Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the
Widow Douglas' protection introduced him into society—no, dragged him into it,
hurled him into it—and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The
widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they bedded
him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or stain which
he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had to eat with a knife
and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he
had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid
in his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization
shut him in and bound him hand and foot.
He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day
turned up missing. For forty–eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched high and
low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third morning Tom Sawyer
wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind the abandoned
slaughter–house, and in one of them he found the refugee. Huck had slept there;
he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying
off, now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the
same old ruin of rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was
free and happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing,
and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and took a
melancholy cast. He said:
"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't
work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's
good to me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder;
she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that
just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air git through 'em, somehow; and
they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around
anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar–door for—well, it 'pears to be years; I
got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons! I can't
ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder
eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell—everything's
so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."
"Well, everybody does that way, Huck."
"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody,
and I can't STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy—I
don't take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a–fishing; I
got to ask to go in a–swimming—dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do everything.
Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort—I'd got to go up in the
attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or I'd a died,
Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't
let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks—" [Then with a spasm
of special irritation and injury]—"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the
time! I never see such a woman! I HAD to shove, Tom—I just had to. And besides,
that school's going to open, and I'd a had to go to it—well, I wouldn't stand THAT,
Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just
worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a–wishing you was dead all the time.
Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and I ain't ever going to
shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't
'a' ben for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and
gimme a ten–center sometimes—not many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a
thing 'thout it's tollable hard to git—and you go and beg off for me with the
widder."
