tries clean out of sight under the
Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left."

"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord
took as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and
all them other countries."

Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis--you look at it, and
see ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey
ain't no way to make it pay. Hain't dat so, Huck?"

"Yes, I reckon."

"Hain't it so, Mars Tom?"

"I guess so. Go on."

"Ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?"

"Yes."

"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat."

"Well--no, He don't."

"Den how come He make a desert?"

"Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?"

"Mars Tom, I b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's
allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. What does you do wid it?
Doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot?
'Course. Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat--dat de Great
Sahara warn't made at all, she jes HAPPEN'."

I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best
one Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about
arguments is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories
don't prove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell,
when you are tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out
something there ain't no way TO find out. And he says:

"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one
of Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it
come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left over?
How does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?"

But Jim was fixed for him and says:

"What's de Milky Way?--dat's what I want to know. What's de Milky Way?
Answer me dat!"

In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It's only an opinion, it's
only MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I
stand to it now--it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed
Tom Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person
that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was,
as for people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon hav