"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry. And one thing in
particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way and
trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and a railroad train
doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and farms, and
pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a little puff of
white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it, you
would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. And we left the
bird and the train both behind, 'WAY behind, and done it easy, too.
But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant
blatherskites, and then he says:
"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 chuckleheads 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