Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-second chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our website, or join our Facebook Group!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

Take a look and a buck and let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one fight at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take it word for word like line.

One bite at a time my name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you want to know what's coming next and vote on upcoming books, sign up for our newsletter at bit at a Timebooks.com.

You'll also find our new t shirts in the shop, including podcast shirts and quote shirts from your favorite classic novels.

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also our website.

Bite at a Timebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our patreon to support the show, and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

We're part of the byte at a Time Books Productions network.

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic authors to write their novels and what was going on in the world at the time, check out the Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts, please note while we try to keep the text as close to the original as possible, some words have been changed to honor the marginalized communities who've identified the words as harmful and to stay in alignment with Bite at a Time book's brand values.

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

Chapter 22 they swarmed up toward Sherburne's house a whooping and raging like engines and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush.

And it was awful to see children was healing it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way.

And every window along the road was full of women's heads and there was servant boys in every tree and bucks and winches looking over every fence.

And as soon as the mob would get nearly to them, they would break and Scattle back out of reach.

Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburne's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.

It was a little 20 foot yard, some sung out, tear down the fence.

Tear down the fence.

Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburne steps out onto the roof of his little front porch with a double barrel gun in his hand and takes his stand, perfectly calm and deliberate, not saying a word.

The racket stops and the wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word, just stood there looking down.

The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable.

Sherburn run his eyes slow along the crowd and wherever it struck.

The people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't.

They dropped their eyes and looked sneaky.

Then pretty soon sherburne sort of laughed.

Not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you're eating bread that's got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful, the.

Idea of you lynching anybody.

It's amusing the idea of you thinking.

You had pluck enough to lynch a.

Man because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast out women that come along here.

Did that make you think you had.

Grid enough to lay your hands on a man?

Why, a man's safe in the hands of 10,000 of your kind as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.

Do I know you?

I know you clear through.

I was born and raised in the south and I've lived in the north, so I know the average all around.

The average man's a coward.

In the north, he lets anybody walk over him that wants to and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it.

In the south, one man all by himself has stopped a stage full of.

Men in the daytime and robbed the lot.

Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people, whereas you're just as brave and no braver.

Why don't your juries hang murderers?

Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back in the dark.

And it's just what they would do, so they always acquit.

And then a man goes on the.

Night with 100 masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal.

Your mistake is that you didn't bring a man with you.

That's one mistake.

And the other is that you didn't.

Come in the dark and fetch your masks.

You brought part of a man, Buck Harkness, there.

And if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd have taken it out in blowing you didn't want to come.

The average man don't like trouble in danger.

You don't like trouble in danger.

But if only half a man like Buck Harkness there shouts, lynch him.

Lynch him.

You're afraid to back down, afraid you'll be found doubt to be what you are cowards.

And so you raise a yell and hang yourselves onto that half a man's coattail and come raging up here swearing what big things you're going to do.

The pitifulst thing out is a mob.

That's what an army is, a mob.

They don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass and from their officers.

But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness.

Now, the thing for you to do.

Is to droop your tails and go.

Home and crawl in a hole.

If any real lynching is going to be done, it will be done in.

The dark southern fashion.

And when they come, they'll bring their masks and fetch a man along.

Now leave and take your half a.

Man with you tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.

The crowd washed back sudden and then broke all apart and went tearing off every which way.

And Buck Harkness, he healed it after them, looking tolerable cheap.

I could have stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.

I went to the circus and loafed around to the backside till the watchman went by and then dived in under the tent.

I had my $20 gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it because there ain't no telling how soon you're going to need it away from a home and amongst strangers.

That way you can't be too careful.

I ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way.

But there ain't no use in wasting it on them.

It was a real bully circus.

It was the splendidest sight that ever was.

When they all come riding in two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts and no shoes nor stirrups and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable.

There must have been 20 of them.

And every lady with a lovely complexion and perfectly beautiful and looking just like a gang of real sure enough queens and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars and just littered with diamonds.

It was a powerful fine sight.

I never see anything so lovely.

And then, one by one, they got up and stood and went to weaving around the ring, so gentle and wavy and graceful.

The men looking ever so tall and aryan straight with their heads bobbing and skimming along away up there under the tent roof.

And every lady's rose leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips and she looking like the most loveliest parasol.

And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing 1st 1ft out in the air.

And then the other, the horses leaning more and more and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole, cracking his whip and shouting, High.

High.

And the clown cracking jokes behind him.

And by and by, all hands dropped to the reins and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms.

And then, how the horses did lean over and hump themselves.

And so one after the other, they all skipped off into the ring and made the sweetest bow I ever see and then scampered out and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild.

Well, all through the circus they'd done the most astonishing things.

And all that time that clown carried on so it most killed the people.

The ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him.

But he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said and how he ever could think of so many of them.

And so sudden and so pat was what I could no way understand, why I couldn't have thought of them in a year.

And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring.

Said he wanted to ride, said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was.

They argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen.

And the whole show come to a standstill.

Then the people began to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad.

And he begun to rip and tear.

So that stirred up the people.

And a lot of men begun to pile down off the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, knock him down.

Throw him out.

And one or two women began to scream.

So then the ringmaster, he made a little speech and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse.

So everybody laughed and said, all right.

And the man got on.

The minute he was on the horse began to rip and tear and jump and convert around with two circusmen hanging onto his bridle, trying to hold him and the drunk man hanging onto his neck and his heels flying in the air every jump.

And the whole crowd of people standing up, shouting and laughing till tears rolled down.

And at last, sure enough, all the circusmen could do, the horse broke loose and away he went, like the very nation, round and round the ring with that thought lying down on him and hanging onto his neck with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side and then the other one on the other side.

And the people just crazy.

It weren't funny to me, though.

I was all of a tremble to see his danger.

But pretty soon he struggled up a straddle and grabbed the bridle a reeling this way and that, and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood.

And the horse had going like a.

House of fire, too.

He just stood up there assailing around as easy and comfortable as if he weren't ever drunk in his life.

And then he began to pull off his clothes and sling them.

He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air.

And altogether he shed 17 suits.

And then there he was, slim and handsome and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw.

And he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly and finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off to the dressing room and everybody just a howling with pleasure and astonishment.

Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon.

Why it was one of his own men.

He had got up that joke all out of his own head and never let on to nobody.

Well, I felt cheapish enough to be took in so but I wouldn't have been in that ringmaster's place, not for a don't know.

There may be bullier circuses than what that one was but I never struck them yet.

Anyways, it was plenty good enough for me and wherever I run across it, it can have all of my custom every time.

Well that night we had our show but there weren't only about twelve people there, just enough to pay expenses and they laughed all the time and that made the Duke mad.

And everybody left anyway before the show was over but one boy which was asleep.

So the Duke said these Arkansas lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare.

What they wanted was low comedy and maybe something rather worse than low comedy he reckoned.

He said he could size their style.

So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village, the bill said at the courthouse.

For three nights only the world renowned tragedeans David Garrick the younger and Edmund Keane the elder of the London and Continental theaters and their thrilling tragedy of the King's Camelopard or the Royal nonsuch admission $0.50.

Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all which said ladies and children not admitted nair, says he, if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansas.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for.

The next bite of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@bitedimebooks.com and check out the shop.

You can check out the show notes or our website, Bite at a Timebooks.com.

For the rest of the links for our show, we'd love to hear from you on social media as well.

Take a look in the broken.

Let's see what we can find.

Taking chapter by chapter one five at a time.

So many adventures and mountains we can climb.