TOM SAWYER ABROAD

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-

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