and--there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's
our duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way.
I says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and
another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.
It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They
own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it
was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they
haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought
not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it
away from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now,
if I had a farm and another person--"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is
business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all
you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally
different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers--dey mos' sholy is.
I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't
run across none dat acts like dat."

It made Tom hot, and he says:

"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If
either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur
de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most
noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the
paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away
from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time--and yet here's
a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri
setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it
than they did! Talk about cheek!"

Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and
Jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wish