American Literature Honors/AP Review Flashcards

Which of the following best describes the origins of American literature?

Which of the following statements about Eurocentrism is NOT TRUE

Which of the following is NOT TRUE about the concept of the “noble savage”

What is the source of the following quotation? “For thousands of centuries—centuries in which human races were evolving, forming communities, and building the beginnings of national civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe—the continents we know as the Americas stood empty of mankind and its works.” [The story of Europeans in the New World] “is the story of the creation of a civilization where none existed.”

Stereotypes such as the “Noble Savage,” the “Savage” and the “Exotic Other” can be dangerous to native peoples because

“…though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy.” What concept is reflected in this quotation from Christopher Columbus?

Which best describes words and language within the oral tradition?

“So many goodly cities ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed or made desolate; so infinite millions of harmless people of all sexes, status, and ages, massacred, ravaged, and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest, the best part of the world turned upside down, ruined, and defaced for the traffic of pearls and peppers! Oh, mechanic victories, oh base conquest!” This statement by the French essayist, Montaigne, suggests

This excerpt from The General History of Virginia reveals which of the following European perspectives? “But when they did see him discharge them [small cannon], being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with icicles, the ice and branches came so tumbling down that the poor savages ran away half dead with fear. But at last we regained some conference with them, and gave them such toys and sent to Powhatan, his women, and children such presents as gave them in general full content…”

“But now was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all helps abandoned. Each hour [we were] expecting the fury of the savages, when God, the patron of all good endeavors, in that desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provisions that no man wanted.” This quotation reflects which of the following?

A 1970s history textbook describes the role of Tisquantum (Squanto) in the Plymouth colony as follows: “A friendly Indian named Squanto helped the colonists. He showed them how to plant corn and how to live on the edge of the wilderness” While this statement is not untrue,

The following lines from Of Plymouth Plantation illustrate which Puritan belief? And yet the Lord so upheld these persons as in this general calamity they were not at all infected either with sickness or lameness…

What literary/rhetorical device is used by Jonathan Edwards in the following excerpt from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?” “We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by; thus easy is it for God when he apleases to cast his enemies down into hell…”

For what does Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible serve as an allegory?

The writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment viewed humans as

The “Hypocrisy of Democracy” was that the U.S., a nation based on the ideal that “all men are created equal,” was committing national sins, including

Whereas the Puritans viewed God as actively involved in their daily lives, the writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment viewed God as

The French Mathematician and Philosopher René Descartes coined this phrase, which serves as the motto for the Age of Reason:

Following the American Revolution, which of the following social realities contradicted the claim that “all men are created equal”?

Which change of phrasing, which reflects the shift in philosophy from the Puritan view to the Enlightenment view, was made to the Declaration of Independence ?

Paul Revere’s engraving “The Bloody Massacre” contains the following words with the image of the incident:

“Unhappy Boston! See thy sons deplore

Thy hallowed walks besmeared with guiltless gore

While faithless Preston and his savage bands

With murderous rancor stretch their bloody hands

Like fierce barbarians grinning o’er their prey

Approve the carnage and enjoy the day.”

This is an example of:

******“Savages we call them, because their Manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs.” “Our laborious Manner of Life, compared with theirs, they esteem as slavish and base; and the Learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless.” In these excerpts from Ben Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” the author

“The blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy” contains

“Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief break into my house, burn and destroy my property, and kill or threaten to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever,” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it, is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman? Whether it is done by an individual villain or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned where we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other” contains all of the following

“…but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man” contains

1. “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: ’Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to GOD.” This opening paragraph of The Crisis, Number 1 employs all of the following rhetorical devices

“the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph; what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly” contains

“A noted one [Torie], who kept a tavern at Amboy…finished with this unfatherly expression, ‘Well! Give me peace in my day.’ Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day that my child may have peace;” and this single reflection…is sufficient to awaken every man to duty” contains

“But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families…” is an example of

*******“In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense …” is an example of

Which of the following events took place in 1848?

In the New England area between 1840 and 1855, a remarkable body of "classic" American literature was produced; this period is called

Common subjects of American Romantic literature include all of the following

All of the following are Transcendentalist values

In Melville’s Moby Dick , the conflict between the logical, rational first mate, Starbuck and the intuitive, emotional Captain Ahab reflects the difference between

Which of the following is NOT true about Transcendentalism?

The lines, “envy is ignorance…imitation is suicide,” and “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” are from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our head” as well as, “ If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears…” is from Henry David Thoreau’s

“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution…” This quotation encourages which of the following actions?

The phrase “peaceable revolution…” from the excerpt above is an example of which rhetorical/literary device?

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” is a quintessential example of which rhetorical device?

The following quotations can be best related to which concept?

• “In the faces of men and women I see God.”

• “The groves were God’s first temples.”

• “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our head.”

Edgar Allan Poe’s poems “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” both contain within them his reaction to his wife's death

Emerson’s concept of the individual, nature and God converging in an interconnected web is called

Henry David Thoreau’s influential essay in which he urges passive, non-violent resistance to unjust governmental policies is

Identify the dominant rhetorical device in the following passage: “And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;”

Identify the rhetorical devices in the following passage: “On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'”

Identify the rhetorical devices in the following passage:

“What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,”

The Civil War began on

Which of the following is NOT TRUE about spirituals sung by slaves?

Which of the following statements is NOT true about the slavery accounts by Olaudah Equiano and Julius Lester?

In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass states that the turning point of his life as a slave was when

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, which had a powerful antislavery influence, was

“He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war.”

“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes...”

“I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery...”

"No day ever dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. For the slave, it is all night forever."

“Maintaining slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears: you do not like it much, but you dare not let it go.”

“Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke – look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”

“Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby-Dick that dismasted me; Moby-Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now…it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor legging lubber of me forever and a day!”

“Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tossed sapling cannot, Starbuck!

“Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.” – Captain Ahab

“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?”

“It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery…”

“My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died…”

“…my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield.”

“It is like a funeral next door. It attracts your attention, but it does not enlist your sympathy. But it is very different when the hearse stops at your front door and the corpse is carried over your own threshold...”

“Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke.”

“The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name.”

1. Identify the rhetorical/literary device in the passage: “Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude,—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts,—Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile.”

Identify the rhetorical device: “Thy acts are like mercy…But thy words interpret thee as a terror!”

1. “Hester,” said he, “I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast fallen into the pit, or say rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I,—a man of thought,—the book-worm of great libraries,—a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,—what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl’s fantasy!” This passage all of the following rhetorical devices :

Identify the rhetorical device: “My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,—old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,—that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!”

1. “Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?” This passage contains all of the following :

Identify the rhetorical/literary device: “ Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister,—an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look,—as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own.”

“It might be, too,—doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole,—it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.”

“It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another’s actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost.” This passage contains:

“But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards [Dimmesdale] had been both softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth,—the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him,—and his authorized interference, as a physician, with the minister’s physical and spiritual infirmities,—that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose.” This passage contains:

“They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along;—and yet it enclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forbode evil to come.” This passage contains:

“But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticizing all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” This passage contains:

1. “She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe,—what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England,—was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” This passage contains all of the following :

1. “Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death.” In this passage how does the metaphor function?

“God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her, in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me, too!” This passage contains:

1. “But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together,—for all these reasons, Hester never thought of meeting [Dimmesdale] in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.” This passage contains:

“The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the exhilarating effect—upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart—of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region.” This passage contains:

“All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.” This passage contains:

“Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.” This passage contains:

Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always…

I went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself, horses coming...”

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixedup whiskers. There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl – a tree-toad white, a fishbelly white. As for his clothes – just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor – an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom— boom—boom—twelve licks; and all still again – stiller than ever Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely.

Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that’s got sand in it.

Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn’t tell nothing about her . . .

. . . and there was things enough on that table for seven families – and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that’s laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning.

When he got a-front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn’t want to disturb them . . .

“Cuss the doctor! What do we k-yer for him ? Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

“We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle.”

“Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure—that’s what he’s call it; and he’d land on that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn’t he throw style into it?—wouldn’t he spread himself, nor nothing? Why you’d think it was Christopher C’lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.”

“Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching -- all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works…”

“Now I say it ain’t agoin’to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that’s a considerable sight better’n killin’ of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git around it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right”

“En all you wuz thinkin’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash ; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.”

“I did wish Tom Sawyer was there, I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.”

“There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching -- a mighty ornery lot. They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch.”

“It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family.”

“Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had time to, before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself, yet, and then how would I like it?”

“And pretty soon you’d hear a loafer sing out, ‘Hi! so boy! Sick him, Tige!’ and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they’d settle back again till there was a dog-fight. There couldn’t anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog-fight—unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.”

In this description of the town and people of Bricksville, Arkansas, Twain is commenting on all of the

following EXCEPT

“They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hol on,--s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, 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 he same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.”

“The pitifulest thing out there is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with the courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole.”

“I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up, just at daybreak, he was setting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice, nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for theirn. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.”

1. "Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim."

“Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place…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.”

“I don’t care whether ‘twas little or whether ‘twas big, he’s here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn’t good of you to say it. If you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn’t to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed.”

“So, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times, I couldn’t help it; but about the third crack, I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well,--and held my breath, and listened and waited—and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come! –and just laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke. So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all I could do to keep from crying.”

"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing -- then I won't have to tell no lies."

“Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had.”

“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.”

“It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no objections. I was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.”

“I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the foot of Jim’s blanket, ever so natural, thinking there’d be some fun when Jim found him there…He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it.”

“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied it a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up.”

“Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Abilitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell, and I ain’t agoing back there anyways.”

“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.”

“When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me an wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun; but I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him.”

“Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. I warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.”

1. “It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face---it’s too ghastly.”

“The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, ‘Kill them, kill them!’ It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain’t agoing to tell all that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night, to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them.”

“After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing,everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.”

"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there. Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work?"

"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want you keep mum and not let on. Will you?"

"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck; you's de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole Jim's got now."

While I was at it he asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.

"Well, guess," he says.

"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?"

"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy."

" Which candle?" I says.

"Why, any candle," he says.

"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"

"Why, he was in the dark! That's where he was!"

"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"

Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely…Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres -- perfectly still -- just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe… then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers…