The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain [best novels for teenagers .txt] 📗

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

By Mark Twain.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface The Adventures of Tom Sawyer I: Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides II: The Glorious Whitewasher III: Busy at War and Love IV: Showing Off in Sunday School V: The Pinch-Bug and His Prey VI: Tom Meets Becky VII: Tick-Running and a Heartbreak VIII: A Pirate Bold to Be IX: Tragedy in the Graveyard X: Dire Prophecy of the Howling Dog XI: Conscience Racks Tom XII: The Cat and the Painkiller XIII: The Pirate Crew Set Sail XIV: Happy Camp of the Freebooters XV: Tom’s Stealthy Visit Home XVI: First Pipes—“I’ve Lost My Knife” XVII: Pirates at Their Own Funeral XVIII: Tom Reveals His Dream Secret XIX: The Cruelty of “I Didn’t Think” XX: Tom Takes Becky’s Punishment XXI: Eloquence—and the Master’s Guilded Dome XXII: Huck Finn Quotes Scriptures XXIII: The Salvation of Muff Potter XXIV: Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights XXV: Seeking the Buried Treasure XXVI: Real Robbers Seize the Box of Gold XXVII: Trembling on the Trail XXVIII: In the Lair of Injun Joe XXIX: Huck Saves the Widow XXX: Tom and Becky in the Cave XXXI: Found and Lost Again XXXII: “Turn Out! They’re Found!” XXXIII: The Fate of Injun Joe XXXIV: Floods of Gold XXXV: Respectable Huck Joins the Gang Conclusion Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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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.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer I 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!”

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.

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