The Adventures of Tom Sawyer NT, E-book, T
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The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer
Mark Twain
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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 combina- tion of the
characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore
belongs to the composite order of archi- tecture.
The odd superstitions touched upon were all preva-
lent 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 en-
tertainment 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.
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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!’
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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 des-
perate —
‘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.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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 look- ing
out for him by this time? But old fools is the big- gest
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, some- how. 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
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