Tom Robinson

“ Tom, however, was loath to abandon his joke, and argued:
"But he said for Robinson to square him with you, didn't he?"
"Why, yes."
"Then, Robinson can tell him the feed for the dozen of us was the only way he could do it." ”

“ The idea of Tom Robinson of "Robinson's," with his middle size, matter-of-fact air, and foxy hair and moustache, entertaining such a dream and relinquishing it with a pang of mortal anguish that would leave a [24] long sickening heart-ache behind! It was the infection of all the silly love stories she had ever read which had received a kind of spurious galvanic life from the very ordinary circumstance, the feather in her cap, as so many girls would have regarded it, of Dora, having to receive and refuse an offer of marriage. ”

“ She would not have her daughter see her weep.
"Tom, my boy, tell me; come, Tom, that is a good boy—the truth, nothing but the truth—I must know it."
Good boy, again, and his heart overflowed. He could stand kicks, and cuffs, and curses, without a tear, but he could not hold out against, "good boy."
"Maggie, I will not lie to you, I could not; but I can't tell you the truth."
"Why?"
"I am 'fraid you won't call me good boy again."
"Yes, I will. I don't believe you are a bad one."
"And you won't hate me?"
"No, no; she cannot hate you, for you have been good to her mother, to-day."
"Mother! Oh! ”

“ I don't know her."
"It is the little tambourine girl, sir," said Tom.
"Oh, I see now. Juliana is your cousin, then. Come here Madalina; let me look at you, and I will talk about it. Did Juliana tell you to come here?"
"Yes, sir; she has told me a good many times, but they would not let me. I am afraid to stay there to-night, they are drinking and fighting so bad."
"I thought so; and you want me to go and stop them; is that it?"
"No, sir. I want to stay here."
"Oh, a poor little girl flying for fear from her own parents, because they are drinking and fighting so." ”

“ Have I ever told you a lie since I have been in your house?"
"Well, well, Tom, take Madalina to the housekeeper, and give her somewhere to sleep to-night, and to-morrow morning you shall go to her mother and see what she will do."
"Lord, sir, I must go to-night. She will be off with her hook and basket, poking in the gutters after rags before the stars go to bed. These rag-pickers are early birds. I have known them travel four or five miles of a morning, to get to their own walk."
"Own walk. What is that?"
"All the city is divided up among them. Each must keep to his own walk. ”

“ Robinson wore a sad smile.
“We can't afford to smoke them; this is to chew; it is not food, George, but it keeps the stomach from eating itself. We must do the best for our lives we can for Susan's sake.”
“Give it me, Tom; I'll chew it, and thank you kindly. You are a wise companion in adversity, Tom; it is a great grief to me that I have brought you into this trouble, looking for what I know you think is a mare's nest, as the saying is.”
“Don't talk so, George. True pals like you and me never reproach one another. They stand and fall together like men. ”

“ From a home, where he received a fair education, and had a good mother, but a father who learned him to drink, and who thought it cunning to call him, Tom Top, he was come down to be a mere hanger-on around Cale Jones's grocery.
"God never works without an object," is an axiom of those [80] who look every day to him for counsel. We shall see in time how the villain was defeated in his object of bringing Reagan into this place, and making use of Tom for an instrument of his ruin. ”

“ Pauling who had been deep in thought. “He’s bobbed up twice in the nick of time to save your life, Tom, and each time he’s killed a man who would have been more valuable alive than dead. Not that I blame him--I owe him a greater debt than I can ever hope to repay--but I do wish that if he’s destined to rescue you from every scrape you get into that he could do it without always destroying our evidence. I’d give a great deal to have a chance to put a few questions to that Robinson.”
“And I’ll bet my boots to a tin whistle he wouldn’t have come across with any information,” declared Rawlins. ”

“ George assented with joy; but, when Robinson suggested that Jacky would be very useful to pilot them through the bush, his countenance fell.
“Don't think of it,” said he. “I know he is here, Tom, and I shan't go after him. But don't let him come near me, the nasty little, creeping, murdering varmint. Poor Abner will never get over his tomahawk—not if he lives fifty years.”
In short, it was agreed they should go alone at peep of day.
“I have talked it over with Jem already, and he will take charge of our tent till we come back.” ”

“ There are few smaller, meaner men in this region than Hugh Thompson. Do you know Robinson's conscience?”
“Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet high; used to be a blond; is a brunette now, but still shapely and comely.”
“Well, Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom Smith's conscience?” ”

“ He knows about you. He'll say that he turned the horse into the pasture. You must.... Joe! Sam! Go up to the stable and saddle my horse and bring him here. Run!"
"Yassum," replied the negroes in a breath. They disappeared into the darkness. Tom's protest was smothered under Marjorie's hand. The wave of excitement which had kept him on his feet passed, and it was as though he had been caught in a powerful undertow which swept his legs from under him. He sank down on the fallen log where they had been sitting together earlier in the day.
"Can you ride? Are you strong enough?" ”

“ As it was, he stood in the cold water up to his shoulders, clinging still to the rope, holding the teapot with one hand, and wildly vociferating to his admiring audience whose heads hung over the well-curb, and their faces, as seen in this position by Tom, looked like those of grinning fiends.
“What made you let go?” roared Tom, and his voice sounded hollow and unnatural as it resounded from the depths of his cool and shady retreat.
“Oh, Tom, have you got it? Have you really? Ain’t it cold? Are you hurt? Were you scared? Is the teapot broken?” ”

“ Away goes the Tally-ho into the darkness.
Tom stands up, and looks back at his father's figure as long as you can see it; and then comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for facing the cold three hours before dawn. The guard muffles Tom's feet up in straw, and puts an oat-sack over his knees, but it is not until after breakfast that his tongue is unloosed, and he rubs up his memory, and launches out into a graphic history of all the performances of the Rugby boys on the roads for the last twenty years. ”

“ Now, do you remember this, Tom! for our success depends upon it. Don’t you show your teeth, old chap—unless you have a good chance of using them.”
“I understand,” growled Tom. “A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse!”
They had no time to say more to each other, for at that moment their jailer came back, and was followed into the hut by three brawny savages, who, seizing Frank roughly, proceeded to fasten his arms behind him, after which they placed a long “reim” with a running noose round his neck; they then served Tom in a similar fashion. ”

“ James’s Church, because he killed the giant on that day, which is so called to this hour. He did many good deeds, and became a public benefactor to all persons that lived near him.
Tom having got so much money about him, and being not used to it, could hardly tell how to dispose of it, but yet he did use the means to do it, for he kept a pack of hounds and men to hunt with him, and who but Tom then? So he took such delight in sports that he would go far and near to any meetings, as cudgel-play, bear baiting, football, and the like. ”

“ Besides that, we’ve bought the freehold of our little house at Bonfire Corner, I know, father, and there’s the bird-shop and all the stock!”
“You knows too much, Master Tom, I’m a-thinking,” he rejoined, scratching his head again, as he always did, as now, when he was in a quandary about anything, especially when any one had got the better of him in an argument, or, as he said, ‘weathered’ on him, and he wasn’t quite prepared with an answer, reaching over the sternsheets of the wherry and dipping the blade of his oar, ready to make a stroke. “But, look out, my lad! ”

“ Tom answered. "I hear she ain't bigger than my thumb, and awful pretty, Tim Biggs says, and he is threatening to thrash anybody who is mean to her. I'd laugh to see him tackle me!"
"He'll have no occasion to, for I predict you will be the warmest champion Miss Smith has. See if you are not," Jack said, offering his hand to Tom, as they had now reached the school-house.
"He is certainly a good deal of a ruffian," Jack said to himself as he went on his way, while Tom was not quite so sure of the two chips on which he was to carry Eloise out if she tried to boss him. He'd wait and see. ”

“ Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new friend, a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with the most transcendent coolness and assurance, which Tom felt to be aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn't for the life of him help admiring and envying,—especially when young my lord begins hectoring two or three long, loafing fellows, half porter, half stableman, with a strong touch of the blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom's luggage up to the School-house for sixpence. ”

“ I have been down the river three or four times already with some other freshmen, and it is glorious exercise, that I can see, though we bungle and cut crabs desperately at present."
Within a day or two of the penning of this epistle, Tom realised one of the objects of his young Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking in a skiff by himself. He had been such a proficient in all the Rugby games that he started off in the full confidence that, if he could only have a turn or two alone, he should satisfy not only himself but everybody else that he was a heaven-born oar. ”

“ He was born away down there on Harpswell P'int; and they say, if ye throw one o' them Harpswell babies into the sea, he'll take to it nateral, and swim like a cork: ef they hit their heads agin a rock it only dents the rock, but don't hurt the baby. Tom he was a great character on the ship. He could see farther, and knew more 'bout wind and water, than most folks: the officers took Tom's judgment, and the men all went by his say. My mother she chalked a streak o' good luck for me when she nussed up Tom.
“Wal, we wus a lyin' at Camden there, one arternoon, goin' to sail for Boston that night. ”

“ He tried to get out of the cape, but she stopped him. "It's too hot," he protested, but he let her draw the cape up more tightly about him.
"Won't you let me take you to the house?" she begged.
"No—have to get back to the lines."
"But you can't, Tom. You're sick. It's the fever that makes you hot. Oh,
Tom...."
"Got to get back to the lines," he interrupted. "Start in a few minutes. I guess ... sleep a little first. Mustn't be captured. You wake me up if anyone comes. Murdock's dogs...."
It was night when his brain cleared again. He was wrapped in blankets, lying comfortably on the ground. ”

“ When he had it gathered and tied, what should come up but a big giant, nine foot high, and made a lick of a club at him. Well become Tom, he jumped a-one side, and picked up a ram-pike; and the first crack he gave the big fellow, he made him kiss the clod.
"If you have e'er a prayer," says Tom, "now's the time to say it, before I make fragments of you." [246]
"I have no prayers," says the giant; "but if you spare my life I'll give you that club; and as long as you keep from sin, you'll win every battle you ever fight with it."
Tom made no bones about letting him off ”

“ Rattling on in this manner, Tom helped his new friend to dress—or fitted him out “from truck to kelson,” as he expressed it; for Tom had become very nautical in his language since he joined the Surat Castle—and then surveyed him with a critical eye.
“Come, that’s not so bad! you look less like an ancient Briton now,” said he, crowning young Weston with a cricket cap upon which was embroidered the school-house badge. “Feel a bit queer though at first, eh, George Maurice?”
“Rather so,” George answered, wriggling himself. “The shoes and socks are the worst. ”

“ Tell them that we're likely to have a fight—to be ready to jump out and use their guns."
Tom sauntered to the box-car and leaned against the door. "Hey! you men! This is Tom Burns. Andrews says that we're likely to have a fight. Get your guns ready."
"What's the trouble?" one of them asked. Tom explained as best he could the difficulties they had encountered. "There may be some more trains behind this one," he told them. "They're moving out of Chattanooga. The rebs are on the run!"
The whistle of the second special train sounded as Tom walked back toward Andrews. ”

“ It is full of the delight in nature and human nature, unpatronized and unsentimentalized. From his earliest boyhood up Tom Brown is the free and equal comrade of other decent boys of whatever station, and he ranges the woods, the fields, the streams with the joy in the sylvan life which is the birthright of all the boys born within reach of them. ”

“ The morning-star now stands over the tops of the mountains, and gales and breezes, not of earth, show that the gates of day are unclosing.
The escape of Cassy and Emmeline irritated the before surly temper of Legree to the last degree; and his fury, as was to be expected, fell upon the defenceless head of Tom. When he hurriedly announced the tidings among his hands, there was a sudden light in Tom's eye, a sudden upraising of his hands, that did not escape him. He saw that he did not join the muster of the pursuers. He thought of forcing him to do it ”