Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians Read online

  MARK TWAIN

  HUCK FINN

  AND TOM SAWYER

  AMONG THE INDIANS

  AND OTHER UNFINISHED STORIES

  THE MARK TWAIN LIBRARY

  The Library offers for the first time popular editions of Mark Twain’s best works just as he wanted them to be read. These moderately priced volumes, faithfully reproduced from the California scholarly editions and printed on acid-free paper, are expertly annotated and include all the original illustrations that Mark Twain commissioned and enjoyed.

  “Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away

  and sped down the hill as fast as his

  legs could carry him.”

  —THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  Mark Twain at the Hannibal train station in June 1902.

  Associate Editors

  Robert Pack Browning

  Richard Bucci

  Victor Fischer

  Michael B. Frank

  Paul Machlis

  Kenneth M. Sanderson

  Harriet Elinor Smith

  MARK TWAIN

  HUCK FINN

  AND TOM SAWYER

  AMONG

  THE INDIANS

  AND OTHER UNFINISHED STORIES

  Foreword and Notes by

  Dahlia Armon and Walter Blair

  Text established by

  Dahlia Armon, Paul Baender, Walter Blair,

  William M. Gibson, and Franklin R. Rogers

  A publication of the

  Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library

  This Mark Twain Library volume reprints ten of Mark Twain’s works as they were published in four volumes of the Mark Twain Papers and Works of Mark Twain: Satires & Burlesques (1967), ed. Franklin R. Rogers; Hannibal, Huck & Tom (1969), ed. Walter Blair; Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William M. Gibson; and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Tom Sawyer Abroad; Tom Sawyer, Detective (1980), ed. John C. Gerber, Paul Baender, and Terry Firkins. All but the first of these editions were endorsed by the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA) or its successor, the Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE). The selection reprinted from Satires & Burlesques has been re-edited in accord with standards set by the CSE, and errors since identified in the other texts have been corrected in this reprinting and are recorded in the note on the text. An eleventh work, “Letter to William Bowen,” has not yet appeared in the Papers and Works and has here been edited from the original manuscript in, and with the consent of, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Newly typeset matter has been proofread in accord with CSE standards.

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

  University of California Press, Ltd.

  London, England

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-0-520-27150-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Editorial work on this volume has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, to the Mark Twain Project in The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Those grants included funding conditional on its being matched dollar for dollar, which was done by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and other donors to The Friends of The Bancroft Library. Mark Twain’s works in, and all his words quoted from unpublished sources in the annotation for, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians, and Other Unfinished Stories, are © 1938, 1942, 1967, 1969 and 1989 by Edward J. Willi and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company as trustees of the Mark Twain Foundation, which reserves all reproduction or dramatization rights in every medium. Editorial foreword, explanatory notes, biographical directory, and note on the text are © 1989 by The Regents of the University of California.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier edition of this book as follows:

  Library of Congress

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Twain, Mark, 1835–1910.

  [Short stories. Selections.]

  Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians and other unfinished stories / Mark Twain; foreword and notes by Dahlia Armon and Walter Blair; texts established by Dahlia Armon . . . [et al.].

  p. cm. — (Mark Twain library)

  I. Armon, Dahlia. II. Blair, Walter, 1900– . III. Title. IV. Series: Twain, Mark, 1835–1910. Mark Twain Library.

  PS1302.A7 1989

  813′.4—dc19

  88-27894

  CIP

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

  The Mark Twain Library is designed by Steve Renick.

  The texts reprinted in this Mark Twain Library volume, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians, and Other Unfinished Stories, are drawn from four volumes of the Mark Twain Project’s comprehensive edition of The Mark Twain Papers and Works of Mark Twain, and from one original manuscript at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Editorial work for this volume has been supported by a generous donation from the

  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST FOUNDATION

  and by matching funds from the

  NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES,

  an independent federal agency.

  Without such generous support, these editions could

  not have been produced.

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  Boy’s Manuscript

  Letter to William Bowen

  Tupperville-Dobbsville

  Clairvoyant

  Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians

  Jane Lampton Clemens

  Villagers of 1840–3

  Hellfire Hotchkiss

  Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy

  Schoolhouse Hill

  Huck Finn

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY

  REFERENCES

  NOTE ON THE TEXT

  FOREWORD

  In one of his 1887 notebooks Mark Twain enunciated his fundamental literary tenet:

  If you attempt to create & build a wholly imaginary incident, adventure or situation, you will go astray, & the artificiality of the thing will be detectable. But if you found on a fact in your personal experience, it is an acorn, a root, & every created adornment that grows up out of it & spreads its foliage & blossoms to the sun will seem realities, not inventions. You will not be likely to go astray; your compass of fact is there to keep you on the right course. (N&J3, 343)

  The works reprinted in this volume, all written between 1868 and 1902, demonstrate Mark Twain’s reliance on what has come to be known as the Matter of Hannibal—the “realities, not inventions” of his early life in Missouri, which inspired much of his best-known work.

  The three nonfiction pieces provide particularly direct evidence of Mark Twain’s dependence on this “compass of fact.” “Letter to William Bowen” (1870) evokes the escapades, pleasures, and occasional terrors of boyhood, recalling events that would eventually be put to use in Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1885). “Jane Lampton Clemens” (1890) is the only one of the nonfiction pieces that Mark Twain wrote with publication in mind—although, for reasons unknown, he never did publish
it. A loving biographical tribute to his mother, and a sharply focused portrait of Hannibal as a small, slave-holding community, it also affords striking insights into the mature author’s values and social attitudes. The most intriguing of the factual works, however, is “Villagers of 1840–3,” published here in its entirety for the first time. This extended series of notes about life in antebellum Hannibal contains over one hundred capsule biographies of the town’s residents, including Mark Twain’s own family. Written in 1897, forty-four years after Samuel Clemens left his boyhood home, it is a remarkable feat of memory, compelling both as a historical and a literary document. Evidently Mark Twain intended to use it as a master list of possible characters for any subsequent stories he might set in St. Petersburg or Dawson’s Landing, his imaginary re-creations of Hannibal.

  Of the eight stories reprinted here, only the earliest, “Boy’s Manuscript” (1868), was ever completed. This diary of the school days, pastimes, and lovesick torments of a young boy is clearly the embryo of Tom Sawyer, which Mark Twain began writing several years later. The unfinished state of the other seven stories is in part the result of Mark Twain’s characteristic method of composition. In 1906, in his autobiography, he explained: “As long as a book would write itself I was a faithful and interested amanuensis and my industry did not flag; but the minute that the book tried to shift to my head the labor of contriving its situations, inventing its adventures and conducting its conversations, I put it away and dropped it out of my mind.” A work would then remain pigeonholed—Huckleberry Finn, for example, was twice set aside for periods of three years—until Mark Twain could approach it with renewed interest. There is no evidence, however, that he returned to any of these stories, which were no doubt among the works he called “books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground, year after year, and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written—it is only because the right form for the story does not present itself” (AD, 30 Aug 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE, 196, 199). Nonetheless, four of the stories in this volume were already substantially developed when Mark Twain put them aside. “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” (1884)—written as a sequel to Huckleberry Finn when its author was at the height of his creative powers—is a vivid adventure incorporating many of the classic elements of the Western novel. “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (1897), another attempted sequel to Huckleberry Finn, is a parody of popular detective fiction that stops just pages shy of completion. “Hellfire Hotchkiss” (1897), one of Mark Twain’s few works with a female protagonist (and an emancipated one at that), and “Schoolhouse Hill” (1898), an early version of his “Mysterious Stranger” fantasy, are rich in autobiographical allusion and have stretches of writing that compare favorably with his best efforts.

  However fragmentary and unfinished, all of the works reprinted here illuminate each other as well as the more famous works to which they are akin, and they manage to entertain even as they provide fresh glimpses into the heart of Mark Twain’s imaginative universe.

  MARK TWAIN

  HUCK FINN

  AND TOM SAWYER

  AMONG THE INDIANS

  AND OTHER UNFINISHED STORIES

  Boy’s Manuscript

  [two manuscript pages (about 300 words) missing]

  me that put the apple there. I don’t know how long I waited, but it was very long. I didn’t mind it, because I was fixing up what I was going to say, and so it was delicious. First I thought I would call her Dear Amy, though I was a little afraid; but soon I got used to it and it was beautiful. Then I changed it to Sweet Amy—which was better—and then I changed it again, to Darling Amy—which was bliss. When I got it all fixed at last, I was going to say, “Darling Amy, if you found an apple on the doorstep, which I think you did find one there, it was me that done it, and I hope you’ll think of me sometimes, if you can—only a little”—and I said that over ever so many times and got it all by heart so I could say it right off without ever thinking at all. And directly I saw a blue ribbon and a white frock—my heart began to beat again and my head began to swim and I began to choke—it got worse and worse the closer she came—and so, just in time I jumped behind the lumber and she went by. I only had the strength to sing out “APPLES!” and then I shinned it through the lumber yard and hid. How I did wish she knew my voice! And then I got chicken-hearted and all in a tremble for fear she did know it. But I got easy after a while, when I came to remember that she didn’t know me, and so perhaps she wouldn’t know my voice either. When I said my prayers at night, I prayed for her. And I prayed the good God not to let the apple make her sick, and to bless her every way for the sake of Christ the Lord. And then I tried to go to sleep but I was troubled about Jimmy Riley, though she don’t know him, and I said the first chance I got I would lick him again. Which I will.

  Tuesday.—I played hookey yesterday morning, and stayed around about her street pretending I wasn’t doing it for anything, but I was looking out sideways at her window all the time, because I was sure I knew which one it was—and when people came along I turned away and sneaked off a piece when they looked at me, because I was dead sure from the way they looked that they knew what I was up to—but I watched out, and when they had got far away I went back again. Once I saw part of a dress flutter in that window, and O, how I felt! I was so happy as long as it was in sight—and so awful miserable when it went away—and so happy again when it came back. I could have staid there a year. Once I was watching it so close I didn’t notice, and kept getting further and further out in the street, till a man hollered “Hi!” and nearly ran over me with his wagon. I wished he had, because then I would have been crippled and they would have carried me into her house all bloody and busted up, and she would have cried, and I would have been per-fectly happy, because I would have had to stay there till I got well, which I wish I never would get well. But by and bye it turned out that that was the nigger chambermaid fluttering her dress at the window, and then I felt so down-hearted I wished I had never found it out. But I know which is her window now, because she came to it all of a sudden, and I thought my heart, was going to burst with happiness—but I turned my back and pretended I didn’t know she was there, and I went to shouting at some boys (there wasn’t any in sight,) and “showing off” all I could. But when I sort of glanced around to see if she was taking notice of me she was gone—and then I wished I hadn’t been such a fool, and had looked at her when I had a chance. Maybe she thought I was cold towards her? It made me feel awful to think of it. Our torchlight procession came off last night. There was nearly eleven of us, and we had a lantern. It was splendid. It was John Wagner’s uncle’s lantern. I walked right alongside of John Wagner all the evening. Once he let me carry the lantern myself a little piece. Not when we were going by her house, but if she was where she could see us she could see easy enough that I knowed the boy that had the lantern. It was the best torchlight procession the boys ever got up—all the boys said so. I only wish I could find out what she thinks of it. I got them to go by her house four times. They didn’t want to go, because it is in a back street, but I hired them with marbles. I had twenty-two commas and a white alley when I started out, but I went home dead broke. Suppose I grieved any? No. I said I didn’t mind any expense when her happiness was concerned. I shouted all the time we were going by her house, and ordered the procession around lively, and so I don’t make any doubt but she thinks I was the captain of it—that is, if she knows me and my voice. I expect she does. I’ve got acquainted with her brother Tom, and I expect he tells her about me. I’m always hanging around him, and giving him things, and following him home and waiting outside the gate for him. I gave him a fish-hook yesterday; and last night I showed him my sore toe where I stumped it—and today I let him take my tooth that was pulled out New-Year’s to show to his mother. I hope she seen it. I was a-playing for that, anyway. How awful it is to meet her father and mother! They seem like kings and queens to me. And her brother Tom—I can hardly un
derstand how it can be—but he can hug her and kiss her whenever he wants to. I wish I was her brother. But it can’t be, I don’t reckon.

  Wednesday.—I don’t take any pleasure, nights, now, but carrying on with the boys out in the street before her house, and talking loud and shouting, so she can hear me and know I’m there. And after school I go by about three times, all in a flutter and afraid to hardly glance over, and always letting on that I am in an awful hurry—going after the doctor or something. But about the fourth time I only get in sight of the house, and then I weaken—because I am afraid the people in the houses along will know what I am about. I am all the time wishing that a wild bull or an Injun would get after her so I could save her, but somehow it don’t happen so. It happens so in the books, but it don’t seem to happen so to me. After I go to bed, I think all the time of big boys insulting her and me a-licking them. Here lately, sometimes I feel ever so happy, and then again, and dreadful often, too, I feel mighty bad. Then I don’t take any interest in anything. I don’t care for apples, I don’t care for molasses candy, swinging on the gate don’t do me no good, and even sliding on the cellar door don’t seem like it used to did. I just go around hankering after something I don’t know what. I’ve put away my kite. I don’t care for kites now. I saw the cat pull the tail off of it without a pang. I don’t seem to want to go in a-swimming, even when Ma don’t allow me to. I don’t try to catch flies any more. I don’t take any interest in flies. Even when they light right where I could nab them easy, I don’t pay any attention to them. And I don’t take any interest in property. To-day I took everything out of my pockets, and looked at them—and the very things I thought the most of I don’t think the least about now. There was a ball, and a top, and a piece of chalk, and two fish hooks, and a buckskin string, and a long piece of twine, and two slate pencils, and a sure-enough china, and three white alleys, and a spool cannon, and a wooden soldier with his leg broke, and a real Barlow, and a hunk of maple sugar, and a jewsharp, and a dead frog, and a jaybird’s egg, and a door knob, and a glass thing that’s broke off of the top of a decanter (I traded two fish-hooks and a tin injun for it,) and a penny, and a potato-gun, and two grasshoppers which their legs was pulled off, and a spectacle glass, and a picture of Adam and Eve without a rag. I took them all up stairs and put them away. And I know I shall never care anything about property any more. I had all that trouble accumulating a fortune, and now I am not as happy as I was when I was poor. Joe Baldwin’s cat is dead, and they are expecting me to go to the funeral, but I shall not go. I don’t take any interest in funerals any more. I don’t wish to do anything but just go off by myself and think of her. I wish I was dead—that is what I wish I was. Then maybe she would be sorry.