had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a
spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and
then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer.
Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson
would say, “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t
scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty soon
she would say, “Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why
don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place,
and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean
no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a
change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said;
said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so
as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going
where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But
I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do
no good.
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the
good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go
around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t
think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom
Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I
was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lone-
some. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and
then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of
candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the
window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no
use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shin-
ing, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I
heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was
dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was
going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me,
and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers
run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a
sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something
that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
3
