Quote 1
"Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your share?"
"Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time."
"What you going to do with yourn, Tom?"
"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red necktie and a bull pup, and get married." (25.48-9; 53-4)
The childishness of Tom's dream is only emphasized by his inclusion of marriage in what is otherwise a rather silly list of desires.
Quote 2
"Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes -- not many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable hard to git -- and you go and beg off for me with the widder." (35.9)
Huck finds out that, sometimes, getting just what you had hoped for is actually the last thing you ever want.
Quote 3
The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell -- everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."
"Well, everybody does that way, Huck." (35.7-8)
The Widow's regimen, and, most especially, Tom's defense of it, seems curiously at odds with the vision of boyhood, of specifically American boyhood, that Tom has come to represent.
Quote 4
Tom saw his opportunity—
"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning robber."
"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"
"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." (35.12-15)
Tom's nimble imagination – and the fact that most of his schemes have no basis in reality – allows him to coax Huck in to going back to the Widow Douglas.
Quote 5
"Say -- what is dead cats good for, Huck?"
"Good for? Cure warts with."
"No! Is that so? I know something that's better."
"I bet you don't. What is it?"
"Why, spunk-water."
"Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water." (6.57-61)
Superstitions function as a kind of street smarts, a way for kids, in this case Tom and Huck, to demonstrate their knowledge.
Quote 6
"Say, Hucky -- do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?"
"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does."
Tom, after a pause:
"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss."
"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead people, Tom." (9.10-14)
Even when their fears are normal or understandable – the whole ghost in the graveyard thing is pretty standard – Tom and Huck take things to a new level; they are very serious about the supernatural.
Quote 7
"We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering around so." (25.91)
Considering that Tom and Huck are so young, and that their knowledge of the world is so limited, their belief in strange, otherworldly things is understandable – also, in this case, ghosts and witches provide Huck with a perfect reason to stop digging a hole late at night, an unenviable task if there ever was one.
Quote 8
"My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"
"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was Friday."
"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday."
"Might! Better say we would! There's some lucky days, maybe, but Friday ain't." (26.4-7)
Here again, superstition gives Huck and Tom the opportunity to delay what is, no doubt, a scary endeavor – they go off and pretend to be Robin Hood instead.
Quote 9
"It [Injun Joe's ghost] would hang round the money. I know the ways of ghosts, and so do you."
Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his mind. But presently an idea occurred to him –
"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!"
The point was well taken. It had its effect. (33.58-61)
In order to bolster Huck's confidence, Tom trumps one with another. Though they do believe in the craziest things, their system has some order to it.
Quote 10
"Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort -- I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom." (35.9)
Huck's connection to his own way of speaking is so visceral that it actually affects him physically; his way of talking really is an important part of his personality.
Quote 11
"That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?"
"In Ben Rogers's hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's n***** man, Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it. That's a mighty good n*****, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat with him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." (28.31-32)
Here, Huck demonstrates that he is both conscious of racial divisions and that he is able to look past them.
Quote 12
"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout where I'll go to. I been so wicked."
"Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller's told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried -- but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I'll just waller in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle a little.
"You bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance." (10.51-53)
Though Tom and Huck do not much like church or Sunday school – Huck doesn't even attend – they both worry about going to hell.
Quote 13
"Most always -- most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk on -- and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do that -- leastways most of us -- preachers and such like." (23.19)
Here, Huck takes a little jab at the preaching profession – but only so that he can paint Muff Potter in a better light.