to a museum with his name on it and the facts when he
went home, and I slipped it out and put another brick
considerable like it in its place, and he didn’t know the
difference — but there was a difference, you see. I
think that settles it — it’s mostly instink, not knowledge.
Instink tells him where the exact PLACE is for the brick to
be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place it’s in, not
by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not
instink, he would know the brick again by the look of
it the next time he seen it — which he didn’t. So it
shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge
being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of
it for real unerringness. Jim says the same.
When we got back Jim dropped down and took us
in, and there was a young man there with a red skull-
cap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket and baggy
trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it
that could talk English and wanted to hire to us as
guide and take us to Mecca and Medina and Central
Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day and his
keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the
power, and by the time we was through dinner we was
over the place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea
when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught
by the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good
look at the place, and it done Jim good to see it. He
said he could see it all, now, just the way it happened;
he could see the Israelites walking along between the
walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away
off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start
in as the Israelites went out, and then when they was
all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last
man of them. Then we piled on the power again and
rushed away and huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw
the place where Moses broke the tables of stone, and
where the children of Israel camped in the plain and
worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as
interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every
place as well as I knowed the village at home.
But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the
plans to a standstill. Tom’s old ornery corn-cob pipe
had got so old and swelled and warped that she couldn’t
hold together any longer, notwithstanding the strings
and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom
he didn’t know WHAT to do. The professor’s pipe
wouldn’t answer; it warn’t anything but a mershum,
and a person that’s got used to a cob pipe knows it
lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world,
and you can’t git him to smoke any other. He
wouldn’t take mine, I couldn’t persuade him. So
there he was.
He thought it over, and said we must scour around
and see if we could roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or
around in some of these countries, but the guide said no,
it warn’t no use, they didn’t have them. So Tom was
pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said
he’d got the idea and knowed what to do. He says:
“I’ve got another corn-cob pipe, and it’s a prime
one, too, and nearly new. It’s laying on the rafter
that’s right over the kitchen stove at home in the
village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it,
and me and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till
you come back.”
“But, Mars Tom, we couldn’t ever find de village.
I could find de pipe, ‘case I knows de kitchen, but my
lan’, we can’t ever find de village, nur Sent Louis, nur
none o’ dem places. We don’t know de way, Mars
Tom.”
That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute.