The disillusionment of Jim

From the end of the magisterial chapter 15 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, originally published in 1885.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now.

“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does THESE things stand for?”

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them first-rate now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

“What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.”

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

 

Washington Irving Comes Home

from Washington Irving’s A Tour of the Prairies:

At length the long anticipated moment arrived.  I again  saw the “blue line of my native land” rising like a cloud in that horizon where, so many years before, I had seen it fade away.  I again saw the bright city of my birth rising out of its beautiful bay; its multiplied fanes and spires, and its prolonged forest of masts proclaiming its augmented grandeur.  My heart throbbed with pride and admiration as I gazed upon it, I gloried in being its son.

But how was the wanderer to be received, after such an absence ?  Was he to be taken, as a favored child, to its bosom;  or repulsed as a stranger, and a changeling?

My old doubts recurred as I stepped upon land. I could  scarcely realize that I was indeed in my native city, among the haunts of my childhood.  Might not this be another of those dreams that had so often beguiled me?  There were circumstances enough to warrant such a surmise.  I passed through places that ought to be familiar to me, but all were changed.  Huge edifices and lofty piles had sprung up in the  place of lowly tenements; the old landmarks of the city were  gone; the very streets were altered.

As I passed on, I looked wistfully in every face : not one  was known to me, not one!  Yet I was in haunts where every  visage was once familiar to me.  I read the names over the doors :  all were new.  They were unassociated with any early recollection. The saddening conviction stole over my heart that I was a  stranger in my own home!  Alas!  thought I, what had I to expect after such an absence!

Let not the reader be mistaken.  I have no doleful picture  to draw; no sorrowful demand to make upon his sympathies.  It  has been the lot of many a wanderer, returning after a shorter  lapse of years, to find the scenes of his youth gone to ruin and  decay.   If I had any thing to deplore, it was the improvement of  my home.  It had outgrown my recollection from its very prosperity, and strangers had crowded into it from every clime, to participate in its overflowing abundance.  A little while was sufficient to reconcile me to a change, the result of prosperity.  My friends, too, once clustered in neighboring contiguity, in a moderate community, now scattered widely asunder, over a splendid metropolis, soon gathered together to welcome me; and never did wanderer, after such an absence, experience such a greeting.  Then it was that every doubt vanished from my mind.  Then it  was that I felt I was indeed at home, and that it was a home of  the heart! I thanked my stars that I had been born among such  friends; I thanked my stars, that had conducted me back to  dwell among them while I had yet the capacity to enjoy their fellowship.