on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the
points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still,
and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead
and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it
all.

Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of
it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what
it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away
from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired
of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a
wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where
everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do
that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN
go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.

Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but
it warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:

"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt
Sally wants you."

I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so
foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose
it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he
set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't
know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:

"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got
to be excused--for the present."

His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of
it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this
gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:

"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?"

But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:

"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her S