed it. He said there
warn’t nothing foreign that warn’t taxed but just that
one, and so they couldn’t be consistent without taxing
it, and to be consistent was the first law of politics.
So he stuck to it that they’d left it out unintentional
and would be certain to do their best to fix it before
they got caught and laughed at.
But I didn’t feel no more interest in such things, as
long as we couldn’t git our sand through, and it made
me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom he tried to
cheer us up by saying he would think up another
speculation for us that would be just as good as this
one and better, but it didn’t do no good, we didn’t
believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty
hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could
‘a’ bought a country and started a kingdom and been
celebrated and happy, and now we was so poor and
ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands.
The sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold
and di’monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so
silky and nice, but now I couldn’t bear the sight of it,
it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn’t
ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I
didn’t have it there no more to remind us of what we
had been and what we had got degraded down to.
The others was feeling the same way about it that I
was. I knowed it, because they cheered up so, the
minute I says le’s throw this truck overboard.
Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty
solid work, too; so Tom he divided it up according to
fairness and strength. He said me and him would
clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-