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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 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 git 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 wood-shed; 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 cellardoor 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-swimmingdern’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 a while, 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