ese characters were trying to talk alike and
not succeeding.

The Author.

HUCKLEBERRY FINN

CHAPTER I

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of
_The Adventures of Tom Sawyer;_ but that ain't no matter. That book
was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was
things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is
nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it
was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt
Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in
that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I
said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six
thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when
it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at
interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year
round--more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas
she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was
rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular
and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand
it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead
again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and
said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I
would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by
it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing
but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old
thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had
to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to
eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and
grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really
anything the matter with them--that is, nothing only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things
get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go
better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; bu