The adventures of huckleberry finn

now nothing about play-actin`, and hain`t ever seen much of it. I was too small when pap used to have `em at the palace. Do you reckon you can learn me?”
“Easy!”
“All right. I`m jist a-freezn` for something fresh, anyway. Le`s commence right away.”
So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.
“But if Juliet`s such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin` to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.”
“No, don`t you worry; these country jakes won`t ever think of that. Besides, you know, you`ll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; Juliet`s in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she`s got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts.”
He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t`other chap, and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart.
There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go, too, and see if he couldn`t strike something. We was out of coffee, so Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.
When we got there there warn`t nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn`t too young or too sick or too old was gone to campmeeting, about two mile back in the woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he`d go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.
The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop – carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting.
We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.
The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. They didn`t have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn`t have on any clothes but just a towlinen shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly.
The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing – and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It`s the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory! – A-a-MEN!” And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:
“Oh, come to the mourners` bench! come, black with sin! (AMEN!) come, sick and sore! (AMEN!) come, lame and halt and blind! (AMEN!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (A-A-MEN!) come, all that`s worn and soiled and suffering! – come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open – oh, enter in and be at rest!” (A-A-MEN! GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!)
And so on. You couldn`t make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners` bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.
Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirate – been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean – and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he`d been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, “Don`t you thank me, don`t you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville campmeeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!”
And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let HIM pass the hat around!” Then everybody said it, the preacher too.
So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times – and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they`d think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn`t do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.
When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he`d ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warn`t no use talking, heathens don`t amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.
The duke was thinking HE`D been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didn`t think so so much. He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office – horse bills – and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten dollars` worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance – so they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head – three verses – kind of sweet and saddish – the name of it was, “Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart” – and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didn`t charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he`d done a pretty square day`s work for it.
Then he showed us another little job he`d printed and hadn`t charged for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and “$200 reward” under it. The reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he run away from St. Jacques` plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses.
“Now,” says the duke, “after to-night we can ru…