You don’t know about me unless you have read a book called *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*. But that doesn’t matter. Mr. Mark Twain wrote that book, and he told the truth, mostly.
At the end of that book, Tom and I found the gold that some robbers had hidden in a cave: six thousand dollars each. Judge Thatcher put it in the bank for us, and it brought us a dollar a day each, more than anybody could know what to do with.
The Widow Douglas took me into her house as her son and said she would civilize me. But living in a house all the time was hard, because the widow followed strict rules in everything. So when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I ran away. I put on my old rags, slept in my old barrel again, and was free and happy. But Tom Sawyer found me. He said he was going to start a gang of robbers, and I could join if I went back to the widow and was respectable. So I went back.
The widow cried over me and put me in those new clothes again, and they felt tight and uncomfortable. At supper you couldn’t start eating. You had to wait while the widow put her head down and said something quietly over the food, though there was nothing wrong with it. After supper she read to me about Moses, and I really wanted to know all about him. But then she let it out that Moses had been dead a very long time, so I stopped caring. I don’t think much of dead people.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a thin old woman with glasses, had just come to live with her. She was always saying, “Sit up straight, Huckleberry. Why don’t you try to behave?” She told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got angry, but I didn’t mean any harm. All I wanted was a change. She said she was going to live so that she could go to the good place, where you walked around all day with a harp and sang, forever and ever. I couldn’t see any advantage in going where she was going, so I decided I wouldn’t try. But I didn’t say so, because it would only make trouble. I asked her if Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said no, not at all. I was glad, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Later everybody went to bed. I sat down by the window in my room with a piece of candle and tried to think of something cheerful, but it was no use. I felt so lonely that I almost wished I was dead. Far away an owl was crying about somebody who was dead, and the wind was trying to whisper something to me that I couldn’t understand.
Then a spider climbed up my shoulder. I flicked it off, and it fell into the candle and was burned up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that this was a terrible sign and would bring me bad luck. I turned around three times and tied up a bit of my hair with a thread to keep witches away, but I didn’t really believe it would help.
I sat down again, shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke. The house was as still as death now, so the widow wouldn’t know. After a long time the clock in the town struck twelve. Then, down in the dark among the trees, I heard it, very softly: “Meow! Meow!” That was good! I answered “Meow! Meow!” as softly as I could, put out the light and climbed out of the window onto the roof of the shed. I slid down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and there was Tom Sawyer, waiting for me.