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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 Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the

teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. 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. ssssssssss

 

"Why," says 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."

 

"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help us -- can't we lick

the other crowd then?" ssssssssss

 

"How you going to get them?"

 

"I don't know. How do they get them?"

 

"Why they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come

tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke

a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't

think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-

school superintendent over the head with it -- or any other man."

 

"Who makes them tear around so?"

 

"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever

rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he

tells them to build a palace forty miles long, out of di'monds, and fill it

full of chewing gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's

daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it -- and they've

got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more -- they've got to

 

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