Now that I'm old enough to appreciate the non-dumbed-down little-kid abridged versions of good ol' Samuel Clemens' work, I find it highly entertaining. Mark Twain was a very funny man. We're doing Huck Finn in English class right now, and the way he writes the situations and how so many characters have NO idea what they're talking about...

Like the scene where Tom Sawyer is forming their little "Band of Robbers" and talking about killing people and robbing them (naturally, we're talking a group of rowdy boys here; they'll be murdering and robbing bundles of hay or something, all pretend) and then someone asks if they have to kill everyone and Tom says, well, no, you keep some prisoner until they're ransomed.

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"

"Why, blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine for you to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? --that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"

"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead."

"Now that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they'll be, too-- eating up everything, and always trying to get loose."

"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"

"A guard! Well that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"

I absolutely LOVE the line "ransomed to death."

Go Mark Twain and yer never-ending wit! =D