A few months ago, I watched Ken Burns' Mark Twain and decided it might be a good time to revisit Huck Finn. Interesting side note, the "Mark Twain" pseudonym comes from his days as a steamboat captain. "mark twain" is the first depth indicating safe waters (or in the reverse direction, heading to unsafe waters) for the boat. Here are the glossary of terms:
Quarter Less Twain - ten and one-half feetBecause I had left over audible credits, I decided to listen to it as an audio book. Among the multitude of choices, I ended up picking Elijah Wood's, mostly because he sounded the youngest and the other narrators used a very slow, old man, southern drawl. I was pretty entertained by Wood's accents when imitating a southerner, imitating a British accent (when he himself had never actually heard one).
Mark Twain - twelve feet (two fathoms)
Quarter Twain - thirteen and one-half feet
Half Twain - fifteen feet
Quarter Less Three - sixteen and one-half feet
Mark Three - eighteen feet (three fathoms)
Quarter Three - nineteen and one-half feet
Half Three - twenty-one feet
Quarter Less Four -twenty-two and one-half feet
Mark Four (or Deep Four) - twenty-four feet (four fathoms)
No Bottom - over twenty-four feet
All in all, it was entertaining to listen to, though it seemed to get a little long by the end. Since I wasn't reading it visually, I didn't get to highlight as I usually do; however, this section was definitely my favorite:
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
HUCK FINN.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell"—and tore it up.It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.