I lit out

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.  That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

{This is the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
"He told the truth, mainly." ...}

----------- [excerpt]: 
There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.  That is nothing.  I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.  Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this:  Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich.  We got six thousand dollars apiece -- all gold.  It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up.  Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body could tell what to do with. 

The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out.  I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.  But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable.  So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it.  She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up.  Well, then, the old thing commenced again.  The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. ...

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me.  But she wouldn't.  She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more.  That is just the way with some people.  They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. 

Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it.  And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

...  [end Excerpt]

{The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
by Mark Twain.  1884 in England, 1885 in America.
publishers:  Chatto & Windus, Charles Webster.}

-------------------------------
...a thing that had some good in it

finding a power of fault with me

...Moses which was no kin to her  (!!)

Here she was a-bothering about Moses

a-bothering

...because I don't take no stock in dead people

Moses and the Bulrushers  (lol.  ol.  l.)

learned me

got out her book and learned me

allowed she would sivilize (sic. - "civilize") me

an awful sight of money

mostly a true book with some stretchers

stretchers

--------------------------------------------
Here I am, with a B.A. in English literature & I've never read this before.
By the time you get to college, Huck Finn is one of the books educators just assume you've read, or experienced in some way -- they try to introduce you to literature you may not know already...

All the time I was growing up, the idea somehow soaked into my awareness that Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was somehow controversial.

It was good for you,

but the library might not have it because someone might have whined & made them take it out.

And that wasn't good -- censorship, yikes -- but still,
while Tom Sawyer was available to me during childhood, no one ever handed me Huckleberry Finn.

If I had brought it home, would either one of my parents have suggested I read something else instead?
I can hardly imagine that, but I don't know. ...

If I had taken Huckleberry Finn to school, would the guidance counselor have confiscated it?

Was H. Finn's adventures in the school library?

I wish I could turn back time and venture and find out.  But I'll never know, now.

Huck Finn was --
risqué.

It walked the line.

Writing like that is, I suppose, how Mark Twain got to be Mark Twain and not just a person with some notebooks.

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