The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

this book really occurred," and he tells us that Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also,

John Briggs was also the original of Joe Harper, the "Terror of the Seas." As for Huck Finn, the "Red-Hand

young Ben, the eldest son-a doubtful character, with certain good traits; and Tom-that is to say, Huck, who was just as he is described in the book-a ruin of rags, a river-rat, kind of heart, and accountable for his conduct to nobody in the world. He could come and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to sc

all signals at night that would bring Sam out on the shed roof at the back and down a little trellis and flight of steps to the group of boon companions, which, besides Tom, usually included John Briggs

the river, the islands, and the deep wilderness of the Illinois shore. They could run like turkeys and swim like ducks; they could handle a boat as if born in one. No orchard or melon-patc

spot being where the railroad bridge now ends. It was a good distance across to the island where, in the book, Tom Sawyer musters his pirate band, and where later Huck found Nigger Jim, but quite often in the evening they swam across to it, and when they had frolicked for an hour or more on the sandbar at the head of the island, they would swim back in the dusk, breasting the strong, steady Mississippi curre

f the size of Tom Sawyer. Many of them are, of course, forgotten now, but

But this was not enough. The boys thought of a plan to make it bring more. Selms's back window was open, and the place where he kept his pelts was pretty handy. Huck went around to the front door and sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who tossed it back on th

g wrong about this. That boy has been s

several sheep-skins and some cow-hides, but only

years, used to tell th

oad with the deadly momentum of a shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then wait until they saw a team approaching, and, calculating the distance, would give the boulder a start. Dropping behind the bushes, they would watch the sudden effect u

in front of some peaceful-minded countryman jogging along the road. Quarrymen had been getting out rock not far away and had left their picks and shovels handy. The boys borrowed the

nd started down. They were not ready for it at all. Nobody was coming but

ough while it lasted. In the first place the stone nearly caught Will Bowen when it started. John Briggs had that mo

boys; she'

half-way down the hill it struck a sapling and cut it clean off. This turned its course a little, and the negro in the

it struck, fragments and dust would fly. The shop happened to be empty, but the rest of the catastrophe would call for close investigation. They wanted to fly, but they could not mov

, and landed in the soft dirt beyond the road, only a fragment striking the shop, damaging, but not wrecking it. Half buried in the ground, the great stone lay there for nearly forty years;

t stone acted the way it did. We might have had to pay

admission. If the band had a leader, it was Sam, just as it was Tom Sawyer in the book. They were always ready to listen to him-they would even stop fishing to do that-and to follow his plans. They looked to him for ideas and dire

ot. The pilot in his splendid glass perch with his supreme power and princely salary was to them the noblest of all human creatures.

gorgeous and awe-inspiring, where his word, his nod, would still be law. The river kept his river ambit

ed of the cave. He was willing any time to quit fishing or swimming or melon-hunting for the three-mile walk, or pull, that brought them to its mystic door. With its long corridors, its royal chambers hung with stalactites, its remote hid

though he was dissolute and accounted dangerous; and when one night he died in reality, there came a thunder-storm so terrific that Sam Clemens at home, in bed, was certain that Satan

om Blankenship (Huck) one morning said he had dreamed just where the treasure was, and that if the boys-Sam Clemens and John Briggs-would go with him and help dig, he would divide. The boys had great fai

ure that day, and next morning they took two long iron rods to push and drive into the ground until they should strike something. They

circumstantial that they went back and dug another day. It was hot weather, too-August-and that night th

so used, and very importantly, in the creation of our beloved Huck. Ben was considerably older, but certainly no more reputable, than Tom. He tormented the smaller boys, and they had little love for

here was for this one a reward of fifty dollars-a fortune to ragged, out-cast Ben Blankenship. That money, and the honor he could acquire, must have been tempting to the waif, but it did not outweigh his human sympathy. Instead of giving him up and claiming the reward, Ben kept the run

, supposing there was one, would be between sympathy and the offered reward. Neither conscience nor law would trouble him. It was his native

e and were pushing the drift about, when, all at once, the negro shot up out of the water, straight and terrible, a full half-length in the a

e house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home, where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presentl

ent. I went out of the window, and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it was

hed that age. And how many things had crowded themselves into his few brief years

. Will Bowen became a fine river-pilot. Will Pitts was in due time a leading merchant and bank president. John Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer. Huck

he writer of this memoir spent an afternoon with him and