Короткий английский текст для практики чтения и перевода.
You don’t know about me without having read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that does not matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.
There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers had hidden in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece — all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Judge Thatcher took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all year round. The Widow Douglas took me for her son, and she said that she would civilize me; but it was a rough living in the house all the time considering how dismally regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it any longer I ran away. I got into my old rags again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb. She put me in new clothes again, and I couldn’t do anything but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. Then the old things commenced again.
The widow would ring a bell for supper, and you had to come on time. When you got to the table, you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck her head and grumble a little over the food.
After supper she would get out the Bible and read me about Moses, and I was in sweat; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerably long time; so I didn’t care any more about him, because I don’t care about dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice.
It was midnight. I felt so lonesome that I almost wished I was dead. I did wish I had a company. And then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled among the trees, and there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.
After «The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn» by Mark Twain