The Writings of Mark Twain [pseud.], Volume 13

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Harper & brothers, 1899

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Page 13 - 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.
Page i - NOTICE Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
Page 112 - Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that." "Is a cat a man, Huck?" "No." "Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man? — er is a cow a cat?" "No, she ain't either of them." "Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?
Page 111 - Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?" "No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said — not a single word." "Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?" "/ don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy — what would you think?
Page 128 - They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get STARTED right when he's little ain't got no show - when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'da done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd...
Page 160 - ... by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way...
Page 252 - All right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to England ; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor Robinson.
Page 285 - "Don't say yes'm — say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?" I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up — from down towards Orleans. That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on — or — Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out...
Page 13 - 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.
Page iii - 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.

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