Question

Which excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains humor?
Well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve people there—just enough to pay expenses.
And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep.
So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village.
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.

Answer 1

All of them carry Twain’s dry, comic tone, but the clearest bits of humor are the second and fourth lines.

- “And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep.” — deadpan understatement and the absurd image of everyone leaving while one kid snores on; the contrast between the duke’s anger and the audience’s behavior is comic.

- “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.” — ironic and satirical: people coming back even after being fooled, which creates a comic sense of human gullibility.

The other lines (the makeshift handbills and the small audience) add to the humor by painting a shabby, improv show scene in Huck’s plainspoken voice.