Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. (page 6)

 

Pap warn’t in a good humor—so he was his natural self. (page 26)

 

When I woke up I didn’t know where I was, for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and
smelt
late. You know what I mean—I don’t know the words to put it in.

(page 34)

 

When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty satisfied; but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the currents washing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it. (page 38)

 

What’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

(page 85)

 

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. (page 107)

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to
make
so many. (pages 109-110)

 

“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.” (page 140)

 

“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” (page 162)

 

I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks. (page 170)

 

“It’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most.” (page 173)

 

You can’t pray a lie—I found that out. (page 194)

 

It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him
anyway.
(page 210)

BARNES & NOBLE CLASSICS
NEW YORK

 

 

 

Published by Barnes & Noble Books
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

 

 

 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
was first published in America in 1885.

 

Originally published in mass market format in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics
with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
This trade paperback edition published in 2008.

 

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright @ 2003 by Robert G. O‘Meally.

 

Note on Mark Twain, The World of Mark Twain and
Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn,
Inspired by
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.

 

Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics
colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

 

ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-112-6 ISBN-10: 1-59308-112-X

eISBN : 978-1-411-43372-4

LC Control Number 2007941537

 

 

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

 

Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

QM

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. When Sam was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town later immortalized in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
After the death of his father, twelve-year-old Sam quit school and supported his family by working as a delivery boy, a grocer’s clerk, and an assistant blacksmith until he was thirteen, when he became an apprentice printer. He worked for several newspapers, traveled throughout the country, and established himself as a gifted writer of humorous sketches. Abandoning journalism at points to work as a riverboat pilot, Clemens adven tured up and down the Mississippi, learning the 1,200 miles of the river.

During the 1860s he spent time in the West, in newspaper work and panning for gold, and traveled to Europe and the Holy Land;
The Innocents Abroad
(1869) and
Roughing It
(1872), published some years later, are accounts of those experiences. In 1863 Samuel Clemens adopted a pen name, signing a sketch as “Mark Twain,” and in 1867 Mark Twain won fame with publication of a collection of humorous writings,
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.
After marrying and settling in Connecticut, Twain wrote his best-loved works: the novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and the nonfiction work
Life on the Mississippi.
Meanwhile, he continued to travel and had a successful career as a public lecturer.

In his later years, Twain saw the world with increasing pessimism following the death of his wife and two of their three daughters. The tone of his later novels, including The Tragedy
of Pudd‘nhead Wilson
and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,
became cynical and dark. Having failed as a publisher and suffering losses from ill-advised investments, Twain was forced by financial necessity to maintain a heavy schedule of lecturing. Though he had left school at an early age, his genius was recognized by Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University in the form of honorary doctorate degrees. He died in his Connecticut mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.