THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_32 - CHAPTER_35)

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Chapter 32                                      
                   "Turn Out! They're Found!"                              
-                                                                          
  TUESDAY AFTERNOON CAME, and waned to the twilight. The village of        
St. Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found.        
Public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a           
private prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but            
still no good news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers       
had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying     
that it was plain the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was     
very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. People said it was       
heart-breaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and          
listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a     
moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray       
hair had grown almost white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday       
night, sad and forlorn.                                                    
  Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village       
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic              
half-clad people, who shouted, "Turn out! turn out! they're found!         
they're found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the              
population massed itself and moved toward the river, met the               
children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens,            
thronged around it, joined its homeward march, and swept magnificently     
up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah!                            
  The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the        
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half        
hour a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house,       
seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's            
hand, tried to speak but couldn't- and drifted out raining tears all       
over the place.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_29 - CHAPTER_31)

 

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Chapter 29                                      
                      Huck Saves the Widow                                 
-                                                                          
  THE FIRST THING Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of          
news- Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night              
before. Both Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance     
for a moment, and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He     
saw her and they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and          
"gully-keeper" with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was              
completed and crowned in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased       
her mother to appoint the next day for the long-promised and               
long-delayed picnic, and she consented. The child's delight was            
boundless; and Tom's not more moderate. The invitations were sent          
out before sunset, and straightway the young folks of the village were     
thrown into a fever of preparation and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's     
excitement enabled him to keep awake until a pretty late hour, and         
he had good hopes of hearing Huck's "meow," and of having his treasure     
to astonish Becky and the picnickers with, next day; but he was            
disappointed. No signal came that night.                                   
  Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and       
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything       
was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar     
picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe             
enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few         
young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferry        
boat was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up     
the main street laden with provision baskets. Sid was sick and had         
to miss the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last          
thing Mrs. Thatcher said to Becky, was-                                    
  "You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all            
night with some of the girls that live near the ferry landing, child."     
  "Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma."  

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_25 - CHAPTER_28)

 

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Chapter 25                                      
                  Seeking the Buried Treasure                              
-                                                                          
  THERE COMES A TIME in every rightly constructed boy's life when he       
has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.           
This desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe     
Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had           
gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed.         
Huck would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the          
matter to him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always            
willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment        
and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of        
that sort of time which is not money.                                      
  "Where'll we dig?" said Huck.                                            
  "O, most anywhere."                                                      
  "Why, is it hid all around?"                                             
  "No indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck-         
sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a        
limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but     
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses."                                 
  "Who hides it?"                                                          
  "Why robbers, of course- who'd you reckon? Sunday-school                 
sup'rintendents?"                                                          
  "I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and        
have a good time."                                                         
  "So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it          
and leave it there."                                                       
  "Don't they come after it any more?"                                     
  "No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or       
else they die. Anyway it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by     
and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the       
marks- a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because         
it's mostly signs and hy'rogliphics."                                      
  "Hyro- which?"                                                           
  "Hy'rogliphics- pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to        
mean anything."                                                            
  "Have you got one of them papers, Tom?"                                  
  "No."                                                                    
  "Well then, how you going to find the marks?"                            
  "I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house       
or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking         
out. Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it        
again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the                  
Still-House branch, and there's lots of dead-limb trees- dead loads of     
'em." 

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_21 - CHAPTER_24)

 

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Chapter 21                                      
             Eloquence- and the Master's Gilded Dome                       
-                                                                          
  VACATION WAS APPROACHING. The schoolmaster, always sever, grew           
severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to           
make a good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule           
were seldom idle now- at least among the smaller pupils. Only the          
biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing.     
Mr. Dobbins's lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he       
carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only       
reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his              
muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him       
came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in            
punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence was, that the            
smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights     
in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do the master a     
mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution that             
followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that          
the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they         
conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling            
victory. They swore-in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme,        
and asked his help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for        
the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy            
ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go on a visit to          
the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere         
with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great                
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy       
said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on             
Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his     
chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried       
away to school.         

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_18 - CHAPTER_20)

 

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Chapter 18                                      
                  Tom Reveals His Dream Secret                             
-                                                                          
  THAT WAS TOM'S GREAT secret- the scheme to return home with his          
brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over       
to the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or       
six miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge       
of the town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back          
lanes and alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church     
among a chaos of invalided benches.                                        
  At breakfast Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to     
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of       
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:                                 
  "Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody         
suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity       
you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come     
over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give     
me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off."                
  "Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary; "and I believe          
you would if you had thought of it."                                       
  "Would you Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully.           
  "Say, now, would you, if you'd thought of it?"                           
  "I- well I don't know. 'Twould a spoiled everything."                    
  "Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt Polly, with a           
grieved tone that discomforted the boy. "It would been something if        
you'd cared enough to think of it, even if you didn't do it."              
  "Now auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary; "it's only Tom's        
giddy way- he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of             
anything."                                                                 
  "More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come        
and done it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late,     
and wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost          
you so little."

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_14 - CHAPTER_17)

 

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Chapter 14                                      
                 Happy Camp of the Freebooters                             
-                                                                          
  WHEN 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.                           
  Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered;              
presently the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the           
cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds             
multiplied and life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking        
off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A           
little green worm came crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds       
of his body into the air from time to time and "sniffing around," then     
proceeding again- for he was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm        
approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a stone, with        
his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the creature still came         
toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and when at last it         
considered a painful moment with its curved body in the air and then       
came decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey over him,          
his whole heart was glad- for that meant that he was going to have a       
new suit of clothes- without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical       
uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in                
particular, and went about their labors; one struggled manfully by         
with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms, and lugged     
it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the          
dizzy height of a grass-blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said,     
"Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your            
children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it-         
which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect        
was credulous about conflagrations and he had practiced upon its           
simplicity more than once. A tumble-bug came next, heaving sturdily at     
its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs            
against its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting     
by this time. 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 kurrying           
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. All Nature was wide awake       
and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the        
dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon     
the scene.                                            

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_11 - CHAPTER_13)

 

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Chapter 11                                      
                      Conscience Racks Torn                                
-                                                                          
  CLOSE UPON THE HOUR OF NOON the whole village was suddenly               
electrified with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet                   
undreamed-of telegraph; the tale flew from man to man, from group to       
group, from house to house, with little less than telegraphic speed.       
Of course the schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town       
would have thought strangely of him if he had not.                         
  A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had        
been recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter- so the            
story ran. And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter     
washing himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the            
morning, and that Potter had at once sneaked off- suspicious               
circumstances, especially the washing, which was not a habit with          
Potter. It was also said that the town had been ransacked for this         
"murderer" (the public are not slow in the matter of sifting               
evidence and arriving at a verdict) but that he could not be found.        
Horsemen had departed down all the roads in every direction, and the       
Sheriff "was confident" that he would be captured before night.            
  All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heart-break        
vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a          
thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,              
unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful             
place, he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal       
spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody     
pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then           
both looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed         
anything in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent     
upon the grisly spectacle before them.                                     
  "Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought to be a lesson to        
grave-robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This     
was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment;        
His hand is here."   

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_8 - CHAPTER_10)

 

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Chapter 8                                        
                      A Pirate Bold To Be                                   
-                                                                           
  TOM DODGED HITHER and thither through lanes until he was well out of      
the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He         
crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing        
juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an          
hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the            
summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly                     
distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. He entered a             
dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat            
down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a            
zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of        
the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but           
the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to        
render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more               
profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings            
were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his            
elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed        
to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half          
envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful,          
he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the         
wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the           
flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever        
any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he could be           
willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What           
had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been          
treated like a dog- like a very dog. She would be sorry some day-           
maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily!

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_4 - CHAPTER_7)

 

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Chapter 4                                        
                  Showing off in Sunday School                              
-                                                                           
  THE SUN ROSE upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the              
peaceful village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had         
family worship; it began with a prayer built from the ground up of          
solid courses of Scriptural quotations welded together with a thin          
mortar of originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a          
grim chapter of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.                              
  Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to            
"get his verses." Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all      
his energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of         
the Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were          
shorter. At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of         
his lesson, but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field        
of human thought, and his hands were busy with distracting                  
recreations. Mary took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to         
find his way through the fog:                                               
  "Blessed are the- a- a-"                                                  
  "Poor"-                                                                   
  "Yes- poor; blessed are the poor- a- a-"                                  
  "In spirit-"                                                              
  "In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they- they-"              
  "Theirs-"                                                                 
  "For theirs. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the            
kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they- they-"            
  "Sh-"                                                                     
  "For they- a-"                                                            
  "S, H, A-"                                                                
  "For they S, H,- O I don't know what it is!"                              
  "Shall!"                                                                  
  "O, shall! for they shall- for they shall- a- a- shall mourn- a-          
a- blessed are they that shall- they that- a- they that shall mourn,        
for they shall- a- shall what? Why don't you tell me Mary?- what do         
you want to be so mean for?"                                               

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (CHAPTER_1 - CHAPTER_3)

 

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                          THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER                      
                                                                            
                                 by Mark Twain                              
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                   Dedication                               
                                                                            
                To my wife this book is affectionately dedicated            
                                                                            
PREFACE                                                                     
                           Preface                                          
-                                                                           
  MOST OF THE ADVENTURES recorded in this book really occurred; one or      
two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were             
schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also,         
but not from an individual- he is a combination of the characteristics      
of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite           
order of architecture.                                                      
  The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children      
and slaves in the West at the period of this story- that is to say,         
thirty or forty years ago.                                                  
  Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys         
and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that           
account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind           
adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and          
thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes               
engaged in.                                                                 
                                                     THE AUTHOR.            
                                                    HARTFORD, 1876.         
                                                                            
CHAPTER_1                                                                   
                           Chapter 1                                        
                  Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides                              
-                                                                           
  "TOM!"                                                                    
  No answer.                                                                
  "Tom!"                                                                    
  No answer.                                                                
  "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"                           
  No answer.                                                                
  The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them,             
about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She         
seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy;          
they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for        
"style," not service;- she could have seen through a pair of stove          
lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said,        
not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:              
  "Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll-"                                  
  She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and             
punching under the bed with the broom- and so she needed breath to          
punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.            
  "I never did see the beat of that boy!"