I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:
“Well, we’re shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we’ve come, there’s the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we’ve got.”
“Why?”
“Well, they can’t raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when they can’t raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it.”
“There ain’t no sense in that, Tom Sawyer.”
“Who said there was? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing’s got sense in it before you go to accusing me of saying it.”
“All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on.”
Jim says:
“Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can’t raise in America, en don’t make no ’stinction ’twix’ anything?”
“Yes, that’s what they do.”