Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter Fourteen Summary

Huck and Jim look over all the loot they got from the robbers’ skiff – they made bank.
Huck is all excited about the adventures they keep having, but Jim is pretty sure he’d rather not have any more near-death experiences.
Part of the loot they got from the steamship was a load of books. Huck reads some of them to Jim and, in doing so, gets into a conversation about dukes and kings and the like.
He tells Jim about all the pomp and circumstances surrounding these kinds of men. Jim is amazed. He says he’s never heard of kings before – except for "Sollermun" (i.e., Solomon, from the Bible).
Jim is skeptical that kings can get all the riches they want just by sitting around all day.
Huck confirms that this is the case. They also hang around their harem, he says, which is like a garage for their thousands of wives.
Jim says that, if Solomon indeed had a thousand wives, he wasn’t actually that smart after all, because he’d have to listen to the women gabbing all the time. Besides, he says, Solomon made that stupid decision about splitting the kid in two.
(Biblical Aside: The story of Solomon is that he was a very wise man who could judge and solve all disputes. One day, two women came to him with a child, both claiming to be the mother. Solomon suggested that they cut the child in half, knowing that the real mother would rather give up her baby than see him split in two. His master plan worked, of course.)
Amazingly, and despite the fact that all he did was complain about it at the time, Huck remembers what the Widow taught him from the Bible. He tries to explain the wisdom of Solomon to Jim.
But Jim is adamant in his misunderstanding: Solomon is stupid for wanting to cut a child in half, because half a child isn’t good to anybody.
He continues: Solomon was so wasteful of children because he had about eight million kids himself. If he only had two kids, he wouldn’t be so eager to go chopping them in half.
Next, they talk about language. Huck explains that a Frenchman doesn’t speak the same way they do.
Jim thinks this is ridiculous: All cats talk the same. All dogs talk the same. Why shouldn’t all men talk the same?
This is a good point. But Huck misses the fact that Jim is actually incredibly logical and declares that, "you just can’t learn a nigger to argue."

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Thirteen