make Jim a rope ladder, we’re going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born. Now, the way I look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don’t cost nothing, and don’t waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain’t had no experience, and so he don’t care what kind of a—”
“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I’d keep still—that’s what I’d do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? Why, it’s perfectly ridiculous.”
“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.”
He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says:
“Borrow a shirt, too.”
“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”
“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”
“Journal your granny— Jim can’t write.”
“ ’pose he can’t write—he can make marks on the shirt, can’t he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?”
“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too.”
“ Prisoners don’t have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. They always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks