Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 25 Summary & Analysis

The duke and king, pretending to be Harvey and William Wilks, are received by Peter Wilks’s family, including his niece Mary Jane, whom Huck thinks is very beautiful. When the duke and king approach Peter’s coffin, all the people gathered go quiet, and the two con men begin to cry their eyes out, and everyone else starts to cry too. The duke and king work the crowd, and Huck finds the situation “disgusting.”

The king addresses the crowd, saying how hard it was to lose Peter and how grateful he is to those gathered. Someone begins to play music, and the king resumes, inviting close friends of the family to supper that night. As the duke makes signs with his hands and goo-goos like a baby, the king goes to the townspeople and addresses mostly all of them by name, and informs them about what Peter had written to him.

Mary Jane fetches the letter her uncle left behind, and the king reads it and cries. In the letter, Peter Wilks bequeaths to his nieces his house and three thousand dollars in gold, and, to his brothers, three thousand dollars in gold. The letter also says where the gold is hidden.

The duke and king, along with Huck, go to the cellar and find the hidden bag full of gold, and, even though anybody else would be satisfied with the mere sight of that much gold, the duke and king count it. They discover that there’s about four hundred dollar worth of gold missing. The two agree to make up the deficit with their own money so that, when counting the sum before the townspeople to prove that everything is being done fairly, no one will question what happened to the missing gold. The duke and king also agree to give their part of the treasure to Wilks’s nieces so that no one will even suspect them of fraud.

Upstairs before the townspeople, the duke and king announce that they are giving what Peter seemingly bequeathed them to his nieces, because otherwise the two would feel as though they were robbing the girls. The Wilks girls hug the two con men, thinking the two their very loving uncles. The king goes on to invite all the townspeople to Peter’s funeral obsequies, which he mistakenly refers to as “orgies” until the duke discreetly corrects him. The king explains he uses “orgies” instead of “obsequies” because that is the word used in England, based on Greek and Hebrew etymology.

A man, Doctor Robinson, laughs in the king’s face after he gives his etymology of “orgies.” The townspeople are shocked, but the undeterred doctor goes on to accuse the king of being a fraud. The townspeople tell him he’s wrong, and the Wilks girls cling to the king and begin to cry. But Doctor Robinson tells the girls that, as their father’s friend, he begs them to get the king out of their house. Mary Jane responds by giving the king Peter’s six thousand dollars to invest on her and her sister’s behalf. Doctor Robinson tells the girls that they will regret this day and takes his leave.