| Share page |
|
Tom Sawyer Abroad 99
there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could.'
" Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck for fifty camels."
" Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."
" Mars Tom, he tole de man de truck would make him bline."
"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a man he was hunting for — a man that never believes in anybody's word or anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. I reckon there's lots of people like that dervish. They swindle, right and left, but they always make the other person seem to swindle himself. They keep inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to git hold of them. They don't put the salve on — oh, no, that would be sin; but they know how to fool you into putting it on, then it's you that blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a pair — a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals, just the same."
" Mars Tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl' now?"
" Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they've got it in New York, and they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and |
||