afts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or
jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-
and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the
look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current
which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see
the mist curl up off the water, and the east reddens up, and the
river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away
on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely,
and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it
anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you
over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the
woods and the flowers.... And next you've got the full day, and
everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

This is the Huck we want, and this is the Huck we usually have, and that
the world has long been thankful for.

Take the story as a whole, it is a succession of startling and unique
pictures. The cabin in the swamp which Huck and his father used together
in their weird, ghastly relationship; the night adventure with Jim
on the wrecked steamboat; Huck's night among the towheads; the
Grangerford-Shepherdson battle; the killing of Boggs--to name a few of
the many vivid presentations--these are of no time or literary fashion
and will never lose their flavor nor their freshness so long as humanity
itself does not change. The terse, unadorned Grangerford-Shepherdson
episode--built out of the Darnell--Watson feuds--[See Life on the
Mississippi, chap. xxvi. Mark Twain himself, as a cub pilot, came near
witnessing the battle he describes.]--is simply classic in its vivid
casualness, and the same may be said of almost every incident on
that long river-drift; but this is the strength, the very essence of
picaresque narrative. It is the way things happen in reality; and the
quiet, unexcited frame of mind in which Huck is prompted to set
them down would seem to be the last word in literary art. To Huck,
apparently, the killing of Boggs and Colonel Sherburn's defiance of the
mob are of about the same historical importance as any other incidents
of the day's travel. When Colonel Sherburn threw his shotgun across his
arm and bade the crowd disperse Huck says:

The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went
tearing off every which way,