"Huckleberry Finn" is the adventures of Tom Sawyer's boy companion after he rebels against the efforts made to civilize him. "Huck" runs away, and, in company with the slave Jim, starts down the Missouri River on a raft, tying it up o' days and running at night, because Jim is a runaway slave.

At last they come across two "fakirs," who are running away from angry townspeople, and take them aboard the raft. At various spots they touch, and the "Duke" and "King," as the fakirs call themselves, resort to any sort of scheme to raise money, acting, addressing prayer-meetings as reformed pirates, and finally ending up with a trick which costs them a suit of tar and feathers. This is palming themselves off as a bereaved family in a country village, as the brothers of the uncle who has just died, and getting hold of the money.

"Huck" finally manages to trick the rascals and they are summarily punished.

The descriptions of life along the Missouri fifty years ago are marvellously written in a colloquial, familiar style, as though told by "Huck" Finn himself. The story of the great Grangerford-Sheperdson feud, the tale of the "Royal Nonesuch," the camp-meeting in the woods, the running amuck of a drunken man in a river town -- these are in Mark Twain's best style."