Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0133/01333.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 18KB | 377 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01333}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
The Grangerfords Take Me In}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{says
old
young
didn't
come
warn't
little
buck
now
right}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

The Grangerfords Take Me In

     In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his
head out, and says:

     "Be done, boys!  Who's there?"

     I says:

     "It's me."

     "Who's me?"

     "George Jackson, sir."

     "What do you want?"

     "I don't want nothing, sir.  I only want to go along by, but the dogs
won't let me."

     "What are you prowling around here this time of night for - hey?"

     "I warn't prowling around, sir; I fell overboard off of the steamboat."

     "Oh, you did, did you?  Strike a light there, somebody.  What did you
say your name was?"

     "George Jackson, sir.  I'm only a boy."

     "Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid - nobody
'll hurt you, But don't try to budge; stand right where you are.  Rouse out
Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns, George Jackson, is there
anybody with you?"

     "No, sir, nobody."

     I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light.
The man sung out:

     "Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool - ain't you got any sense?
Put it on the floor behind the front door.  Bob, if you and Tom are ready,
take your places."

     "All ready."

     "Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?"

     "No, sir; I never heard of them."

     "Well, that may be so, and it mayn't.  Now, all ready.  Step forward,
George Jackson.  And mind, don't you hurry - come mighty slow.  If there's
anybody with you, let him keep back - if he shows himself he'll be shot.
Come along now.  Come slow; push the door open yourself - just enough to
squeeze in, d'you hear?"

     I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd wanted to.  I took one slow step at a
time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart.  The
dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me.  When
I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and unbarring and
unbolting.  I put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little
more till somebody said, "There, that's enough - put your head in."  I done
it, but I judged they would take it off.

     The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and
me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: Three big men with guns pointed
at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the
other two thirty or more - all of them fine and handsome - and the sweetest
old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which I couldn't see
right well.  The old gentleman says:

     "There; I reckon it's all right.  Come in."

     As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it
and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they
all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got
together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows - there
warn't none on the side.  They held the candle, and took a good look at me,
and all said, "Why, he ain't a Shepherdson - no, there ain't any Shepherdson
about him."  Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't mind being searched
for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it - it was only to make sure.
So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and
said it was all right.  He told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell
all about myself; but the old lady says:

     "Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't
you reckon it may be he's hungry?"

     "True for you, Rachel - I forgot."

     So the old lady says:

     "Betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something
to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up
Buck and tell him - oh, here he is himself.  Buck, take this little stranger
and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's
dry."

     Buck looked about as old as me - thirteen or fourteen or along there,
though he was a little bigger than me.  He hadn't on anything but a shirt,
and he was very frowzy-headed.  He came in gaping and digging one fist into
his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one.  He says:

     "Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?"

     They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.

     "Well," he says, "if they'd 'a' ben some, I reckon I'd 'a' got one."

     They all laughed, and Bob says:

     "Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming."

     "Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right.  I'm always kept down;
I don't get no show."

     "Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough,
all in good time, don't you fret about that.  Go 'long with you now, and do
as your mother told you."

     When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on.  While I was at it he asked
me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell me about
a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before
yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out.  I said
I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.

     "Well, guess," he says.

     "How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it
before?"

     "But you can guess, can't you?  It's just as easy."

     "Which candle?"  I says.

     "Why, any candle," he says.

     "I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"

     "Why, he was in the dark!  That's where he was!"

     "Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"

     "Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?  Say, how long are you
going to stay here?  You got to stay always.  We can just have booming
times - they don't have no school now.  Do you own a dog?  I've got a
dog - and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.  Do
you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness?  You bet I
don't, but ma she makes me.  Confound these ole britches!  I reckon I'd
better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm.  Are you all ready?  All
right.  Come along, old hoss."

     Cold corne-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk - that is what
they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've
come across yet.  Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except
the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women.  They all smoked
and talked, and I eat and talked.  The young women had quilts around them,
and their hair down their backs.  They all asked me questions, and I told
them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at
the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and
never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard
of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me
and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his
troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm
didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell
overboard; and that was how I come to be here.  So they said I could have a
home there as long as I wanted it.  Then it was most daylight and everybody
went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the
morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was.  So I laid there about
an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says:

     "Can you spell, Buck?"

     "Yes," he says.

     "I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

     "I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

     "All right," says I, "go ahead."

     "G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n - there now," he says.

     "Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could.  It ain't no
slouch of a name to spell - right off without studying."

     I set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it next,
and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it.

     It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too.  I hadn't
seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much
style.  It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with
a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town.
There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors
in towns has beds in them.  There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the
bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and
scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them over with red
water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town.  They had
big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log.  There was a clock on the
middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom
half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun,
and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it.  It was beautiful to hear
that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and
scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a
hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out.  They wouldn't took any money
for her.

     Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made
out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy.  By one of the parrots was
a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed
down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouth nor look different
nor interested.  They squeaked through underneath.  There was a couple of big
wild-turkey wing fans spread out behind those things.  On the table in the
middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and
oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and
yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you
could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or
whatever it was, underneath.

     This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and
blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around.  It come
all the way from Philadelphia, they said.  There was some books, too, piled
up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table.  One was a big family Bible
full of pictures.  One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his
family, it didn't say why.  I read considerable in it now and then.  The
statements was interesting, but tough.  Another was Friendship's Offering,
full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the poetry.  Another
was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine,
which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead.  There was
a hymn-book, and a lot of other books.  And there was nice split-bottom
chairs, and perfectly sound, too - not bagged down in the middle and busted,
like an old basket.

     They had pictures hung on the walls - mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes,
and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration."
There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was
dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old.  They was
different from any pictures I ever see before - blacker, mostly, than is
common.  One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the
armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large
black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed
about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she
was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping
willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief
and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee
More Alas."  Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up
straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a
chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying
on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture
it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas."  There was one
where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running
down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black
sealing-wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a
chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art
Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas."  These was all nice pictures, I reckon,
but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a
little they always give me the fan-tods.  Everybody was sorry she died,
because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body
could see by what she had done what they had lost.  But I reckoned that
with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard.  She was
at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and
every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she
got it done, but she never got the chance.  It was a picture of a young
woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to
jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with
the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her
breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up toward
the moon - and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then
scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she
got her mind made up and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed
in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it.  Other
times it was hid with a little curtain.  The young woman in the picture had
a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too
spidery, seemed to me.

     This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste
obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.  It
was very good poetry.  This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of
Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

Ode To Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd

And did young Stephen sicken,
And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no.  Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him:
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
In the realms of the good and great.

     If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could 'a' done by and by.  Buck
said she could rattle off poetry like nothing.  She didn't ever have to stop
to think.  He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find
anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another
one, and go ahead.  She warn't particular; she could write about anything you
choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.  Every time a man
died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her
"tribute" before he was cold.  She called them tributes.  The neighbors said
it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker - the undertaker
never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme
for the dead person's name, which was Whistler.  She warn't ever the same
after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live
long.  Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little room
that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when
her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little.  I
liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything
come between us.  Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when
she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some
about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself,
but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow.  They kept Emmeline's room trim
and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them
when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there.  The old lady took care of
the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a
good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

     Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on
the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all
down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink.  There was a little old
piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely
as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and play "The
Battle of Prague" on it.  The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most
had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the
outside.

     It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed
and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day,
and it was a cool, comfortable place.  Nothing couldn't be better.  And
warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!