“Suppose there’s a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has got to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you look at them, hain’t he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don’t. He paints one of them blue, and then you can’t make no mistake. It’s just the same with the maps. That’s why they make every State a different color; it ain’t to deceive you, it’s to keep you from deceiving yourself.”
But I couldn’t see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim shook his head, and says:
“Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you’d wait a long time before you’d fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac’. I’s gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you’self. I see one of ‘em a-paintin’ away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson’s back lot, en I went down to see, en he was paintin’ dat old brindle cow wid de near horn gone – you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he’s paintin’ her for, en he say when he git her painted, de picture’s wuth a hundred dollars. Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah, if you’ll b’lieve me, he jes’ shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on a-dobbin’. Bless you, Mars Tom, DEY don’t know nothin’.”
Tom lost his temper. I notice a person ‘most always does that’s got laid out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we’d feel better. Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip again, and says:
“That’s funny! That clock’s near about an hour fast.”
So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and it was an hour fast too. That puzzled him.
“That’s a mighty curious thing,” he says. “I don’t understand it.”
Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was an hour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kinder gaspy like, and he says:
“Ger-reat Scott, it’s the LONGITUDE!”
I says, considerably scared:
“Well, what’s been and gone and happened now?”
“Why, the thing that’s happened is that this old bladder has slid over Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of Pennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there.”
“Tom Sawyer, you don’t mean it!”
“Yes, I do, and it’s dead sure. We’ve covered about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. We’ve come close on to eight hundred miles.”
I didn’t believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back just the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn’t take much short of two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his mind and studying. Pretty soon he says:
“Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?”
“Yes, they’re right.”
“Ain’t yo’ watch right, too?”
“She’s right for St. Louis, but she’s an hour wrong for here.”
“Mars Tom, is you tryin’ to let on dat de time ain’t de SAME everywheres?”
“No, it ain’t the same everywheres, by a long shot.”
Jim looked distressed, and says:
“It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I’s right down ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you’s been raised. Yassir, it’d break yo’ Aunt Polly’s heart to hear you.”
Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn’t say nothing, and Jim went on:
“Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it. Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain’ dey bofe his children? ‘Cose dey is. WELL, den! is he gwine to SCRIMINATE ‘twixt ‘em?”
“Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain’t no discriminating about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?”
Jim see the p’int. He was stuck. He couldn’t answer. Tom says:
“He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case HERE ain’t no discrimination of his, it’s man’s. The Lord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn’t invent the hours, and he didn’t distribute them around. Man did that.”
“Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?”
“Certainly.”
“Who tole him he could?”
“Nobody. He never asked.”
Jim studied a minute, and says:
“Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn’t ‘a’ tuck no sich resk. But some people ain’t scared o’ nothin’. Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don’t care what happens. So den dey’s allays an hour’s diff’unce everywhah, Mars Tom?”
“An hour? No! It’s four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of ‘em’s an hour, thirty of ‘em’s two hours, and so on. When it’s one clock Tuesday morning in England, it’s eight o’clock the night before in New York.”
Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the worst of his feelings, and then he says:
“Mars Tom talkin’ sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Monday in t’other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain’t no place to joke – up here whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two days inter one day? Can’t git two hours inter one hour, kin you? Can’t git two niggers inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can’t git two gallons of whisky inter a one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, ‘twould strain de jug. Yes, en even den you couldn’t, I don’t believe. Why, looky here, Huck, s’posen de Choosday was New Year’s – now den! is you gwine to tell me it’s dis year in one place en las’ year in t’other, bofe in de identical same minute? It’s de beatenest rubbage! I can’t stan’ it – I can’t stan’ to hear tell ‘bout it.” Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says:
“NOW what’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”
Jim could hardly speak, but he says:
“Mars Tom, you ain’t jokin’, en it’s SO?”
“No, I’m not, and it is so.”
Jim shivered again, and says:
“Den dat Monday could be de las’ day, en dey wouldn’t be no las’ day in England, en de dead wouldn’t be called. We mustn’t go over dah, Mars Tom. Please git him to turn back; I wants to be whah – ”
All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. Tom says:
“Ain’t that the – ” He catched his breath, then says: “It IS, sure as you live! It’s the ocean!”
That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. Tom kept muttering:
“Atlantic Ocean – Atlantic. Land, don’t it sound great! And that’s IT – and WE are looking at it – we! Why, it’s just too splendid to believe!”
Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a city – and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge; and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself,