got the same power.”
“All right, then. What is the power that’s in a
candle and in a match?”
“It’s the fire.”
“It’s the same in both, then?”
“Yes, just the same in both.”
“All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop
with a match, what will happen to that carpenter
shop?”
“She’ll burn up.”
“And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a
candle — will she burn up?”
“Of course she won’t.”
“All right. Now the fire’s the same, both times.
WHY does the shop burn, and the pyramid don’t?”
“Because the pyramid CAN’T burn.”
“Aha! and A HORSE CAN’T FLY!”
“My lan’, ef Huck ain’t got him ag’in! Huck’s
landed him high en dry dis time, I tell you! Hit’s
de smartes’ trap I ever see a body walk inter — en
ef I –”
But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and
couldn’t go on, and Tom was that mad to see how neat
I had floored him, and turned his own argument ag’in
him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it,
that all he could manage to say was that whenever he
heard me and Jim try to argue it made him ashamed
of the human race. I never said nothing; I was feel-
ing pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of
a person that way, it ain’t my way to go around crow-
ing about it the way some people does, for I consider
that if I was in his place I wouldn’t wish him to crow
over me. It’s better to be generous, that’s what I
think.
CHAPTER XIII.
GOING FOR TOM’S PIPE:
BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in
the neighborhood of the pyramids, and we clumb
down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and
went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in
there in the middle of the pyramid we found a room and
a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king,
just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was
gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn’t take
no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts
there, of course; not fresh ones, but I don’t like no
kind.
So then we come out and got some little donkeys and
rode a piece, and then went in a boat another piece,
and then more donkeys, and got to Cairo; and all the way
the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as ever I
see, and had tall date-pa’ms on both sides, and naked
children everywhere, and the men was as red as copper,
and fine and strong and handsome. And the city was
a curiosity. Such narrow streets — why, they were
just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and
women with veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing
bright clothes and all sorts of colors, and you wondered
how the camels and the people got by each other in
such narrow little cracks, but they done it — a perfect
jam, you see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn’t
big enough to turn around in, but you didn’t have to
go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his counter,
smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where
he could reach them to sell, and he was just as good as
in the street, for the camel-loads brushed him as they
went by.
Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage
with fancy dressed men running and yelling in front of
it and whacking anybody with a long rod that didn’t
get out of the way. And by and by along comes the
Sultan riding horseback at the head of a procession,
and fairly took your breath away his clothes was so
splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his
stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller
helped me to remember. He was one that had a rod
and run in front.
There was churches, but they don’t know enough to
keep Sunday; they keep Friday and break the Sab-