Huck & Moses and the Bullrushers

[alice wellintown]

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by
it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing
but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old
thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had
to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to
eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and
grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really
anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things
get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go
better.

   After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and
the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by
and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long
time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no
stock in dead people.

see
Huckleberry Finn: A Mississippi Moses
Billy G. Collins
The Journal of Narrative Technique
Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp. 86-104