"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on
top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always
does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak,
and you never see a person so sick and disgusted.
Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day
out, and when I asked him what WAS he in such a state about, he said it
'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting
older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a name for
himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always thinking,
but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.
So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and
pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer
was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's
mighty good and friendly when YOU'VE got a good thing, but when a good
thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to
hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him.
There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you
when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've got
one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one
time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no
core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to do is to
wait.
Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it
was. It was a crusade.
"What's a crusade?" I says.
He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a
person, and says:
"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"
"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till
now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell
me, I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out
things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any
occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk
Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a
crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a
patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he-"
"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is
a kind of war."
I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest,
and went right on, perfectly ca'm.
"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."
"Which Holy Land?"
"Why, the Holy Land-there ain't but one."
"What do we want of it?"
"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's
our duty to take it away from them."
"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"
"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."
"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"
"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"