Huckleberry Finn

Chapters 22,23, & 24

    The king spends the next day getting the stage ready. The gentlemen fill the entire place up ready for the production. As the curtains rise, the people are awe-struck by the king who is NAKED, covered in paint from head to toe! The men begin to laugh at the sight, not knowing what to think. The king prances around for a while, and then while the men are laughing, he leaps off to backstage and ends the show.

    Once the audience realizes they've been ripped off they begin to yell and leave. Then they decide to fool the rest of the townsmen to come see it so they do not look like the only idiots for being fooled.

    The king dances again the next night and the third night the gates are open again for the final showing. Little do the men know, but by the time the curtains open the king, the duke, Huck, and Jim are already on raft getting away with four hundred and sixty-five dollars!

    As they float away and the two con-men sleep, Jim and Huck discuss what kind of men royals really are.

"

Jim says:

"Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?"

"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, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar ; dat's jist what dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions."

"Well, that's what I'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out."
 

...

"But dis one do SMELL so like de nation, Huck."

"Well, they all do, Jim. We can't help the way a king smells; history don't tell no way."

"Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways."

"Yes, a 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 doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck. Dese is all I kin stan'."

"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 warn't real kings and dukes? It wouldn't a done no good; and, , it was just as I said: you couldn't tell them from the real kind.

"