Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the third chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today, we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter Three well, I got a good going over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes.

But the widow, she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could.

Then Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.

She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for, I would get, but it weren't so.

I tried it once.

I got a fish line, but no hooks.

It weren't any good to me without hooks.

I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work by and by.

One day I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool.

She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way.

I sat down one time back in the woods and had a long think about it.

I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Wynn get back the money he lost on pork?

Why can't the widow get back her silver snuff box that was stole?

Why can't Miss Watson fat up?

No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it.

I went and told the widow about it and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts.

This was too many for me but she told me what she meant.

I must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself.

This was including Miss Watson as I took it.

I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time but I couldn't see no advantage about it except for the other people.

So at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it anymore but just let it go.

Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water.

But maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again.

I judged I could see that there was two Providences and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's Providence.

But if Miss Watson's got him there weren't no help for him anymore.

I thought it all out and reckoned I would belong to the widows if he wanted me.

Though I couldn't make out how he was going to be any better off than when he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low down and ornery pappy ain't been seen for more than a year and that was comfortable for me.

I didn't want to see him no more.

He used to always wail me when he was sober and could get his hands on me though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around.

Well about this time he was found in the river, drowned about twelve mile above town so people said.

They judged it was him anyway.

Said this drowned man was just his size and was ragged and had uncommon long hair which was all like PAP.

But they couldn't make nothing out of the face because it had been in the water for so long.

It weren't much like a face at all.

They said he was floating on his back in the water.

They took him and buried him on the bank.

But I weren't comfortable long because I happened to think of something.

I know mighty well that a drowned man don't float on his back but on his face.

So I know then that this weren't PAP, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.

So I was uncomfortable again.

I judged the old man would turn up again by and by though I wished he wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a month and then I resigned.

All the boys did.

We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended.

We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market.

But we never hived any of them.

Tom Sawyer got the hogs ingots, and he called the turnips and stuff jewelry, and we would go to the cave and POW wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked, but I couldn't see no profit in it.

One time, Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan, which was a sign for the gang to get together.

And then he said he had got secret news by his spies.

That next day, a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich Arabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with 200 elephants and 600 camels and over a thousand sumter mules, all loaded down with diamonds.

And they didn't have only a guard of 400 soldiers.

And so we would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.

He said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready.

He never could go after even a turnip cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only laugh and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted.

And they weren't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before.

I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and Arabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants.

So I was on hand next day, Saturday in the ambuscade, and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill.

But there weren't no Spaniards and Arabs, and there weren't no camels nor no elephants.

It weren't anything but a Sunday school picnic, and only a primer class at that.

We busted it up and chased the children up the hollow, but we never got anything but some donuts and jam, though ben Rogers got a rag doll and Joe Harper got a hymn book and a track.

And then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut.

I didn't see no diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so he said there was loads of them there anyway, and he said there was Arabs there, too, and elephants and things.

I said, Why couldn't we see them then?

He said if I weren't so ignorant but had read a book called Don Kyoti, 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 numb school.

Why, said 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're as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.

Well, I says, suppose we got some genies to help us.

Can't we lick the other crowd then?

How are 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 are ripping around and the smoke are 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 40 miles long out of diamonds 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 waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it.

You understand?

Well, says I, I think they're a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves stead of fooling them away like that.

And what's more, if I was one of them, I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.

How you talk Huck Finn.

Why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it whether you wanted to or not.

What?

And I as high as a tree and as big as a church.

All right, then, I would come.

But I lay.

I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.

Shucks.

It ain't no use to talk to you, Huxin.

You don't seem to know anything somehow.

Perfect saphead.

I thought all this over for two or three days and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it.

I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat calculating to build a palace and sell it.

But it weren't no use.

None of the genies come.

So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies.

I reckoned he believed in the Arabs and the elephants.

But as for me, I think different.

It had all the marks of a Sunday school.

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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