Nostalgia - Traveling Treff

This post is inspired by two topics.
The first one is my love to Steiff's Treff dog, the second one is the fascinating (and frustrating) world of parcel delivery, hence the title.

Let me tell you about Treff first.
From the very start of our Steiff collecting on, this bloodhound has had my heart. Although there are a lot of Steiff dogs I love, Treff has always been my favorite.
I couldn't even tell you why exactly. Is it the long ears, is it the cute nose? The color, the airbrushed details in the face, the eyes? I guess it's the whole package.

Over many years, a few of them made it into the collection, all of them sitting in different sizes from 4 to almost 20 inch (not in all nine sizes, though), in mohair and velvet. These are smaller ones, the big ones sit in the back of the cabinet and I'll admit I didn't want to move the animals in front of them.

Treff was a popular dog not just with me and therefore stayed in the Steiff lineup from 1928 to 1938, also standing up, as a ride animal, with a music box inside, on a pincushion -  and as a puppet on which I had had my eager eye on from the beginning.

I don't know if you have noticed it in the group photo, but their eyes don't all look the same.
The design was patented, the eyes are not just sewn on, but embedded and part of them is covered by the fabric for the distinctive bloodhound look.
As quoted by Steiff Gal, Steiff's US distributor Borgfeldt once wrote "the slanting, half-covered eyeball, which gives this dog’s face a particularly thoughtful, intelligent expression."
In fact, however, you see Treffs where the eyes don't look like that because the fabric has slipped behind the eye. I usually leave them like that because I don't want to mess with the eye and fabric to avoid tearing.

Can you see how the look changes?

I'm in love with the Steiff animal hand puppets and especially with the pre-war ones, and when a Treff finally turned up for sale after years, the ex got it for my birthday.
Probably only a collector will be able to imagine my excitement waiting for the parcel.

And that brings us to the wonders of postal services ...
Back then you didn't get emails and you didn't have live tracking. Delivery notices were still on cards being thrown in your mailbox telling you to pick the parcel up elsewhere although you had been home all day.
What was really disturbing in this case, though, was not getting a notice or a parcel, but then being told that the parcel had been delivered ...
What had they done to my Treff??

So I called the hotline. At least I didn't have to deal with a chatbot back then, but of course I still had to "number press" my way through to a human who then explained to me that I would have to call a sorting center in Munich.
I live 200 km from Munich. The parcel didn't go via Munich. "Doesn't matter, you have to call Munich". Once I finally had a person on the phone there ... you may have already guessed it ... "Why are you calling us?" "Heck if I know, the hotline said ..." "Yeah, you are wrong here, try the hotline again." With the help of a little whimpering and begging from me not to send me back there, they gave me at least the direct number to the right sorting center near us.

There I got to talk to a very nice man who had strange news for me. Yes, the parcel had been delivered today, yes, they had a signature from my husband. Stop, stop ... we always had both names on parcels because of our different names, but I had been home, not he.
I asked him what the name was and he didn't hesitate to tell me, so my next question was if it was difficult to read and he said not at all. I explained to him that it couldn't be my husband's signature for two reasons - he wasn't home and his signature was absolutely not readable because it didn't even have individual letters. He said he'd fax it to me (yes, it was that long ago) which only confirmed what I knew already.
WHO had MY Treff?

I was worried and angry because after all we are not only talking a certain financial but also emotional value. This isn't something easily available for replacing.
He promised to send the parcel guy by our house to see if it helped him remember the parcel and where he had taken it to.
When he called me back, he let me know that my parcel had been delivered to a town three miles from here. To a different person in a street with a different name who had seen - of course because the address had been correct and readable - that it wasn't for him, but decided to keep the parcel "just in case". What case? That the actual owner wouldn't investigate?
Of course, they didn't tell me the name of the person, but does it sound to you as if that was an honest mistake? I didn't even believe that person had the same last name as my husband.
At any rate, the next day Treff traveled to the right house and here he has been ever since.

Suchet on a broad bean

There are two images in my head when I think of Hercule Poirot - David Suchet and this.

The explanation is that in episode 1 of series 4 of my favorite British game show "Taskmaster" the prize task at the start of the show was for the comedians "to bring in the most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable" and this is the one that won - "Suchet on a broad bean. Bang. That's what this competition is all about."
I have no idea why those words are so funny to me, but there you are. It's probably the fact such a distinguished actor would even do this.

Okay, let's get to David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.
Suchet was Poirot for almost 25 years, in 70 episodes from January 1989 to June 2013. And when I say "was" instead of "played", that's exactly what it felt like.
He studied him, made a list of "Poirot character notes", and worked on the role until he became the ultimate Poirot in the eyes of many devoted fans (me obviously included).

If you have missed it before, I'm not a fan of Christie's style and I'm not even a fan of all the adaptations with Suchet.
There are some I find painfully slow - my brother and I always argue about 45 or 90 minute episodes for crime shows in general and in Poirot's case I often prefer the shorter ones ... BUT I will also slog through the slowest ones for Suchet and the amazing sets.
As I love Art Deco, I didn't mind that they got stuck in the 30s for most of the episodes even if it wasn't true to the novel or story. I can absolutely entertain myself not paying any attention to the case - having seen all episodes multiple times, I don't really need to - and look at buildings, cars, furniture or decoration instead.

In the stories I have read I always found Poirot a tad annoying, but while Suchet's Poirot is definitely full of himself, I can forgive him much more easily because he has that gentleness and I love the little smile, how he walks and talks (in English, I hate the German dubbing).

It has been almost exactly two years since I made my last portrait and I've had this pattern lined up even longer than that, but finally I can welcome David Suchet/Hercule Poirot to my fan wall (you can find all of my bead loomed portraits here).

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 161

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Sometimes you have to look really close to see something.
My friend and I like this spot which I mentioned a few days ago, the spring of a small river in our area.
It's lovely to rest there for a while, especially early at morning when no one else is there.

Can you see something in the rock wall?
Here you go. Sorry, the pictures are not good because of the zooming in.
We have no idea if that's supposed to be a little castle or church or who put it there and how, but isn't that a cute surprise?

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Shoreline Journeys Travel.

Jennifer from Shoreline Journeys Travel says: "My family is my strength and supports me on my travel journeys. I met the love of my life & best friend in 1993, we graduated college together, started our grown-up jobs, and were married in 1997. We traveled to Jamaica for our honeymoon and stayed at the Sandals Royal Jamaican (now the Sandals Royal Caribbean) and it started our journey together. I help couples plan romantic escapes to Sandals Resorts for honeymoons, destination weddings, and vow renewals, while also designing amazing family getaways to Beaches Resorts."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Lydia is talking about bringing courtesy back.

Aletha is sharing some Hawaii memories.

Nicole has three owlets in her cherry tree. I'm jealous!

Donna is making popeye pancakes (also called Dutch babies or German pancakes ... and yes, I'm confused because I have never heard of those being made here).

Barbara tells us about a day trip to the Douro Valley.

Pat witnessed the birth of two mule deer fawns in her garden.


Let's link up!

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Silent movies - Peter Pan

What do you say we make a little trip to Neverland (sometimes called Never Never Land like in this case) today?
I have for you the first movie adaptation of the J. M. Barrie's play and later novel about the boy who wouldn't grow up - "Peter Pan" from 1924.

Again, you are probably familiar with the plot more or less.

First we meet the Darling family with Mother, Father, their three children Wendy, John, and Michael, and the nurse dog Nana. The Darlings are ready to go out for the evening.

When Mr. Darling is annoyed by Nana, his wife tells him about having seen a face at the window and that the same little boy had been in the room the other day, but that Nana had jumped at him and the boy - who had a bright light for company - escaped without his shadow. She thinks he might be coming back, but Father ties Nana up in the garden, anyway.
When the Darlings are gone, the boy comes back indeed to look for his shadow. It's of course Peter Pan and his fairy Tinker Bell who finds the shadow in the drawer.

He starts crying when he can't stick it back on and Wendy wakes up. They introduce themselves and Wendy sews on Peter's shadow after hearing he doesn't have a mother to do it.

Peter tells Wendy that he ran away the day he was born and that he lived among fairies. He lets Tinker Bell out of the drawer. When Wendy tells him that he can give her a "thimble" meaning a kiss, though, Tinker Bell gets jealous and pulls her hair.

Now Peter says he has to return to Never Never Land and the Lost Boys - boys who fell out of their perambulators as babies - because they will be afraid of the pirates on the island. Wendy is sad, so Peter invites her to come along and be their mother.
He teaches Wendy, John, and Michael how to fly thanks to happy thoughts and fairy dust, and although Nana breaks free to alert their parents, the children follow Peter and Tinker Bell.

On the island of Never Never Land, the Lost Boys see Wendy approaching. Jealous Tink tells them that Peter wants them to shoot "the Wendy bird", and Tootles shoots her down, but the arrow hits the "kiss" (an acorn) Peter has given her.
Peter banishes Tink for a week.

So, Wendy becomes the boys' "mother" with Peter as their "father", but while she has fallen in love with him, Peter's feelings for her are those "of a devoted son". He lets her know that Tiger Lily, the princess of the tribe living on the island (we're getting to that later) also wants to be something for him, but not his mother.
Wendy tells the Lost Boys about a mother's love and that the window will always be left open for their return, but Peter says that he tried to go back and the window was barred and another little boy was sleeping in his bed.
Now Wendy is afraid that will happen to them and she wants to go home and take all the Lost Boys with them for her parents to adopt them. Peter refuses to go with them because he doesn't want to grow up, but promises to send Tink along to show them the way.

Meanwhile, the pirates have ambushed the tribe who's guarding Peter's underground home.
Captain Hook, whose hand Peter had cut off which then has been eaten by a crocodile, has the drum beaten to make them think the tribe has won, and Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys are taken prisoners and carried to the pirate ship.
To get rid of Peter, he then poisons his medicine.
Before Peter can take it, however, Tinker Bell drinks it and is about to die. Only if children believe in fairies, she can survive, so Peter implores the audience to clap their hands (and I bet it got loud in that theater!).

On the pirate ship, Hook wants to send the boys over the plank, especially after none of them is ready to become a cabin boy. But of course Peter is there in time to save them all and instead send Hook over the plank ... where the crocodile has already been waiting.

Hook was a great villain, surprisingly it was a
different actor than Mr. Darling, usually they were
both played by the same one.

The crocodile spitting out Hook's hook ...

Before the others arrive at home, Peter orders Tink to close the window because he hopes that Wendy will come back to the island with him then, but seeing the sad Darlings he can't do it after all.
While Mr. Darling is looking for space to accodomate all their new children, Mrs. Darling tells Peter to stay with them as well, but he refuses and asks Wendy again to come with him. Mrs. Darling doesn't allow that, but promises to send Wendy once a year for a week of spring cleaning.
So Peter returns to Never Never Land alone.

Before watching the movie, I had only known about the play from "Finding Neverland" and then seeing the play (directed by Sally Cookson) on National Theatre at Home (here's a trailer) which was very fascinating despite being very long, and from which I first learned about the dark side of Peter Pan.
I then decided I would also watch the Disney movie, which I only knew in parts, and read the novelization of the original stage play.
I know that there are of course loads of adaptations, old ones, modern ones, musicals, sequels, Peter as a grown-up, even horror, but you have to stop somewhere, and I think I did a pretty nice mix.
And actually, this movie is my favorite so far.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room first.
The tribe I mentioned are Native Americans, but "We redskins - you the great white father" doesn't go down well anymore in our times, neither do the stereotypes, even if a review from 1905 said "Mr. Barrie presents not the pirate or Indian of grown-up fiction but the creations seen by childish eyes." Contemporary productions have to find their own ways to deal with that. You can find an interesting article in the Smithsonian Magazine.

I also mentioned the dark side of "Peter Pan" which actually comes across even more in the novel.
Did you know that Peter "thins the boys out when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules", however you want to interpret that? Actually, there's quite a bit of killing in the novel - although in the film the swords go visibly between body and arm like in childplay - and Peter is not a simple hero, either. With his dodging responsibility and always being ready for the next adventure also comes that he's often selfish and forgets things quickly. No wonder he needed a mother!
In the novel, he even forgets again and again to pick up Wendy for the spring cleaning and thus is very surprised one day when he finds her grown up with a daughter of her own and eventually that daughter with a daughter of her own ...

I don't think I would have noticed it that much in the movie, though, without reading the novel first although it really seems to be very close to the original play.
By the way, Peter was traditionally played by young women for a long time, the reason being that children weren't allowed on stage that late and grown up men not being right for the role for their looks, but also their weight. There's a lot of "flying"! (In the play I saw it was a grown-up man and I have to admit that it didn't satisfy me completely.)
The intertitles are mostly quotes, only Americanized in some cases, for example when being loyal to the King is changed to being loyal to the Stars and Stripes.

"Peter Pan" is another film that was thought to be lost until a print turned up in 1971. What a pity it would have been if it had vanished!
One blog author criticized Betty Bronson's play as overacting, but I thought it worked really well in this context as I imagined Peter as a bit of a show-off, and to complain about wires (which I didn't even notice during the first viewing because I was so immersed in the plot) in a movie of that time is just ridiculous to me.
A lot of well-known actresses of the time are said to have been after this role, but Barrie himself chose Bronson.

I also thought the special effects were great for the time - big fan of Tinker Bell's little room here - but we can't forget Nana, either. Who would have thought that a man in a dog costume would be able to move like that? But then George Ali specialized in playing animals on stage and screen. Possibly he was the crocodile, too.

And because I already shared more pictures than I usually do, here's the Mermaid Queen.

Can you tell how much I enjoyed the movie? The video I saw also had a score that worked beautifully.
A truly magical experience with a very interesting backstory, absolutely a recommendation from me.

Last but not least I want to share a picture of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.
The first time I saw it we were there with a five year old and it was great to see how much she loved it (so do I). This picture is from the time I went with a slightly bigger ex 😉
Barrie commissioned the statue and had it set up secretly during the night. Can you imagine the surprise for people finding it the next day?

Sources and further reading:

1. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "Peter Pan" (1924). On: Silent-ology, December 6, 2018
2. Rick Aragon: Peter Pan (1924): A Review. On: Rick's Cafe Texan, February 8, 2012
3. Evelyn Harper: The Making of a Legend: How Peter Pan (1924) Enchanted the Silent Screen. On: Dark Skies, October 27, 2025

Bookish pet peeves #2

"I don't need any special preparation, because I'm not nervous, I don't have what the Germans call lumpenfever, which is stage fright."
That's from a biography about Peter Ustinov and it was the last straw.
Let's talk a bit about foreign words in books.
You can imagine that I notice the wrong spelling or grammar for German words or phrases in English books more quickly, but this is by no means a problem of the German language only.
I've seen Germans do "interesting" things with the English language, English or German speaking people with the French language and so on, and those are just the languages I know something about.

This isn't going to become one of those "your/you're" discussions (although some things like those can drive me crazy silently, no matter who does it or in which language).
It's not about blogs or social media posts, either. Although I often look up words I'm not sure of at the moment, I make my share of mistakes and typos, no doubt (and correct even really old posts if I come across them again).
I'm talking about books by big publishing houses.

Do you know what lumpenfever means? Nothing. A German "Lump" is a "rascal" and "fever" is not German, it's, surprise, English. The word they meant is "Lampenfieber", literally "lamp fever".

Among the languages Ustinov spoke was German, and although it was not always perfect, which absolutely added to the charm, I wouldn't be surprised if his biographer simply got confused by the German "Lampe" being pronounced like the English "lump" and of course "Fieber" and "fever" sounding very similar.
What I don't understand - and that may be an idea from a mad librarian's brain - is why that kind of information isn't checked before printing.
I think Ustinov's biography pushed me over the edge because it wasn't the only German mistake in it, it was just the most interesting looking one.

Of course it's not only books, but articles, TV shows, movies, news.
I will never not cringe (petty, I know) hearing Geoffrey pronounced with an o for the eo as in George instead of Jeffrey in German dubbings, but that's just the first one that comes to mind because I heard it again in a movie not long ago.
Having non-German actors play Germans can be just as terrible to listen to as can be UK actors playing Americans etc. and the other way round or Germans mangling a regional dialect that isn't their own (which I'm sure also happens in other languages).
I also think it's a matter of respect to learn especially how to pronounce names that are foreign to us and of people doing that professionally I'd expect it even more.

Do you have a pet peeve like that?


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 160

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

This is a picture friends sent me from their vacation at a camping site in The Netherlands.
What is it about chickens that makes me smile? I don't know, but I wanted to share that smile with you.

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Handmade by Amalia.

Amalia from Handmade by Amalia says: "Welcome to my blog! This is the place where I write about my crafts, mostly crochet, needlework and recycled paper, and a little bit about my life as it touches it - family, work, travel … I wish to live my life with creativity and kindness and my blog challenges me to do that. I'm glad you stopped by!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Paula shares with us how to make blackberry passionfruit iced tea.

Linda shows us pictures of the wrens that live (w)rentfree in her garden.

Amy is talking about her Friday Favorites.

Sally has combined black and brights for the latest Style Imitating Art challenge.

Lisa is sharing a bookish link up - A Good Book & a Cup of Tea.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Huckleberry Finn

In 1884, the novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain was published in the UK and shortly after in the USA.
Since then, there were numerous adaptations. The one that impressed me most, simply because it was the first one I ever saw, was one of the famous "Christmas four-parters" here in Germany, a German-French-Romanian coproduction from 1968 which I saw as a rerun (I had more a crush on the Huck actor than on the story, though).
We also had both books which are in my personal library now.

Today, however, I have the earliest adaptation for you, "Huckleberry Finn" from 1920.

I doubt I'll have to worry about spoilers much this time.
Here's the plot.

Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry have found a treasure and received some money from it.
The Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson take Huck in as his guardians. Huck isn't happy about having to behave, but stays to be able to be part of Tom's gang.

"Pap", his father, is after the money and abducts Huck to a remote cabin. After Pap tries to kill him in delirium tremens, Huck fakes his murder and escapes.
Seeing the townspeople putting bread with quicksilver in it in the river tells him that they think he's dead and he makes Jackson's Island his "kingdom".
One morning, he finds the sleeping Jim there, one of Miss Watson's slaves. Jim has run away because Miss Watson intended to sell him to a bad man. He can hardly believe Huck is alive and asks him if he can stay with him.

Huck goes into town for news disguised as a girl and learns that the townspeople suspects Jim of having murdered him before running away and that they want to go look for him on Jackson's Island.

So they take the raft that Jim built and go down the river where they meet two thieves running from some townsfolk.
One of them claims to be a born Duke and an actor (the other calls himself the King in the book), and in the next town they scam the audience with overpriced tickets for a stage performance.

Further down the river they meet a man asking the two thieves if they are the brothers of a Mr. Wilks who has died. When they hear that he left some property, they see their chance to cheat Mr. Wilks's three daughters out of everything.
Huck, however, falls for one of the daughters, Mary-Jane, and after a while he reveals to her that the "brothers" are crooks.

Then two men turn up and can prove that they are the real brothers by knowing about the tattoo on the dead man's chest.
Huck and Jim don't manage to take off without the two crooks, and when they reach the next town, one of them sells Jim to a man named Phelps. Huck decides to save Jim. When he arrives at the plantation, he's greeted by Mrs. Phelps who happens to be Tom Sawyer's aunt and thinks he's Tom.
On the way to Pikesville to fetch "his" trunk Huck meets Tom.

He tells him about his adventures and Jim and of course Tom immediately comes up with a plan. He'll pretend to be his brother Sid and they will help Jim to escape (which involves dressing him in a woman's frock).
When they sneak Jim out and head to the raft, the townspeople are after them and Tom gets shot in the leg (that footage is missing from the video). Although Tom wants to go through with the escape, Jim insists on Huck getting a doctor who has Tom carried back to the Phelps's house.

The next day Tom's Aunt Polly turns up and tells them that Miss Watson has died a month ago and has given Jim his freedom as Tom knows. When asked why he wanted to free a free man, Tom replies that it was for the adventure and that he wants to go on another one with Huck.
Huck, however, wishes Aunt Sally would adopt him, so he can become an educated young man and return to Mary-Jane.

And that's also what he tells Mark Twain at the end - that there's nothing more to write about him but maybe a love story some day ...

I'm not going to go into the controversy about the book itself. The movie had a few racist moments, but that has more to do with the source itself. The n-word is used just once by Jim himself. I don't know if that was on purpose.

William Desmond Taylor (more known today for his unsolvedn murder in 1922 and the following scandal) made three movies from the Twain books, "Tom Sawyer" in 1917, "Huck and Tom" in 1918, and "Huckleberry Finn" in 1920.

The movie had been considered to be lost until a print was found in a Danish archive in the 60s and restored in 2006. As mentioned above, there is footage missing which is explained in intertitles.
E. W. Kemble, the illustrator of the original edition, said that Taylor took his illustrations and brought them to life.

Indeed, the movie is also rather faithful to the book although things have been left out, for example how Jim finds Pap's body or the deadly family feud that Huck gets to witness.
Leaving those out makes it rather a gentle adaptation although the part in which Huck is held prisoner and threatened by Pap is quite violent.
I think it would have been interesting to see more of how the narrative around Jim has been handled which is unfortunately missing, for example the escape (shame on Tom for hatching a complicated plan just for the adventure instead of letting Jim know he's a free man). I would have preferred that to the story of the Duke and the King which was very slow.
Also the relationship between Huck and Jim wasn't explored much except for Huck's decision to save Jim after he had been sold.

Lewis Sargent made a convincing Huck, and it's notable that in a time where blackface was prevalent in movies, the part of Jim was not played by a white man, but by George Reed.

All in all, the film will not make it into my list of favorites for rewatching because I struggle with the story itself.


Sources:

1. David Kiehn: Huckleberry Finn. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Essay. 2011
2. Lorraine Lo: Huckleberry Finn (1920). On: TCM. Articles. October 10, 2011