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The Adventures of Tom Sawyerby Mark Twainthe adventures of tom sawyer what was the boys password Chapter I
"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!"
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So
she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:
"Y-o-u-u Tom!"
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to
seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.
"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that
truck?"
"I don't know, aunt."
"Well, I know. It's jam -- that's what it is. Forty times I've said if
you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."
The switch hovered in the air -- the peril was desperate --
"My! Look behind you, aunt!"
The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The
lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared
over it. ebook reader device His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.
"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the
saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is
a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can
torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to
put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't
hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's
truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book
says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of
the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing,
and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off,
my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most
breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of
trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey
this evening, * and [* Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged
to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him
work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more
than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or
I'll be the ruination of the child."
Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood
and split the kindlings before supper -- at least he was there in time to
tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. Tom's
younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through with his
part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no
adventurous, troublesome ways.
While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very
deep -- for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many
other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was
endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to
contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said
she:
"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?"
"Yes'm."
"Powerful warm, warn't it?"
"Yes'm."
"Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?"
A bit of a scare shot through Tom -- a touch of uncomfortable
suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he
said:
"No'm -- well, not very much."
The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:
"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered
that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had
in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew where the wind lay, now. So he
forestalled what might be the next move:
"Some of us pumped on our heads -- mine's damp yet. See?" tom sawyer hat Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:
"Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!"
The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His
shirt collar was securely sewed.
"Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is -- better'n you look. This time."
She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.
But Sidney said:
"Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black."
"Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!"
But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:
"Siddy, I'll lick you for that."
In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them -- one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:
"She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
geeminy she'd stick to one or t'other -- I can't keep the run of 'em. But I
bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!"
He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very
well though -- and loathed him.
Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles.
Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a
man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down
and drove them out of his mind for the time -- just as men's misfortunes
are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a
valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and
he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar
bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to
the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music -- the
reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy.
Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down
the street with his mouth full of harmony
and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has
discovered a new planet -- no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed
pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.
The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him -- a boy a shade larger than
himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity
in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy was well
dressed, too -- well dressed on a week-day. This was simply astounding. His
cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new
and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes on -- and it was only
Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. He had a citified
air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The more Tom stared at the
splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose at his finery and the
shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to him to grow. Neither boy
spoke. If one moved, the other moved -- but only sidewise, in a circle;
they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. Finally Tom said:
"I can lick you!"
"I'd like to see you try it."
"Well, I can do it."
"No you can't, either."
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- TOM SAWYER ABROAD
- TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
- THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
- 1601
- A Burlesque Autobiography
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- A Dog's Tale
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- A TRAMP ABROAD
- Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
- Carnival of Crime in CT
- Christian Science
- Complete Letters of Mark Twain
- Curious Republic of Gondour
- Double Barrelled Detective
- Essays on Paul Bourget
- Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
- Extracts From Adam's Diary
- FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
- FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
- Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again
- How Tell a Story and Others
- In Defence of Harriet Shelley
- Innocents Abroad
- IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
- LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
- MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
- Mark Twain's Speeches
- On the Decay of the Art of Lying
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc v1
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc v2
- Rambling Idle Excursion
- Roughing It
- Sketches New and Old
- THE $30,000 BEQUEST and Other Stories
- The American Claimant
- The Gilded Age
- The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
- The Mysterious Stranger
- The Prince and the Pauper
- The Stolen White Elephant
- The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Those Extraordinary Twins
- WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN
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