HF+Chapters+1+to+3

Chapter 1
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer leaves off. At the end of the previous novel, Huck and Tom find a treasure of twelve thousand dollars, which they divide. Judge Thatcher takes their money and invests it in the bank at six percent interest, so that each boy earns a dollar a day on their money. Huck Finn moves in with the Widow Douglas who has agreed to care for him. Huckleberry Finn is the narrator of this story, and he starts off by describing his life to the reader. After moving in with the Widow Douglas, who buys him new clothes and begins teaching him the Bible. Huck is uncomfortable with all of these "restrictions" on his life, and soon runs away to avoid being "civilized". Tom Sawyer goes after Huck and convinces him to return to the Widow's house after promising that they will start a band of robbers together. Huck agrees to return, but still complains about having to wear new clothes and eat only when the dinner bell rings, something he was not used to while growing up with his Pap. The Widow Douglas teaches Huck the Bible and forbids him from smoking. Her sister, Miss Watson, who also lives in the house, complements her attentions towards him. Miss Watson is a spinster who decides that Huck must get an education. She tries to teach him spelling and lectures him on how to behave well so that he will be welcomed into heaven. Miss Watson warns Huck that if he does not change his ways, he will go to hell. Ironically, Huck finds the description of hell far more enticing and exciting than the description of heaven, and decides he would rather go to hell, but doesn't tell Miss Watson of his decision. That night, Huck goes into his bedroom and lights a candle before falling asleep. He starts to feel very lonely and equates every night sound, including an owl, dog and whippowill, with death. At one point, Huck flicks a spider away, and accidentally burns it up in the candle flame, which he thinks is a very bad omen. Huck lies awake until midnight, at which time he hears a soft meow from below his window. The meow is a signal from Tom Sawyer, and Huck replies with a similar meow. He climbs out of the bedroom window and drops to the ground to meet his friend.

Chapter 2
While the boys are sneaking away, Huck trips over a root and makes a noise when he falls. Miss Watson's slave Jim hears the sound and comes outside to look around. Huck and Tom hunker down to hide, and Jim ends up sitting down right between them to wait to hear the sound again. At first, Huck thinks they will never get away, but Jim soon gets tired and falls asleep against a tree. While Jim sleeps, Tom wants to play a trick on him. He and Huck climb into the house and steal three candles, for which they leave a nickel as "pay". Then Tom quietly makes his way to Jim, takes off Jim's hat, and places it on a tree branch above Jim's head. He soon returns and tells Huck what he did. After Jim wakes up, he believes he has been bewitched, and keeps the nickel as a token around his neck for the rest of his life. According to Huck, Jim tells all the other slaves that some witches had ridden him around the world, and that the nickel was given to him by the devil. Tom and Huck sneak down to the river and meet some of the other boys who are supposed to be members of Tom's robber band. Together, they steal a skiff and float down the river several miles to an area where Tom has discovered a cave. Tom shows the boys a hidden room in the cave which they make their robber headquarters. Tom then reads them an oath that he has written, taken mostly from robber books and pirate stories. The boys argue over what Huck Finn's role in the gang will be, because Huck does not have a family for them to kill in case he reveals any of the gang's secrets. Huck finally offers them Miss Watson in place of his real parents, and the boys then sign an oath in blood to join the band. Tom is elected captain. Tom explains that as robbers, they will only attack carriages and take the things inside. The men will be killed and the women will be brought back to the cave. He also mentions that they will ransom some of the people, because that is what they do in books, although he has no idea what "ransom" means. After that, all the boys agree to meet again soon. They return home exhausted and Huck climbs into bed having muddied up his new clothes, and feeling dead tired.

Chapter 3
The morning after his robber gang adventure, Huck receives a lecture from Miss Watson for dirtying his clothes. She takes him into a closet to pray, and tells him to pray every day so he will get what he wants. Huck tries to pray daily, but becomes disillusioned when all he gets is a fish-line with no hooks, when he prayed extra hard for hooks. When he asks Miss Watson about it, she tells him praying brings spiritual gifts. Unable to see any use for that sort of thing, Huck decides praying is probably not worth his time. A drowned man is found in the river, and the townspeople believe is Huck's Pap. Huck is unconvinced after he hears the man was found floating on his back. He remarks that everyone knows dead men float face down, so this must have been a woman in man's clothing that looked like his Pap. Tom Sawyer's robber band falls apart after a few weeks because the boys get bored of pretending they are robbing people. The only real escapade is when they wreck a Sunday School picnic and chase some of elementary school children away. Tom pretends that during this 'battle' there were Arabs and elephants and that the boys were attacking a large army, but Huck is too practical to follow Tom's fantastical imaginations. When Huck asks why they could not see all the elephants, Tom explains that some magicians must have turned the whole army into a Sunday School picnic. Tom then tells Huck all about genies in bottles, and how the genies must obey whoever rubs the bottle. Huck gets an old lamp and tries to find a genie, but when it fails he decides that the genies were just another of Tom's lies.