Tom is filled with imaginative schemes, but they all come from adventure stories he has read. Tom makes everything seem fancy and "high faluting." He adds extra touches so as to give the simplest undertaking an air of magic, and he conforms rigorously to the rules--as he interprets them--from the fancy works of fiction he reads. Huck is not a reader, but instead he possesses a mind capable of performing feats that would escape Tom's bookish imagination. Tom is a dreamer, and Huck is always the practical or pragmatic person.
Unlike Tom, Huck's life is uncomplicated. He has no ambition, no desire to be civilized. He hates the idea of respectability and deplores the idea of going to school, wearing proper fitting clothes and cramped shoes, and being forced to do things against his nature, such as quitting smoking and not "cussing."
As a member of society, Tom knows the bounds and limits of that civilized society and adheres to its rules and limitations. Of course, he is full of pranks and wild schemes, but always in the back of his mind are the rules of society which he obeys. Yet there is much in Tom that is hypocritical. For example, when he has to go into town, he makes up a reason to go alone because he does not want to be seen with the disreputable Huck.
Huck, who is an outcast, is not constrained by society's rules as Tom is. Instead, Huck's decency is innate rather than learned.
