"What, is it over? Is that ALL?"

The duke says yes. Then there was a fine time.
Everybody sings out, "Sold!" and rose up mad, and
was a-going for that stage and them tragedians. But a
big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and
shouts:

"Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen." They stopped
to listen. "We are sold -- mighty badly sold. But
we don't want to be the laughing stock of this whole
town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as
long as we live. NO. What we want is to go out of
here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the REST of
the town! Then we'll all be in the same boat. Ain't
that sensible?" ("You bet it is! -- the jedge is
right!" everybody sings out.) "All right, then --
not a word about any sell. Go along home, and ad-
vise everybody to come and see the tragedy."

Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that
town but how splendid that show was. House was
jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the
same way. When me and the king and the duke got
home to the raft we all had a supper; and by and by,
about midnight, they made Jim and me back her out
and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch
her in and hide her about two mile below town.

The third night the house was crammed again -- and
they warn't new-comers this time, but people that was
at the show the other two nights. I stood by the duke
at the door, and I see that every man that went in had
his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under
his coat -- and I see it warn't no perfumery, neither,
not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel,
and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know
the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do,
there was sixty-four of them went in.

Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, c.23.