{"id":"01KG16REQY1JN9HPFCJVNK1Q2B","cid":"bafkreieypbg3jm6poi3jvbasbomu3ez53orreo2mo63x3zjxz3b4pc63ty","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2086,"extracted_at":"2026-01-28T02:26:13.193Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG0K71QZ8KK7RGEGSNTB5534","start_line":1980,"text":"men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat\r\nwas a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,\r\nwhen he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons\r\nfar down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of\r\nthe trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged\r\nin the dirt when not rolled up.\r\n\r\nHuckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps\r\nin fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to\r\nschool or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could\r\ngo fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it\r\nsuited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he\r\npleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring\r\nand the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor\r\nput on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything\r\nthat goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed,\r\nhampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.\r\n\r\nTom hailed the romantic outcast:\r\n\r\n“Hello, Huckleberry!”\r\n\r\n“Hello yourself, and see how you like it.”\r\n\r\n“What’s that you got?”\r\n\r\n“Dead cat.”\r\n\r\n“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he’s pretty stiff. Where’d you get him?”\r\n\r\n“Bought him off’n a boy.”\r\n\r\n“What did you give?”\r\n\r\n“I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.”\r\n\r\n“Where’d you get the blue ticket?”\r\n\r\n“Bought it off’n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.”\r\n\r\n“Say—what is dead cats good for, Huck?”\r\n\r\n“Good for? Cure warts with.”\r\n\r\n“No! Is that so? I know something that’s better.”\r\n\r\n“I bet you don’t. What is it?”\r\n\r\n“Why, spunk-water.”\r\n\r\n“Spunk-water! I wouldn’t give a dern for spunk-water.”\r\n\r\n“You wouldn’t, wouldn’t you? D’you ever try it?”\r\n\r\n“No, I hain’t. But Bob Tanner did.”\r\n\r\n“Who told you so!”\r\n\r\n“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny\r\ntold Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the\r\nnigger told me. There now!”\r\n\r\n“Well, what of it? They’ll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I\r\ndon’t know _him_. But I never see a nigger that _wouldn’t_ lie. Shucks!\r\nNow you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.”\r\n\r\n“Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water\r\nwas.”\r\n\r\n“In the daytime?”\r\n\r\n“Certainly.”\r\n\r\n“With his face to the stump?”\r\n\r\n“Yes. Least I reckon so.”\r\n\r\n“Did he say anything?”\r\n\r\n“I don’t reckon he did. I don’t know.”\r\n\r\n“Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool\r\nway as that! Why, that ain’t a-going to do any good. You got to go all\r\nby yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there’s a\r\nspunk-water stump, and just as it’s midnight you back up against the\r\nstump and jam your hand in and say:\r\n\r\n    ‘Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,\r\n    Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,’\r\n\r\nand then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then\r\nturn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.\r\nBecause if you speak the charm’s busted.”\r\n\r\n“Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain’t the way Bob Tanner\r\ndone.”\r\n\r\n“No, sir, you can bet he didn’t, becuz he’s the wartiest boy in this\r\ntown; and he wouldn’t have a wart on him if he’d knowed how to work\r\nspunk-water. I’ve took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,\r\nHuck. I play with frogs so much that I’ve always got considerable many\r\nwarts. Sometimes I take ’em off with a bean.”\r\n\r\n“Yes, bean’s good. I’ve done that.”\r\n\r\n“Have you? What’s your way?”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG16PT5BB4WWHRZC6QBQRYAA","peer_label":"CHAPTER VI","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG0K71QZ8KK7RGEGSNTB5534","peer_label":"tom_sawyer.txt","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KFXT0KM64XT6K8W52TDEE0YS","peer_label":"More Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG16RES041D3P9AAP9V3M504","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG16REQTDHCM0GJ3SXGRDVZH","peer_label":"Chunk 4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-28T02:26:13.772Z","ts":"2026-01-28T02:26:14.516Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}