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TOM SAWYER. |
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respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim ; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back ; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing; the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on door-steps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church* or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to
fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; |
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he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on \\ clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburgh.
Tom hailed the romantic outcast: " Hello, Huckleberry ! " " Hello yourself, and see how you like it." " What's that you got ? " "Dead cat."
"Lemme see him Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him ? " |
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HUCKLEBERRY FI^N. |
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" Bought him off n a boy." "What did you give?"
" I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter house." " Where'd you get the blue ticket ? " |
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