Huckleberry Finn explains that he first appeared in a book about a boy named Tom Sawyer, by an author named Mark Twain. In that book Tom and Huck met a trio of robbers and got away with $12,000 in gold pieces, which they split evenly. Since then, he has been cared for by the “dismal regular and decent” widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson (10). They live in a town called St. Petersburg in the state of Missouri. Judge Thatcher, another figure from Tom Sawyer, keeps Huck’s money safe in an interest-earning account. Huck often thinks about running away. He is not allowed to smoke his pipe in the widow’s presence, and the biblical lessons she urges are lost on him.

On an evening when Huck “felt so lonesome [he] most wished [he] were dead,” Tom Sawyer comes to his window and signals him to come down (11).

As Tom and Huck creep around the side of the house, sneaking past Miss Watson’s slave Jim as he dozes beneath a tree. In passing, Tom slips the hat off Jim’s sleeping head and hangs it on a tree, a trick that Jim will later extrapolate into an act of extravagant, status-enriching witchery.