Graphic. Punctuation
Phonetic Stylistic Devices
English Vocabulary
Lexical Stylistic Devices
Syntactical Stylistic Devices
Decoding Stylistics
Biographies
Guidelines
Analysis
Texts
Texts
Story to analyze
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by
Mark Twain
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 trou¬sers, 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 hogs-heads 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; no¬body forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went bare¬foot 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. Petersburg. 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?'
'Bought him off'n a boy.'
'What did you give?'
'I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughterhouse.'
'Where'd you get the blue ticket?'
'Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.'
'Say – what is dead cats good for, Huck?'
'Good for? Cure warts with.'
'No? Is that so? I know something that's better.'
'I bet you don't. What is it?'
'Why, spunk water.'
'Spunk water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk water.'
'You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?'
'No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did.'
'Who told you so?'
'Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the nigger told me. There, now!'
'Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I don't know him. But I never see a nigger that would'nt lie. Shucks! Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck,'
'Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water was.'
'In the daytime?'
'Certainly.'
'With his face to the stump?'
'Yes. Least I reckon so.'
'Did he say anything?'
'I don't reckon he did, I don't know.'
'Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk water such a blame fool way as that! Why, that ain't a going to do any good. You got to go all by yourself to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a spunk water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say:
Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk water, spunk water, swaller these warts,
and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. Because if you speak, the charm's busted.'
'Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner done.'
'No, sir, you can bet he didn't; becuz he's the warti-est boy in this town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work spunk water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, Huck. 1 play with frogs so much that I've always got consider¬able many warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean.'
'Yes, bean's good. I've done that.'
'Have you? What's your way?'
'You take, and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean, and take and dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the cross-roads in the dark of the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece that's got the blood on it will keep draw¬ing and drawing, trying to fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the wart, and pret¬ty soon off she comes.'
'Yes, that's it, Huck – that's it; though, when you're burying it, if you say, "Down bean, off wart; come no more to bother me!" it's better. That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville, and most everywheres. But say – how do you cure 'em with dead cats?'
'Why, you take your cat and go and get in the grave¬yard long about midnight, when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's midnight a devil will .come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see 'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk; and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em and say, "Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm done with ye!" That'll fetch any wart'
'Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?'
'No, but old Mother Hopkins told me.'
'Well, I reckon it's so, then, becuz they say she's a witch.'
'Say! Why, Tom, I know she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own self. He come along one day, and he see she was a witching him, so he took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged he'd a got her. Well, that very night he rolled of f n a shed wher' he was a layin' drunk, and broke his arm.'
'Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a witching him?'
'Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you right stiddy, they're a witching you, specially if they mumble. Becuz when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer back'ards.'
'Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?'
'To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Wil¬liams tonight.'
'But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?'
'Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight? and then it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't reckon.'
'I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?'
'Of course – if you ain't afeard.'
'Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?'
'Yes, and you meow back if you get a chance. Last time you keep me a meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me, and says, "Dern that cat!" and so I hove a brick through his window – but don't you tell'
'I won't. I couldn't meow that night becuz auntie was watching me; but I'll meow this time. Say — what's that?'
'Nothing but a tick.'
'Where'd you get him?'
'Out in the woods.'
'What'll you take for him?'
'I don't know. I don't want to sell him.'
'All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway.'
'Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me.'
'Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I wanted to.'
'Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year.'
'Say, Huck, I'll give you my tooth for him.'
'Less see it.'
Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:
'Is it genuwyne?'
Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.
'Well, all right,' said Huckleberry; 'it's a trade.'
Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinch-bug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before.
When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. He hung his hat on a peg, and flung himself into, his seat with business
