He was always the
gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He
was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.
CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE
THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference
when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat,
anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as
far as I can see.
Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeast
course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see
three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:
"It's the pyramids of Egypt."
It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a
picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to
come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of
imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a
curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully
thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and
gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing
solid to it. It's just so with George Washington, and the same with them
pyramids.
And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me
to be stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and
had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid
covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep
mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up
in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps.
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