didn’t know, dey ain’t no use for po’ ignorant folks
like us to be trying to know; en so, ef it’s our duty,
we got to go en tackle it en do de bes’ we can. Same
time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom.
De hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain’t
been ‘quainted wid and dat hain’t done him no harm.
Dat’s it, you see. Ef we wuz to go ‘mongst ’em, jist
we three, en say we’s hungry, en ast ’em for a bite to
eat, why, maybe dey’s jist like yuther people. Don’t
you reckon dey is? Why, DEY’D give it, I know dey
would, en den –”
“Then what?”
“Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain’t no
use, we CAN’T kill dem po’ strangers dat ain’t doin’ us
no harm, till we’ve had practice — I knows it perfectly
well, Mars Tom — ‘deed I knows it perfectly well. But
ef we takes a’ axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en
slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon’s gone
down, en kills dat sick fam’ly dat’s over on the Sny,
en burns dey house down, en –”
“Oh, you make me tired!” says Tom. “I don’t
want to argue any more with people like you and Huck
Finn, that’s always wandering from the subject, and
ain’t got any more sense than to try to reason out a
thing that’s pure theology by the laws that protect real
estate!”
Now that’s just where Tom Sawyer warn’t fair. Jim
didn’t mean no harm, and I didn’t mean no harm.
We knowed well enough that he was right and we was
wrong, and all we was after was to get at the HOW of
it, and that was all; and the only reason he couldn’t
explain it so we could understand it was because we
was ignorant — yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain’t deny-
ing that; but, land! that ain’t no crime, I should think.
But he wouldn’t hear no more about it — just said if
we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would
‘a’ raised a couple of thousand knights and put them
in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieu-
tenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself
and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like
flies and come back across the world in a glory like
sunset. But he said we didn’t know enough to take
the chance when we had it, and he wouldn’t ever offer
it again. And he didn’t. When he once got set, you
couldn’t budge him.
But I didn’t care much. I am peaceable, and don’t
get up rows with people that ain’t doing nothing to
me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and
we would let it stand at that.
Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott’s
book, which he was always reading. And it WAS a
wild notion, because in my opinion he never could’ve
raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would’ve
got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and
as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that
shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky
time of it.
CHAPTER II.
THE BALLOON ASCENSION
WELL, Tom got up one thing after another, but
they all had tender spots about ’em somewheres,
and he had to shove ’em aside. So at last he was
about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to
talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to
sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted
to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn’t
make up his mind. But the papers went on talking,
and so he allowed that maybe if he didn’t go he
mightn’t ever have another chance to see a balloon;
and next, he found out that Nat Parsons was going
down to see it, and that decided him, of course. He
wasn’t going to have Nat Parsons coming back brag-