Chapter 37
Chapter 37 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 37.
That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard where they keep the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles and wore out thin things and all such truck and scratched around and found an old thin wash pan and stopped up the holes as well as we could to bake the pie in and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast
and found a couple of shingle nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair and the other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas' hat which was on the burrow because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning and then went to breakfast and Tom
dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas' coat pocket and Aunt Sally wasn't come yet so we had to wait a little while and when she come she was hot and red and cross and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other and says I've hunted high and I've hunted low and it does beat all what has become of your other shit
my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm and let a cry out of him the size of a war whoop and Tom he turned kind of blue around the girls and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute
or as much as that and I would have sold out for half price if there was a bidder but after that we was all right again it was the sudden surprise of fit that knocked us so kind of cold uncle Silas he says it's most uncommon curious I can't understand it I know perfectly well I took it off because because you ain't got one on just listen at that man I know you took it off and know it by a better way than your wool gathering memory too because
it was on the clothesline yesterday I see it there myself but it's gone that's the long and short of it and you just have to change to a red flannel one till I can get time to make a new one and it will be the third I've made in two years it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts and whatever you do manage to do with them is all is more I can make out anybody would think you would learn to take some sort of
care of them at your time of life I know it's Sally and I do try all I can but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault because you know I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me and I don't believe I've ever lost one of them off of me well it ain't your fault if you haven't Silas you'd have done it if you could I reckon and the shirt ain't all that's gone neither that's a spoon gone and that ain't all there
was 10 and now there's only 9 the calf got the shirt I reckon but the calf never took the spoon that's certain why what else is gone Sally there's six candles gone that's what the rats could have got the candles and I reckon they did I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it and if they weren't fools they'll sleep in your air Silas you'd never find it out but you can't lay the spoon on the rats
and that I know well Sally I'm in fault and I acknowledge it I've been remiss but I won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes oh I wouldn't hurry next year will do Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps whack comes the thimble and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar bowl without fooling around any just then the nigga woman steps onto the passage and says missus there's a sheet gone a sheet gone well for the land's sake I'll stop up them holes
today says uncle Silas looking sorrowful oh do shut up suppose the rats took the sheet where's it gone Lizzie glad to goodness I ain't no notion me Sally she was on the close line yesterday but she don't gone she ain't done no more now I reckon the world is coming to an end I never see the bit of it in all my bond days a shirt and a sheet and a spoon and six can or missus comes a young yellow wench there's a brass candlestick missing clear up from here you
I'll take a skillet to you well she was just a bailing I begun to lay for a chance I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated she kept a region right along running her insurrection all by herself and everybody else mighty meek and quiet and at last uncle Silas looking kind of foolish fishes up that spoon out of his pocket she stopped with her mouth open and her hands up and as for me I wished I was in Jerusalem or somewheres but
not long because she says it's just as I expected so you had it in your pocket all the time and like as not you've got the other things there too how they get there I really don't know Sally he says kind of apologizing or you know I would tell I was a studying over my text in Act 17 before breakfast and I reckon I put it in there not noticing meaning to put my testament in and it must be so because my testament ain't in but I'll go and see and if the testament is
where I had it I'll know I didn't put it in and that will show that I laid the testament down and took up the spoon and oh for the land's sake give a body a rest go long now the whole kit and billion of you and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my peace of mind at the head her if she does say it to herself let alone speaking it out and I got up and obeyed her if I'd been dead as we was passing through the setting room the old man he took up his
hat and the shingle nail fell out on the floor and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel shelf and never said nothing and went out Tom see him do it and remembered about the spoon and says well it ain't no use to send things by him no more he ain't reliable then he says but he done us a good turn with the spoon anyway without knowing it and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it stop up his rat holes there was a noble good lot of them down seller
and it took us a whole hour but we done the job tight and good and ship ship then we had steps on the stairs and blowed out a light and heat and here comes the old man with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in the other looking as absent-minded as ye before last he went and mooning around first to one rat hole and then another till he'd been to them all then he stood about five minutes picking tallow drip off his candle and thinking then he turns off slow and
dreamy towards the stairs saying well for the life of me I can't remember when I done it I could have shown her now that I weren't to blame on account of the rats but never mind let it go I reckon it wouldn't do no good and so he went on a mumbling upstairs and then we left he was a mighty nice old man and always is Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon but he said we'd got to have it so he took a think when he had ciphered it out he told me how we
was to do then we went and waited around the spoon baskets till we see and Sally coming and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side and I slid one of them up my sleeve and Tom says why and Sally there aren't but nine spoons yet she says go long to your play and don't bother me I know better I counted them myself well I've counted them twice and see and I can't make but nine she looked out of all patience but of course she come to count anybody
would I declare to gracious there ain't but nine she says why what in the world plague take the things I'll count them again so I slipped back the one I had and when she got done counting she says hang the troublesome rubbish there's 10 now and she looked huffy and bothered but Tom says why and T I don't think there's 10 you numbskull didn't you see me counting I know but well I'm counting them again so I smooched one and they come out nine same as the other time well she
was in a tearing way just a trembling all over she was so mad but she counted and counted till she got that adult she starts to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes and so three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat's galley west and she said clear out and let her have some peace and if we come bothering around her again between that and dinner she would skin us so we
had the odd spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was giving us our ceiling orders and Jim got it all right along with a shingle nail before noon we was very well satisfied with this business and Tom allowed it was what's twice the trouble it took because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days he
judged she would give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them anymore so we put the sheets back on the line that night and stole one out of her closet and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had anymore and she didn't care and weren't going to bullying the rest of our soul about it and wouldn't count them again not to save our life she'd rather die first so we was all right now as to the shirts
and the sheets and the spoon and the candles by the help of the calf and the rats and the and that's to the candlestick it weren't no consequence it would blow over by and by but that pie was a job we had no end of trouble with that pie we fixed it up away down in the woods and cooked it there and we got it done at last and very satisfactory too but not all in one day and we had to use up three wash pans full of floor before we got through and we got burned
pretty much all over in places and eyes put out with the smoke because you see we didn't want nothing but a crust and we couldn't prop it up right and she would always give in but of course we thought of the right way at last which was to cook the ladder to in the pie so then we laid in with Jim the second night and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hunger person with we let
on it took nine months to make it and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods but it wouldn't go into the pie being made of a whole sheet that way there was rope enough for 40 pies if we wanted them and plenty left over for a soup or sausage or anything you choose we could have had a whole dinner but we didn't need it all we needed was just enough for the pie and so we trod the rest away we didn't cook none of the pies in the wash pan afraid the soda would melt
but uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of because it belonged to one of his ascensors with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid the way up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable not on account of being any account because they weren't but on account of them being relics you know and we snaked her out
privates and took her down there but she failed on the first pies because we didn't know how but she come up smiling on the last one we took and lined her with dough and set her in the course and loaded her up with rag rope put on a door roof and shut down the lid and put hot embers on top and stood up five foot with the long handle cool and comfortable and in 15 minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at but the person that eat it would want
to fetch a couple of cags of toothpicks along for if that rope ladder wouldn't crap him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about and lay him in enough stomach ache to last him till next time too not didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the foetus and so Jim got everything all right and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hit the rope ladder inside of his
trot tick and scratched some marks on the tin plates and threw it out of the window hole end of chapter 37
