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

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 23 well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights.

In that night the house was jammed full of men.

In no time, when the place couldn't hold no more, the Duke, he quit tending door and went around the backway and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was.

And so he went on a bragging about the tragedy and about Edmund Keane the elder, which was to play the main principal part in it.

And at last, when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain and the next minute the king come a prancing out on all fours, naked.

And he was painted all over rings streaked and striped, all sorts of colors as splendid as a rainbow.

But never mind the rest of his outfit, it was just wild, but it was awful funny.

The people most killed themselves laughing.

And when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and ha ha, till he come back and done it over again.

And after that they made him do it another time.

Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the Duke, he lets the curtain down and bows to the people and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more on accounts of pressing London engagements where the seats is all sold already for it in Jury Lane.

And then he makes them another bow and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he'll be deeply obliged if they'll mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it.

20 people sings out.

What?

Is it over?

Is that all?

The Duke says yes.

Then there was a fine time.

Everybody sings out Sold.

And rose up mad and was going for that stage.

And them tragedy ends.

But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts, hold on just a word, gentlemen.

They stopped to listen.

We're sold.

Mighty badly sold.

But we don't want to be the laughingstock of this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live.

No, what we want is to go out of here quiet and talk of this show up and sell the rest of the town.

Then we'll all be in the same boat.

Ain't that sensible?

You bet it is.

The judge is right.

Everybody sings out.

All right, then, not a word about any cell.

Go along home and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy.

Next day, you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was.

House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way.

When me and the King and the Duke got home to the raft, we all had a supper.

And by and by about midnight they made Jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river and fetch her in and hide her out about 2 miles below town.

A third night, the house was crammed again, and they weren't newcomers this time, but people that was at the show.

The other two nights, I stood by the Duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging or something muffled up under his coat.

And I see it weren't no perfumery neither, not by a long sight.

I smelled sickly eggs by the barrel and rotten cabbages and such things.

And if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was 64 of them went in.

I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me.

I couldn't stand it.

Well, when the place couldn't hold no more people, the Duke, he gave a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him for a minute, and then he started around for the stage door.

I after him, but the minute we turned to the corner and was in the dark.

He says, Walk fast now till you get away from the houses and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you.

I'd done it and he'd done the same.

We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than 2 seconds we was gliding downstream, all dark and still and edging towards the middle of the river.

Nobody sang a word.

I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort.

Pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam and says, well, how'll the old thing pan out this time?

Duke, he hadn't been uptown at all.

We never showed a light till he was about ten mile below the village.

Then we lit up and had a supper and the King and the Duke fairly laughed, their bones loots over the way they'd served them people.

The duke says green horns flatheads.

I knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in.

And I knew they'd lay for us the third night and consider it was their turn.

Now, well, it is their turn, and I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it.

I would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity.

They can turn it into a picnic if they want to.

They brought plenty provisions.

Them rap scallions took in $465 in that three nights.

I never see money hauled in by the wagon load like that before.

Buy and buy when they was asleep and Snoring jim says, don't it surprise you the way dim kings carries on, Hook?

No, I says it.

Don't.

Why don't it huck.

Well, it don't because it's in the breed, I reckon.

They're all alike.

But, Hook, these kings aren't regular rabscallions.

That's just what they is, these regular rabscallions.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

All kings is mostly rapscallions, as far as I can make out.

Is that so?

You read about them once, you'll see.

Look at Henry the 8th this, and is a Sunday school superintendent to him.

And look at Charles second and Louis 14 and Louis 15 and James second and Edward second and Richard third and 40 more besides.

All them Saxon heptarkies that used to rip around in old times and raise cane.

May, you ought to see old Henry VIII when he was in bloom.

He was a blossom.

He used to marry a new wife every day and chop off her head next morning.

And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs.

Fetch up nelgwen, he says.

They fetch her up next morning, chop off her head and they chop it off.

Fetch up Jane Shore, he says, and up she comes next morning.

Chop off her head and they chop it off.

Ring up fair Roseman.

Fair Roseman answers the bell next morning.

Chop off her head.

And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night.

And he kept that up till he had hogged a 1001 tails that way.

And then he put them all in a book and called it Domesday Book, which was a good name and stated the case.

You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them.

And this old rip of ARN is one of the cleanest I've struck in history.

Well, Henry, he takes the notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country.

How does he go at it?

Give notice?

Give the country a show?

No, all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston harbor overboard and whacks out a declaration of independence and dares them to come on.

That was his style.

He never gave anybody a chance.

He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington.

Well, what did he do?

Ask him to show up?

No.

Drowned him in a b*** of maimsie like a cat.

Suppose people left money laying around where he was.

What did he do?

He collared it.

Suppose he contracted to do a thing and you paid him and didn't sit down there and see that he'd done it.

What did he do?

He always done the other thing.

Suppose he opened his mouth.

What then?

If he didn't shut it up powerful quick, he'd lose a lie every time.

That's the kind of a bug Henry was.

And if we'd have had him along instead of our kings, he'd have fooled that town a heap worse than ARN.

Dunn, I don't say that Arne is lambs, because they ain't when you come right down to the cold facts.

But they ain't nothing to that old ram.

Anyway.

All I say is kings is kings and you got to make allowances.

Take them all around.

They're a mighty ornery lot.

It's the way they're raised.

Look, this one do smell so like donation.

Huck.

Well, they all do, Jim.

We can't help the way a king smells.

History don't tell no way.

Now to duke, he is a tolerable likely man in some ways.

Yes, the Duke's different, but not very different.

This one's a middling hard lot for a duke when he's drunk.

There ain't no near sighted man could tell him from a king.

Well, anyways, I know and hanker for no more in them.

Huck.

These is all I can stand.

It's the way I feel too, Jim.

But we've got them on our hands and we got to remember what they are and make allowances.

Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings.

What was the use to tell, Jim?

These weren't real kings and dukes.

It wouldn't have done no good.

And besides, it was just as I said.

You couldn't tell them from the real kind.

I went to sleep and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn.

He often done that when I waked up.

Just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself.

I didn't take notice nor let on I knowed what it was about.

He was thinking about his wife and his children away up yonder and he was low and homesick because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life.

And I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for Darren.

It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so.

He was often moaning and mourning that way nights when he judged I was asleep and saying, poor little Elizabeth, poor little Johnny.

It's mighty hard, I speck, ain't ever going to see you no mo, no mo.

He was a mighty good servant, Jim was?

But this time, I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones.

And by and by he says, what makes me feel so bad this time is because I hear something over yonder on the bank.

Like a whack or a slam while ago.

And it mind me or the time I treat my little Elizabeth.

So Earnery.

She weren't only about for a year old and she tuckins a scarlet fever and had a powerful rough spell, but she got well.

And one day she was standing around and I says to her, I says s*** to do, she never done it just stood there kind of smiling up at me it make me mad.

And I says again, mighty loud, I says, don't you hear me shed to do?

She just stood the same way, kind of smiling up.

I was a villain.

I says, lay, I make you mine.

And with that I fetch her a slap side to head, that sun to Sparlin.

Then I went into the other room and was gone about ten minutes and when I come back that was Data standing open yet and that child standing most right in it, looking down in mourning and the tears running down my but I was mad.

I was going for the child but this then it was a dot open innards just then long come to win and slip it too behind the child curb lamb and my land a child never move.

My breath must hop out of me and I feel so, so odd.

Know how I feel?

I crope out all the trembling and crope around and open the doors easy and slow and poke my head in behind a child softened still.

And all of a sudden I says POW.

Just as loud as I could yell.

She never budged.

Oh, huck.

I bust out a crying and grab her up in my arms and say oh, the poe little thing.

The Lord God Almighty forgive Poe Jim because he never going to forgive himself as long as he live.

Oh, she was plumb deep and dumb, huck, plum deep and dumb.

And I've been a treatin or so, 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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