arn't worth much to look at, being
such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss
over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found
that place was too many for me. We passed as much as forty just like it
before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but
just the right one would suit him; I never see anybody so particular as
Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy
as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done it he
couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself.

Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned
the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said
it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it
when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop,
and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that
knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the
place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would
answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I
ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag
of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe
that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before
could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer
done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his
very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize
it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it
instink?

Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it
their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion
that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The
reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with
his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and
put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know
the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think that settles
it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where the exact
PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place
it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not instink,
he would know the brick again by the look of it the nex