Te vale

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 restthose 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 prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story — that is to say, thirty orforty 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.

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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 forso 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 andpunching 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!’ 3 of 353

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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 anglecalculated 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’swhat 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.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

His auntPolly 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....