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

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures with Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 25 the news was all over town in two minutes and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come.

Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march.

The windows and door yards was full and every minute somebody would say over a fence, is it them?

And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say you bet it is.

When we got to the house, the street in front of it was packed and the three girls was standing in the door.

Mary Jane was redheaded, but that don't make no difference.

She was most awful beautiful and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory.

She was so glad her uncles was come.

The king, he spread his arms and Mary Jane, she jumped for them, and the hair lip jumped for the Duke.

And there they had it.

Everybody most least ways women cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times.

Then the king, he hunched the Duke private, I see him do it.

And then he looked around and see the coffin over in the corner on two chairs.

So then him.

And the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder and the other hand to their eyes walked slow and solemn over there.

Everybody dropping back to give them room and all the talk and noise stopping people saying shh.

And all the men taking their hats off and dropping their heads so you could hear a pinfall.

And when they got there, they bent over and looked in the coffin and took one sight and then they bust out a crying so you could hear them door leans most.

And then they put their arms around each other's necks and hung their chins over each other's shoulders.

And then for three minutes or maybe four, I never see two men leak the way they'd done.

And mind you, everybody was doing the same.

And the place was that damp.

I never see anything like it.

Then one of them got on one side of the coffin and the other on the other side and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin and led on to pray all to themselves.

Well, when it come to that, it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it.

And everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud, the poor girls too.

And every woman nearly went up to the girls without saying a word and kissed them solemn on the forehead and then put their hand on their head and looked up towards the sky with the tears running down and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing and giving the next woman a show.

I never see anything so disgusting.

Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little and works himself up and slobbers out a speech all full of tears and flap doodle about it being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the disease and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of a 4000 miles.

But it's a trial that sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy in these holy tears.

And so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart because of their mouths they can't words being too weak and cold and all that kind of rotten slush till it was just sickening.

And then he blubbers out a pious goody goody amen and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxology and everybody joined in with all their might and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church.

Letting out music is a good thing.

And after all that soul butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so and sound so honest and bully.

Then the king begins to work his jaw again and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening.

And helps set up with the ashes of the diseased.

And says if his poor brother Lang yonder could speak, he knows who he would name.

For they was names that was very dear to him and mentioned often in his letters.

And so he will name the same to wit as follows reverend Mr.

Hobson and deacon Lott Huvey and Mr.

Ben Rucker and Abner Shackleford and Levi Bell and Dr.

Robinson and their wives and the widow Bartley.

Reverend Hobson and Dr.

Robinson was down to the end of the town, hunting together.

That is, I mean, the doctor was shipping a sick man to the other world and the preacher was pinting him right.

Lawyer Bell was away up to Louisville on business, but the rest was on hand.

And so they all come and shook hands with the King and thanked him and talked to him.

And then they shook hands with the Duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept smiling and bobbing their heads like a passle of SAP heads whilst he made all sorts of signs with its hands and said goo goo, goo, goo goo.

All the time like a baby that can't talk.

So the King, he blattered along and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody in Dog in town by his name and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town or to George's family or to Peter.

And he always let on that Peter wrote him to things, but that was a lie.

He got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat.

Then married Jane.

She fetched the letter her father left behind and the King, he read it out loud and cried over it.

It gave the dwelling house and $3,000 gold to the girls and it give the Tanyard, which was doing a good business along with some other houses and land worth about 7000 and $3,000 in gold to Harvey and William and Hold where the 6000 cash was hid down.

Seller so these two frauds said they'd.

Go and fetch it up and have everything square and above board and told me to come with a candle.

We shut the cellar door behind us and when they found the bag, they spilt it out on the floor.

And it was a lovely sight.

All of them yeller boys my, the way the King's eyes did shine.

He slaps the Duke on the shoulder and says oh, this ain't bullying or nothing.

Oh.

No, I reckon not.

Why, Bilgie, it beats the nun such, don't it?

The Duke allowed.

It did.

They pawed the yellow boys and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor.

And the King says it ain't no use talking, being brothers to a rich dead man and representatives of fur and heirs that's got left as the line for you and me, Bilge.

This year comes of trust into Providence.

It's the best way in the long run.

I've tried them all and there ain't no better way.

Most everybody would have been satisfied with the pile and took it on trust.

But no, they must count it.

So they counts it and it comes out $415 short, says the king.

Darn him.

I wonder what he'd done with that $415.

They worried over that a while and ransacked all around for it.

Then the Duke says, well, he was a pretty sick man and likely he made a mistake.

I reckon that's the way of it.

The best way is to let it go and keep still about it.

We can spare it.

Oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it.

I don't care nothing about that.

It's the count I'm thinking about.

We want to be awful square and open and above board here, you know, we want to lug this here money upstairs and count it before everybody.

Then there ain't nothing suspicious.

But when the dead man says there's $6,000, you know we don't want to hold on, says the duke, let's make up the deficit.

And he begun to haul out yeller boys out of his pocket.

It's most amazing good idea, Duke.

You have got a rattling clever head on you, says the king.

Blessed if the old nun such ain't a Hepin us out again.

And he begun to haul out yeller jackets and stack them up.

It most busted them, but they made up the 6000 clean and clear.

Say, says the Duke, I got another idea.

Let's go upstairs and count this money and then take and give it to the girls.

Good land, Duke.

Let me hug you.

It's the most dazzling idea it ever a man struck.

You have certainly got the most astonishing head I ever see.

Oh, this is the boss dodge.

There ain't no mistake about it.

Let them fetch along their suspicions now if they want to.

This'll lay them out.

When we got upstairs, everybody gathered around the table and the King, he counted it and stacked it up $300 in a pile.

20 elegant little piles.

Everybody looked hungry at it and licked their chops.

Then they raked it into the bag again.

And I see the King begin to swell himself up for another speech.

He says, friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder is done generous by them that's left behind in the veil of sores.

He is done generous by those year poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered.

And that's left fatherless and motherless.

And yes, we that knowed him knows that he would have done more generous by them if he hadn't been a fear to wound in his dear William and me, now wouldn't he?

There ain't no question about it in my mind.

Well, then, what kind of brothers would it be that it'd stand in his way at such a time.

And what kind of uncles would it be?

That it'd Rob.

Yes, rob.

Such poor sweet lambs as these as he loved at such a time.

If I know William, and I think I do.

He well, I'll just ask him.

He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the Duke with his hands.

And the Duke, he looks at him stupid and leatherheaded a while.

Then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning and jumps for the King.

Goo Gooing with all his might for joy and hugs him about 15 times before he lets up.

Then the king says, I knowed it.

I reckon that'll convince anybody, the way he feels about it.

Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanna, take the money.

Take it all.

It's the gift of him that lays yonder cold.

But joyful, Mary Jane.

She went for him, Susan.

And the hair lip went for the Duke.

And then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet.

And everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes.

And most shook the hands off of them fraud, saying all the time, you dear good souls, how lovely.

How could you?

Olden pretty soon all hands got to talking about the disease again and how good he was and what a loss he was and all that.

And before long, a big iron jawed man worked himself in there from outside and stood a listening and looking and not saying anything.

And nobody saying anything to him either, because the King was talking and they was all busy listening.

The King was saying in the middle of something he started in on.

They be in particular friends of the diseased.

That's why they're invited here this evening.

But tomorrow we want all to come, everybody.

For he respected everybody, he liked everybody.

And so it's fitting that his funeral orgies should be public.

And so he went a mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk.

And every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again.

Till the Duke, he couldn't stand it no more.

So he writes on a little scrap of paper obsequies, you old fool.

And folds it up and goes to Goo Gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him.

The King, he reads it and puts it in his pocket and says lord William, afflicted as he is, his heart's always a right.

Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral.

Wants me to make him all welcome.

But he needn't are worried it was just where I was at.

Then he weaves along again, perfectly calm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again.

Every now and then, just like he'd done before.

And when he'd done it the third time, he says I say orgies not because it's the common term, because it ain't obsequies being the common term, but because orgies is the right term.

Obsequis ain't used in England no more.

Now it's gone out.

We say orgies.

Now, in England, orgies is better because it means the thing you're after.

More exact, it's a word that's made up out in the Greek or Joe outside open broad and the Hebrew Jessem to plant, cover up hence and tear.

So you see, funeral orgies is an open or public funeral.

He was the worst I ever struck.

Well, the ironjawed Man, he laughed right in his face.

Everybody was shocked.

Everybody says, why, doctor.

And Abner Shackleford says, Why, Robinson?

Ain't your news?

This is Harvey Wilkes.

Nakingy smiled eager and shoved out his flapper and says, Is it?

My poor brother's?

Dear good friend and physician, I keep your hands off of me, says the doctor.

You talk like an Englishman, don't you?

It's the worst imitation I ever heard.

You Peter Wilkes brother.

You're a fraud, that's what you are.

Well, how they all took on.

They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey showed up in 40 ways that he was Harvey and knowed everybody by name and the names of the very dogs and begged and begged him not to hurt Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings and all that.

But it weren't no use.

He stormed right along and said any man that pretended to be an English man couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar.

The poor girls was hanging to the king and crying and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them.

He says, I was your father's friend and I'm your friend.

And I warn you as a friend and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm in trouble to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him.

The ignorant tramp with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it.

He's, the thinnest kind of an impostor, has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres.

And you take them for proofs and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here ought to know better.

Mary Jane Wilkes, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too.

Now, listen to me.

Turn this pitiful rascal out.

I beg you to do it, will you?

Mary Jane straightened herself up, and, my, but she was handsome.

She says, Here is my answer.

She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands and says, take this $6,000 and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to and don't give us no receipt for it.

Then she put her arm around the king on one side and Susan and the hair lip done the same on the other.

Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud.

The doctor says all right, I wash my hands of the matter but I warn you all that a time's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.

And away he went.

All right, doctor says the king kind of mocking him.

We'll try and get him to send for you.

Which made them all laugh and they said it was a prime good hit.

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.

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