Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we
looked away down into the village and
could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe,
and the stars over
us was sparkling ever so fine, and down by the village was the river, a whole
mile broad and
awful still and grand.
Four gross grammatical errors in one sentence does not a literary masterpiece make, and it might get it banned in Boston in 1884. Mark Twain's vernacular style in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn goes far beyond vulgarisms. This sentence, perhaps the best in the book, fuses vulgarisms, the colloquial mode, realistic description, loose structure, and "high-toned" language to describe a scene, evoke a mood, and mostly to characterize the boy Huck Finn. "Well" establishes the colloquial mode, and the vulgarisms and loose structure of Huck's speech carry it through. The loose structure of the sentence, both subordinate and coordinate elements added on as Huck speaks, lets the reader share Huck's perceptions in sequence. First he and Tom Sawyer look "away down" into the village, Huck's neat confounding of "way" and "away" flavoring that perception. Then he looks very carefully and counts "three or four lights"--not "some lights" or "a few lights." Both Huck and Mark Twain are realists and they specify as exactly as possible what Huck sees. The lights are "twinkling" as further on the stars are "sparkling," reverberating parallel images. These images are set in further parallels, "away down" and "over us" because Huck is perceiving the entire scene.
The twinkling and sparkling are parallel but also in contrast, for Huck sees that the lights mean "sick folks" needing care late at night and the stars are sparkling "ever so fine." This is a boy whose perceptions are finely tuned by compassion and esthetic appreciation in the same moment. Huck finally sees the river and he searches for sound realistic descriptive words--"a whole mile broad"--and also gropes for something finer to convey his sensitivity to beauty. He has no proper vocabulary to do justice to the scene, so he borrows from Tom Sawyer's "high-toned" books and comes up with "awful still and grand."
"Where there was sick folks, maybe" is the most telling perception in Huck's book. The section preceding describes Nigger Jim's weird superstitions, and it is followed by Tom's teaching his Gang how to have a proper adventure according to the book. Between these passages of unrealistic perceptions of the world, Huck is his own man and sees life truly. If there is humor in the book--and one may have serious doubts about that--it is heightened by Mark Twain's and Huck's tragic view of life
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