FROM “ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA”
(1909)
The Impartial Friend
Death—the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure—the rich and the poor—the loved and the unloved.
[1]. Through an exchange of clothing with the little prince Tom Canty suddenly found himself royalty, and upon the death of Henry VIII is now king.
[2]. Miles Hendon, who has taken the real prince—now a wanderer—under his protection. In the course of their adventures the two have landed in prison.
[3]. Nigger Jim is a runaway slave to whom Huck affords protection.
[4]. Huck and Nigger Jim, drifting down the Mississippi on their raft have been struck by a steamboat. Jim has disappeared but Huck, making his way to shore, has been taken in by Col. Grangerford, whose family is in bitter feud with the Shepherdsons.
Edmund Clarence Stedman declared this chapter of Huck Finn’s adventures to be “as dramatic and powerful an episode as I know in modern literature.”
[5]. Buck Grangerford, a boy of about Huck’s age.