Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

One morning, while canoeing through a creek in search of berries, Huck encounters two men running, pleading with Huck to let them on his canoe, begging for their lives. Huck tells the men not to jump into the boat but to run through the bushes and then wade through the creek before finally meeting up with him later, to throw the pursuing dogs off their scent. The men do so.

After meeting up with the two men, Huck learns that the older one got into trouble for selling “an article to take tartar off the teeth,” while the other, younger, one for running a religious “temperance revival” against drinking alcohol while, his devotees discover, drinking himself. The two con men agree to work together. The older one specializes in cons that involve doctoring and preaching.

When the younger con man learns this, he bemoans the fact that he is forced to con people, having once been “so high.” He claims to have been born the Duke of Bridgewater. Huck and Jim pity the man after he begins to cry, and the duke tells the pair that they should bow when they address him, and do so by his official titles, and to wait on him, which Huck and Jim do. Later, the older con man claims, also crying, that he is “the late Duphin,” or King of France. Huck and Jim begin to comfort the king as well as the duke.

The duke becomes sour, but the king tells him that he should cheer up. Life on the raft is comfortable, with plenty of food and ease. The king asks for the duke’s hand, and the duke gives it to him. Huck and Jim immediately feel more comfortable after the unfriendliness on the raft dissipates; for, as Huck thinks, “what you want above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.” Indeed, even though Huck knows that the duke and king are con men, he doesn’t say anything, so as to avoid conflict.