Humor.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1702, 3 July 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

Humor.

Fife Adventures of Hark! cherry Finn. By Mark Twain. The humor in this book is finer and more subdued than in Murk I wain’s previous works, and although the brilliant humorist had adopted a style which would not bo easily noogni-ed as hip, it is nevertheless a very e’ever book Tae two chief characters sre a negro named Jim and the boy Huck Fain. Jim escapes from elaveiy ana hides in an island on the MinsLsipi, where he meets his old friend Duck, who is running away from a drunken father. They secure a fragment of a lumber raft and on it make voyage down srream by night, biding themselves and the raft in the dav-time.

Headers who have met Huck Finn before (in Tom Sawyer) will not ho surprised to note that whenever Huck is caught in a right place and obliv-id to explain, the truth gets •veil crippled before .he gels through. The most amusing pinions of the book are the adventures down the river with two undesirable passengers, the duke and the kin", who got into Hook’s c mo-?, in a hurry to

t cape the wrath of it s-.vind’c.'l aml avenging town, whose inhabitants tmn out to a rn.au in knot pursuit of the vaviihooils. This is how Huck tells the yarn :

Oi.o morning about day-break, I found a canoe and created over o chute to the main shore— it was only two hundred yards - and P’>ddl-.-d about a mile up a crick amorg.it the cypress woods, to see if I couldn’t, get some berries. Just as I was passing a plica where a kind of cow-path crossed the click, here esnies a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was mn— or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they were pretty close to me then, and sung and begged me to save their lives—said they hadn’t been doing nothing, and was being chased for it—said there was men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump rmht in, hut I says— °

“ Don’t you do it. I don’t hear the dogs and horses yet; you’ve got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways ; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in—that’ll throw the dogs off the scent.”

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our tow-head, and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. We hoard them come along towards the crick, but couldn’t see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as wegot further and further away all the time, we couldn’ jfcardly hear them at all; by the time we ha Jlfft a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the tow-head and hid in the cottoa-woods and was safe. greasy mao woollen shirt, aud ragged old blue jean britches stuffed into his boot tops, and home-knit galluses—no, he only had one. an old long-tailed blue jians coat wiln\ick brass buttons, flung over his arm, and both of them had big fat rstty-looking carpct-bags. The other fellow was about thirty and ilres-ed about as ornery. After breakfast we a 1 laid off and talked, and tha Srst thing that come out was that these chaps didn’t know one another.

“Wfiat got you unto trouble?" says the baldhead to t’other chap. - \V-;11, I’d been selling an article to take the Uttar off the teeth—and it does take it off too, and generly the enamel along with it —but I staid about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, aud begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was expecting trouble myself and would scatter oat with you. That’s the whole yarn—what’s yourn?” “ Well, I’d bsn a-rannin a little temperance revival thar, ’bout a week, and was the pet of the w.jvaen-folks, big and little, for I was mokin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and takin’ as much as five or six dollars a night—ten cents a head, children and niggers free—and business a growin’ all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around, last night, that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug, on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this raornin’, and told me the people was getherin’ on the quiet, with their dogs end horses, and they’d be along pretty soon and give me ’bout half an hour’s start, and then run mo down, if they could ; and it they got me they’d tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn’t wait for no breakfast—l warn’t hungry." “ Old man,’’ says the young one. “ I reckon we might double-team it together ; what do you think ?” “ I ain’t undisposed. What’s your line—mainly ? ” . “ Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines ; theatre-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there’s a chance; teach singing geograpb y i school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimes —ah, I do lots of things—most anything that comes handy, so as it ain’t work, What’s your lay?” “ I’ve done, considerable in the doctoring way in my time. Layin’ on o’ hands is my beat holt—for cancer, and paralysis, and sioh things; and I k’n tell a fortune pretty good, when I’ve got somebody along to find oat the facts for me. Preaohin’s my line, too, and workin’ camp-meetin’s; and missionaryin 1 around.”

Nobody never said anything for a while then the young man hove a sigh and says"Alas i”

“ What ’re you alassin’ about ? ” says the baldhead. 11 To think I should have lived to be load-

ing such a I!’-', and be drgnded down into such company.” And he ot-gun to wipe the corner n( hh cic writi a rug.

IWn v. nr F -n. liiu’t. Ih r company good enough fur j.'u; 1 say n the baldheud, pretty port end wpj.i

‘ Yes, it is in-'- ! rnoagh for me ; it’s a*good as I deserve; f.-r v-ho fetched ms so low; when I was so hh:h ? 7 did myself. I don’t blame you, gent!, m-m—far from it; I don’t blame anybody. I deserve it all. Lot the cold world do its worst ; one thing I know—there’s a grove somewhere for me. The world may go on pH ns it’s always done, and take everything from me—loved ones, property, everything—but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll He down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” He went on a-wiping.

“ Drot your pore broken heart,” says the bsldhead : “ what are you heavinc your pore broken heart at us f’r? JFc hain’t done nothing.” “ No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself down—yes, I did it myself It’s right I should suffer—perfectly right—l don’t make any moan.” “ Brought you down from whar 7 Whar was you brought down from ? ” 11 Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes—let it pass—’tie no matter. The secret of my birth ” " The secret of your birth ? Do you mean to say ” “ Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “ I will reveal it to yon, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights lam a Juke!" Jim’s eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. Then the baldhead says: "No 1 you can’t mean it ? ” " Yes. My greatgrand father, oldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the puie air of freedom ; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the title and estates—the infant real duke, was ignored. lam the lineal descendant of that infant—l am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater ; and hero ami, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft I ’’ Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. Wo tried to comfort him, but he said it warn’t much use, he couldn’t be much comforted ; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell ua how. He said we ought to bow, when we spoke to him, and say, “ Your Grace,” or “My Lord,” or “Y'our Lordship”—and he wouldn’t mind it if wo called him plain “Bridgewater,” which he said was a title, anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and to do any little thing for him he wanted done. Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him, and says, “ Will o’ Grace have some o’ die, or some o’ that ? ” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. But the old man got pretty silent, bye-and-bye—didn’t have much to say, and didn’t look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on hia mind. So, along in the afternoon, he tays : “ Looky here, Bilgewatcr,” he says, “ I’m nation sorry for you, but you ain’t the only person that’s had troubles like that.” “No?” ‘ No, you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s ben snaked down wrongfully out’n a high place.” “Alas! ” “ No, you ain’t the only person that's had a secret of his birth.” And by jings, he begins to cry. “ Hold 1 What do you mean '! ” “ Bilgewater, kin I trust you ? ” says the old man, still sort of sobbing. “To the bitter death I ” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, 11 The secret of your being: speak 1 ” “ Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin ! ’’ You bet you Jim and me stared, this time. Then the duke says : “You are what ?” “Yes, my friend, it is too true—your eyes is lookin’ at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Mary Antonette.” “ Yon 1 At your age 1 No ! You mean you’re the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least,”

" Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature baltitude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled, tramplodou, and sufferin’ rightful King of France." Well, he cried and took on so, that me and Jim didn’t know hardly what to do, we was so sorry—and so glad and proud we’d irt inn hA-tt." no use, nothing 'but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him (eel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t sit down in his presence till he asked them. .So Jim and me set to mojestying him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn’t look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke’s great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke staid huffy a good while, till by-and-by the king says : “Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yfer raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use o’ your bein’ sour ? It’ll only make things onoomfortahle. It ain’t my fault. I warn’t born a duke, it ain’t your fault you warn’r. horn a king—so what’s the use to worry ? Make the host o’ things the way you find ’em, says I—-that’s my motto. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here—plenty grub and an easy life—come, give us your hand, Duke, and leas all be friends."

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to nee it. It took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. (To he continued.)