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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<!-- saved from url=(0048)https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm -->
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<title>Hate Speech in Huck</title>
<link rel="coverpage" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/images/cover.jpg">
<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
body { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; background:#eeffff; text-align:justify}
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/* #faebd0 */
.button {
position: fixed;
background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */
border: none;
color: white;
padding: 16px 32px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none;
display: inline-block;
font-size: 16px;
margin: 4px 2px;
transition-duration: 0.4s;
cursor: pointer;
}
.showHate {
background-color: white;
color: black;
border: 2px solid #4CAF50;
}
.showHate:hover {
background-color: #4CAF50;
color: white;
}
.hideHate {
left: 350px;
background-color: white;
color: black;
border: 2px solid #008CBA;
}
.hideHate:hover {
background-color: #008CBA;
color: white;
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.highlight {
left: 610px;
background-color: white;
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.highlight:hover {
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p.poem {text-indent: 0%;
margin-left: 10%;
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p.center {text-align: center;
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div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<button class="button showHate">Show All Text</button>
<button class="button hideHate">Remove Hate Speech</button>
<button class="button highlight">Highlight Hate Speech</button>
<p> </p>
<br><br><br><br><br><br>
<h1>GENED 1133 Final Project: Hate Speech in Huck</h1>
<h4>By Luke Kenworthy</h4>
<p>
In my final project, I used machine learning to provide some additional
context to the long and storied fight to ban Huckleberry Finn. I will first
describe what my project does, then I will provide some obervations, and I
will conclude with some thoughts about what this means for our society.
<br><br>
Below my introduction contains the full text of Huckleberry Finn. At the top of the page,
there is a button to highlight all text that was classified as hate speech, as well
a button to remove such text. Finally, there is a button to undo either effect
and go back to the original novel. For the best viewing experience, please use
a laptop or desktop on full screen, though mobile should work as well.
<br><br>
<b>Process:</b>
<br><br>
To follow along with the code used for the data processing, click
<a href="https://github.com/lukekenworthy/hateInHuck/blob/main/model.ipynb">here</a>;
I included annotations for each code cell so non-technical readers can kind of
follow along with what is going on.
My base inspiration for the machine learning model came from
<a href="https://thecleverprogrammer.com/2020/08/19/hate-speech-detection-model/">this</a> article.
Immediately, I did not think their dataset would
be particularly helpful for the model that I wanted to create. Their data were based
off of tweets, and very few of those tweets contained the n-word, which is
important for classifying the type of hate speech that might be found in
Huckleberry Finn. So, after doing some digging, I found a
<a href="https://github.com/Vicomtech/hate-speech-dataset">data set</a>
that classified whether posts on a white supremecist forum
contained hate speech. Preparing this data for use in a model took some work.
All of the posts existed in separate .txt files, so I had to traverse the directory to
store all of the text into a single dataframe. Additionally, the classification of
hate speech was not included directly with the file. So, I had to use the table
that contained all of the classifications and then join on the post id to get a "hate"/"noHate"
classification for each post.
<br><br>
Then, I cleaned this data by removing anything that might confuse a machine learning model,
like punctuation or hashtags. After doing this cleaning, I ran into another issue: even
on a white supremicist forum, only around 10% of the data contained hate speech.
While having hate speech be a minority of the dataset is a good thing for society,
it is a bad thing for teaching a machine learning model, because it has so few
samples to learn from. Thus, I used a statistical technique called upsampling,
where I randomly drew (with replacement) from the hate speech samples to increase
the size of the hate speech dataset. I did this until the "hate" and "noHate"
samples had the same size. I then created a simple text classification model
that looks at the distribution of words in a text combined with a classic computational learning technique
known as "stochastic gradient descent" (as an aside, this technique is super cool. It is
basically the main way in which machines learn right now, but it is not at all similar
to how humans learn. For a mildly-in-depth introduction to this technique, see
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w">here</a>) and then checked
out the results.
<br><br>
At this point in the project, I realized that I would need to expand my dataset. When I
tested the model on various sentences in Huckleberry Finn that used the n-word,
it kept saying that the sentences were not hateful. Going back through the data,
I realized that the hate speech in the forum data was largely anti-semitic, and contained
few instances of the n-word. As a result, I added in some hate speech data compiled from Twitter,
making sure that a significant portion of tweets in the data set contained the n-word.
I classified a tweet as containing hate speech when over half of the reviewers
said that the tweet was hateful.
After training the model on this full data set, I started to have some promising results.
On the test set (I held out 25% of the data so I could test the accuracy of the model
with data it was not trained on), it achieved 85.8% accuracy. The false positive rate was 37.9%,
while the false negative rate was 12.1%. This means that the model is a bit eager
to classify something as hate speech, even if it is not, though it will rarely
miss hate speech that it should have picked up. Given the simplicity of the model,
these are pretty good results. An interesting summer coding project for me might be
to build something more sophisticated, perhaps using a neural network.
This model could easily be substituted into
my project once it is built.
<br><br>
To apply my model to Huckleberry Finn on a webpage, I first downloaded the book as an HTML
file provided by Project Gutenberg. I then used the Python HTML parsing package,
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w">Beautiful Soup</a>,
to walk through the book paragraph by paragraph. Starting with the opening sentence,
I separated the paragraph into sentences using the
<a href="https://www.nltk.org">Natural Language Toolkit</a>
sentence tokenizer function. I gave each sentence a span tag, then ran it through my machine
learning model to see how it was classified. I added a class to the span tag based on its
"hate"/"noHate" designation. For context, a span tag is an HTML tool that allows you
to treat parts of a body of text individually for webpage styling purposes, while a class
allows you to stylize parts of a webpage as a group. I then created three HTML buttons (with
some help from
<a href="https://www.w3schools.com/css/css3_buttons.asp">W3 Schools</a>). Finally, I added some
JavaScript code that would change the styling of the words wrapped in "hate" span tags.
For the "Remove Hate Speech" button, I hid all of the "hate" text, for the "Highlight
Hate Speech" button, I added a red highlight to all of the "hate" text, and for the
"Show All Text" button, I restored the text to its original state.
<br><br>
<b>Observations:</b>
<br><br>
Without hate speech removed, the n-word shows up in Hucklberry Finn 214 times. Once you hide hate speech,
it shows up 33 times. Observing some of these instances, it is pretty clear that many -- if not all --
of them should have been classified as hate speech too. My hypothesis for this observation is that
a lot of the data that the model was trained on that contained the n-word came from Twitter.
Examining some of these tweets, it appears that there were some cases in which the n-word
was used in an arguably non-demeaning way. Furthermore, it is worth noting that, in some of
those instances, at least one reviewer thought the tweet was hateful even though
a majority did not, so there is a lot of subjectivity there. Context is one of the more
difficult things for a computer to learn so, with a relatively basic model, it
is expected that some instances would slip through the cracks. Additionally, the full version
of the text is 110,175 words, while the version with hate speech removed is 79,980 words.
<br><br>
There are scenarios where the model will flag something as hate speech when it is clearly
not, while there are others when the flagging is understandable. This observation falls in line
with the high false positive rate found in testing. For example, the sentence, "And by and by they
had me up to tell what I knowed," is flagged inexplicably. But, in the case of the sentence,
"Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how
the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again,"
it seems like the model picked up on the term "rats" as being used frequently in hate speech. Sure enough,
after checking the data on the white supremecist forum, "rats" was used there
as an anti-semitic term. The data from the forum probably made the model overly
sensitive to words like "rats," which demonstrates a pitfall of this technique.
<br><br>
<b>Analysis:</b>
<br><br>
This project shows some of the limitations of machine learning in solving problems
related to hate speech. In a world where humans cannot agree on which speech
is hateful, forcing a machine to decide for us is a shirking of responsibility.
While machines might be able to help humans with such difficult tasks, they should
not take over that responsibility entirely.
Furthermore, though my model was fairly rudimentary, it does give a demonstration
of the more obvious errors that can occur when machines try to make human decisions.
In such sensitive situations, these errors are more costly and require an emotional,
rational being to fix them.
Additionally, it is hard for a machine to learn about context, as well as other social
norms that are more subtle. This difficulty was displayed prominently in the examples
given in the previous paragraph, as well as the many others that you might find while
reading through this edition of Huckleberry Finn. For this specific project, there was also a clear
mismatch between the training data and the text of Huckleberry Finn. Most of the
data that the model was trained on was produced in the last 20 years, whereas
Huckleberry Finn was first published over 100 years ago. This mismatch makes accurate training
difficult, and also shows the importance of training-application congruency. There have been examples
of face detection algorithms having difficulty detecting black faces because there were
few black faces given in their training data set. In the world of big data, representation
is important. Finally, the machine learning algorithm
also does not know the context in which the reader is reading the book. Arguably,
this is an important factor in determining if something should be classified as hate speech.
<br><br>
This project also adds another layer of nuance to the element of context in the debate
over banning the American classic. Many proponents of continuing to teach Huckleberry Finn
say that, when properly contextualized, the racially charged language in the text
can lead to constructive conversations about American society. Many believe,
though, that this context is critical for the conversation to be constructive.
By creating an edition of Huckleberry Finn that highlighted the more racially charged language,
some might argue that this better contextualizes the sensitive language in the novel. Others might
want an edition with such language removed entirely. Opponents of these alternate editions
would likely criticize them for being overly paternalistic, or for changing the
author's original words. Creating these editions, too, would suffer from some the problems
discussed in the previous paragraph; who would get to decide which parts of the book
are classified as hate speech? Proponents of hiding the hate speech would probably contend
that removing the hate speech could teach many of the valuable lessons from the book
without inflicting the harm that comes from those hateful words. A similar argument could
be made for the highlighted edition, where highlighting the terms emphasizes to young adults
that they are not acceptable. While largely well-intentioned, I personally believe that
such a modified edition
would be a poor idea because it would discourage kids from thinking critically about
which parts of the book are hateful, detracting from the intellectual environment
required to make reading Huckleberry Finn a constructive experience, both for
individuals, and for our society.
</p>
<p><i>
<br><br><h2 style="color: red;">
Below, you will find Huck Finn as presented by Project Gutenberg, with the ability to
highlight or remove hate speech:</h2>
</i>
</p>
<br><br>
<hr>
<br>
<div style="text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;">The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)</div>
<div style="display:block;margin:1em 0">
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
country where you are located before using this eBook.
</div>
<div style="display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em">Title: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</div>
<div style="display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em">Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)</div>
<div style="display:block;margin:1em 0">Release Date: August, 1993 [eBook #76]<br>
[Most recently updated: February 21, 2021]</div>
<div style="display:block;margin:1em 0">Language: English</div>
<div style="display:block;margin:1em 0">Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
<div style="display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em">Produced by: David Widger</div>
<div style="margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em">*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUCKLEBERRY FINN ***</div>
<h1>
ADVENTURES<br> <br> OF<br> <br> HUCKLEBERRY FINN
</h1>
<h3>
(Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)
</h3>
<h2>
By Mark Twain
</h2>
<p>
<br> <br>
</p>
<h2>
Complete
</h2>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
<br>
</p>
<p>
<br>
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <br> <br>
</p>
<hr>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<div class="fig" style="width:60%">
<img alt="bookcover.jpg (153K)" src="./The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, By Mark Twain_files/bookcover.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<div class="fig" style="width:60%">
<img alt="frontispiece.jpg (194K)" src="./The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, By Mark Twain_files/frontispiece.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<div class="fig" style="width:60%">
<img alt="titlepage.jpg (75K)" src="./The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, By Mark Twain_files/titlepage.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
EXPLANATORY
</p>
<p>
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri
negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect;
the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified
varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard
fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy
guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of
speech.
</p>
<p>
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would
suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not
succeeding.
</p>
<p>
THE AUTHOR.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br>
</p>
<hr>
<p>
<br> <br>
</p>
<h2>
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
</h2>
<p>
<br> <br>
</p>
<p>
Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to fifty years ago
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <a name="c01-02" id="c01-02"></a><br> <br> <a name="c1" id="c1"></a>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br>
</p>
<p>
CHAPTER I.
</p>
<p>
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That
book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There
was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is
nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without
it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s
Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about
in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said
before.
</p>
<p>
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the
money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got
six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of
money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put
it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year
round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow
Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it
was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular
and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t
stand it no longer I lit out. 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.
</p>
<p>
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it.
She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but
sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing
commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to
come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to
eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and
grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really
anything the matter with them,—that is, nothing only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different;
things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go
better.
</p>
<p>
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by
she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then
I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock
in dead people.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c01-18" id="c01-18"></a><br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But
she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t
clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way
with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t
know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which
was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding
a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it.
And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she
done it herself.
</p>
<p>
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had
just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book.
She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her
ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an
hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say,
“Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t
scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty
soon she would say, “Don’t gap and stretch like that,
Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave?” 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.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c01-19" id="c01-19"></a><br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around
all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t
think much of it. But I never said so. 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.
</p>
<p>
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome.
By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then
everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of
candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the
window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no
use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars
were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I
heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a
whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the
wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out
what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in
the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to
tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself
understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about
that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I
did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up
my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I
could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to
tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck,
so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned
around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then
I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away.
But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve
lost a horseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over
the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep
off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.
</p>
<p>
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for
the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn’t
know. 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. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the
trees—something was a stirring. I set still and listened.
Directly I could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!”
down there. That was good! Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!”
as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the
window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled
in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c01-21" id="c01-21"></a><br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<hr>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c02-22" id="c02-22"></a><br> <br> <a name="c2" id="c2"></a>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> CHAPTER II.
</p>
<p>
We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of
the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t
scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root
and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss
Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we
could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He
got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he
says:
</p>
<p>
“Who dah?”
</p>
<p>
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between
us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and
minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close
together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I
dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back,
right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t
scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since.
If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to
sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t
do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand
places. Pretty soon Jim says:
</p>
<p>
“Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’
hear sumf’n. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s
gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin.”
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c02-24" id="c02-24"></a><br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back
up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most
touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the
tears come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. Then it
begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I
didn’t know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went on
as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that.
I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I
couldn’t stand it more’n a minute longer, but I set my teeth
hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy;
next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon comfortable again.
</p>
<p>
Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and
we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot
off Tom whispered to me, and 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 he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn’t
want him to try. 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. I waited, and it
seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.
</p>
<p>
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of
the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and
hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t
wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a
trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees
again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time
Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that,
every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said
they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his
back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it,
and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers
would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to
than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with
their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.
Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen
fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such
things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know
’bout witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take
a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck
with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own
hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches
whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told
what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there
and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center
piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his
hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck
up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
</p>
<p>
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there
was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine;
and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still
and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers,
and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we
unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the
big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
</p>
<p>
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our
hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn’t a noticed that there was a hole.
We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp
and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:
</p>
<p>
“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s
Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his
name in blood.”
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c02-25" id="c02-25"></a><br> <br>
</p>
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</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had
wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the
band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to
any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his
family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep
till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the
sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could
use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he
must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the
secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up
and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list
with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on
it and be forgot forever.
</p>
<p>
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it
out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
</p>
<p>
Some thought it would be good to kill the <i>families</i> of boys that
told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil
and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:
</p>
<p>
“Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you
going to do ’bout him?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never find him
these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but
he hain’t been seen in these parts for a year or more.”
</p>
<p>
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said
every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t
be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of
anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was
most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered
them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:
</p>
<p>
“Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can
come in.”
</p>
<p>
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and
I made my mark on the paper.
</p>
<p>
“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of
business of this Gang?”
</p>
<p>
“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.
</p>
<p>
“But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—”
</p>
<p>
“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; it’s
burglary,” says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That
ain’t no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop
stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and
take their watches and money.”
</p>
<p>
“Must we always kill the people?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think
different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them—except
some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re
ransomed.”
</p>
<p>
“Ransomed? What’s that?”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve
seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we’ve got to
do.”
</p>
<p>
“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”
</p>
<p>
“Why, blame it all, we’ve <i>got</i> to do it. Don’t
I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing
different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, that’s all very fine to <i>say</i>, Tom Sawyer, but how
in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t
know how to do it to them?—that’s the thing I want to get at.
Now, what do you reckon it is?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them
till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re
dead.”
</p>
<p>
“Now, that’s something <i>like</i>. That’ll
answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll
keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll
be, too—eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.”
</p>
<p>
“How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s
a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”
</p>
<p>
“A guard! Well, that <i>is</i> good. So somebody’s
got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them.
I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club
and ransom them as soon as they get here?”
</p>
<p>
“Because it ain’t in the books so—that’s why.
Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t
you?—that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the
people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do?
Do you reckon <i>you</i> can learn ’em anything? Not by
a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the
regular way.”
</p>
<p>
“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool
way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let
on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books
like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as
polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never
want to go home any more.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, if that’s the way I’m agreed, but I don’t
take no stock in it. Mighty soon we’ll have the cave so cluttered up
with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be
no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say.”
</p>
<p>
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t
want to be a robber any more.
</p>
<p>
So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But
Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and
meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.
</p>
<p>
Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he
wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to
do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get
together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom
Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so
started home.
</p>
<p>
I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.
My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c02-28" id="c02-28"></a><br> <br>
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<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<hr>
<p>
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<p>
<br> <br> <br> <br> CHAPTER III.
</p>
<p>
Well, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t scold, but only
cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I
would behave awhile if I could. 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. It 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.
</p>
<p>
I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it.
I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t
Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can’t the
widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can’t
Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to my self, there ain’t nothing in
it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a
body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts.” This
was too many for me, but she told me what she meant—I must help
other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for
them all the time, and never think about myself. This was including Miss
Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in
my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no advantage about it—except
for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn’t worry about
it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me
one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body’s mouth
water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all
down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and
a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s
Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help
for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong
to the widow’s if he wanted me, though I couldn’t make out how
he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I
was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.
</p>
<p>
Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was
comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used
to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though
I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well,
about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile
above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said
this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long
hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn’t make nothing out of
the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn’t much
like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the
water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I warn’t
comfortable long, because I happened to think of something. I knowed
mighty well that a drownded man don’t float on his back, but on his
face. So I knowed, then, that this warn’t pap, but a woman
dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was uncomfortable again.
I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished
he wouldn’t.
</p>
<p>
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All
the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any
people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and
go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to
market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs
“ingots,” and he called the turnips and stuff “julery,”
and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many
people we had killed and marked. But I couldn’t see no profit
in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing
stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get
together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next
day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp
in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and
over a thousand “sumter” mules, all loaded down with di’monds,
and they didn’t have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so
we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the
things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready.
He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the
swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and
broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they
warn’t worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before.
I didn’t believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and
A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand
next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed
out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn’t no
Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn’t no camels nor no elephants.
It warn’t anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a
primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up
the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though
Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and
then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.
</p>
<p>
<br> <br> <a name="c03-31" id="c03-31"></a><br> <br>
</p>
<div class="fig" style="width:60%">
<img alt="c03-31.jpg (68K)" src="./The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, By Mark Twain_files/c03-31.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
</div>
<p>
<br> <br> <br>
</p>
<p>
I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so.
He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was
A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t
we see them, then? He said if I warn’t so ignorant, but had
read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said
it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of
soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies
which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an
infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the
thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I
was a numskull.
</p>
<p>
“Why,” said he, “a magician could call up a lot of
genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack
Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.”
</p>
<p>
“Well,” I says, “s’pose we got some genies to help
<i>us</i>—can’t we lick the other crowd then?”
</p>
<p>