Mark Twain

“ Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cow-path crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was me—or maybe Jim. ”

“ Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know—there's a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as its always done, and take everything from me—loved ones, property, everything—but it can't take that. ”

“ Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yer raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It'll only make things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king—so what's the use to worry? Make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says I—that's my motto. This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here—plenty grub and an easy life—come, give us your hand, Duke, and less all be friends. ”

“ Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:
"No, spirits wouldn't say, 'dern the dern fog.'"
Soon as it was night, out we shoved; ”

“ You bet you Jim and me stared, this time. Then the duke says "You are what?"
"Yes, my friend, it is too true—your eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette."
"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."
"I AM THE LATE DAUPHIN." "Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. ”

“ After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black—no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock—the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up, right away.
"AND DOGS A-COMING." One morning about day-break, I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore—it was only two hundred yards—and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some berries. ”

“ Not a sound, anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line—that was the woods on' t'other side—you couldn't make nothing else out ”