Tom Sawyer

“ Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life.
As the “sold” congregation trooped out they said they would almost be willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that once more.
Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day—according to Aunt Polly’s varying moods—than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself. ”

“ And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, “It’s Tom Sawyer the Pirate!—the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!” ”

“ Tom turned on me, then, and says:
“What do you say—is the sun standing still?”
“Tom Sawyer, what’s the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that ain’t blind can see it don’t stand still.”
“Well,” he says, “I’m lost in the sky with no company but a passel of low-down animals that don’t know no more than the head boss of a university did three or four hundred years ago.”
It warn’t fair play, and I let him know it. I says:
“Throwin’ mud ain’t arguin’, Tom Sawyer.”
“Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah’s de lake agi’n!” yelled Jim, just then. ”

“ After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I took his place, and he got out the professor’s papers and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated it “In the Welkin, approaching England,” and folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big writing, “From Tom Sawyer, the Erronort,” and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in the mail. ”

“ Just as they were about to move on, the Welshman stepped out and said:
“Hallo, who’s that?”
“Huck and Tom Sawyer.”
“Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting. Here—hurry up, trot ahead—I’ll haul the wagon for you. Why, it’s not as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?—or old metal?”
“Old metal,” said Tom.
“I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away more time hunting up six bits’ worth of old iron to sell to the foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But that’s human nature—hurry along, hurry along!” ”

“ HEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dew-drops stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck still slept. ”

“ Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? ”

“ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer took Mark Twain from epic to comedy. He first planned it as a play and when he decided upon another form for it he had in mind to write a story of boyhood which, like Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy, should emphatically depart from the customary type of Sunday school fiction. But its departure from a type is one of the least memorable aspects of Tom Sawyer. Tom and Huck are, indeed, "bad" boys; they have done more than overhear profanity and smell the smoke of pipes; they play outrageous pranks in the fashion of the disapproved youngsters of all small American towns ”

“ Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don’t come every year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an audience—and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances it warn’t no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. He warn’t a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep ”

“ There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the Village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. ”

“ So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free and generous that way. There’s a-plenty of boys that’s mighty good and friendly when you’ve got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way they don’t say a word to you, and try to hog it all. That warn’t ever Tom Sawyer’s way, I can say that for him. There’s plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you when you’ve got an apple and beg the core off of you ”

“ Boys of Tom's age can follow his fortunes without discomfort or boredom. At the same time, there are overtones which most juvenile fiction entirely lacks and which continue to delight those adults who Mark Twain said, upon finishing his story, alone would ever read it. At the moment, he must have felt that the poetry and satire of Tom Sawyer outranked the narrative, and he was right. They have proved the permanent, at least the preservative, elements of a classic. ”

“ One poor chap, who had no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the remembrance:
“Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.”
But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much. ”

“ Who does he mean?”
“Huck, he must mean us both—we’re right together.”
“Oh, Tom, I reckon we’re goners. I reckon there ain’t no mistake ’bout where I’ll go to. I been so wicked.”
“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn’t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday-schools!” And Tom began to snuffle a little.
“You bad!” and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. “Consound it, Tom Sawyer, you’re just old pie, ’long-side o’ what I am. ”

“ At last frocks ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed in at the gate, and Tom’s heart gave a great bound. The next instant he was out, and “going on” like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings, standing on his head—doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing. ”

“ Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. ”

“ I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat—I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it. ”

“ These qualities in the heroes, however, only conform to the general quality of realism which characterizes Tom Sawyer throughout. To a delicate taste, indeed, the book seems occasionally overloaded with matters brought in at moments when no necessity in the narrative calls for them. The boyish superstitions, delectable as they are in themselves, tend to lug Tom Sawyer to the documentary side of the line which divides documents from works of art. ”

“ MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious. ”

“ The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.
Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. ”

“ YOU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. ”

“ A cat-bird, the northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. ”

“ Sometimes it felt like I was talking to my dad or mom or Becky, I mean my sister. And when it was about Tom Sawyer, then for me it was like talking to . . . some other boy.
Delta: I agree. I never thought about it, but I agree. Other people, those you know, are like shadows that are always there, wherever you are, either in a real place or a book.
Kappa: And they can be heroes from other books too!
Alpha: Yeah, Pinocchio fighting with Tom Sawyer! Guys, get real! We do not live in books. ”

“ "This ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer." ”

“ He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while—plenty of company—and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. ”

“ The girl said:
“It’s ever so nice—I wish I could draw.”
“It’s easy,” whispered Tom, “I’ll learn you.”
“Oh, will you? When?”
“At noon. Do you go home to dinner?”
“I’ll stay if you will.”
“Good—that’s a whack. What’s your name?”
“Becky Thatcher. What’s yours? Oh, I know. It’s Thomas Sawyer.”
“That’s the name they lick me by. I’m Tom when I’m good. You call me Tom, will you?”
“Yes.”
Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom said:
“Oh, it ain’t anything.” ”

“ About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said:
"Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt. But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any more." ”

“ The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. Poor lads! they—like Tom—had suffered a relapse. ”

“ He confesses that he kept it to himself in order that he might hunt treasure and run away from the orders of this court; he confesses that he has deceived his father, that he has been truant and bad. Yes, and above all, gentlemen, he confesses he has dreams and sees visions. He believes that a book, a story, is true; that its characters are real; that a boy named Tom Sawyer really lives ”