Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone | Page 8

China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've
got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to
waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you
understand."
"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the

palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's
more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would
drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he
rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not."
"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I
WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there
was in the country."
"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to
know anything, somehow--perfect saphead."
I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I
would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron
ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like
an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use,
none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only
just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and
the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a
Sunday-school.
CHAPTER IV.
WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter
now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read
and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six
times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further
than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics,
anyway.
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got
next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to
school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's
ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and
sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold

weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so
that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I
liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along
slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed
of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I
reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of
me, and crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry;
what a mess you are always making!" The widow put in a good word
for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that
well enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky,
and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going
to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't
one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along
low-spirited and on the watch-out.
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the
quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the
garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around
so. I couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't
notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick as I