Chapter 2 (Tom Sawyer (Full Cast))

01Chapter Two.

02Strong Temptations, Strategic Movements, The Innocents Beguiled.

03Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh and brimming with life.

04There was a song in every heart, and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips.

05There was cheer in every face, and a spring in every step.

06The locust trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.

07Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

08Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush.

09He surveyed the fence, but all gladness left him, and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.

10Thirty yards aboard fence nine feet high.

11Life to him seemed hollow, an existence, but a burden.

12Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank, repeated the operation, did it again, compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box.

13Discouraged.

14Jim came skipping out at the gates with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals.

15Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes before, but now it did not strike him so.

16He remembered that there was company at the pump.

17White, bulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there, waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarreling, fighting, skylarking, and he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hour, and even then somebody generally had to go after him.

18Tom said, Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you whitewash some.

19Jim shook his head and said, Can't, Mars Tom.

20Old missus, she told me I gotta go and get this water, and not stop fooling around with anybody.

21She says she expect Mars Tom going to ax me to whitewashin', so she told me to go long and tend my own business.

22She lied she tended to whitewashin'.

23Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim.

24That's the way she always talks.

25Give me the bucket.

26I won't be gone only a minute.

27She won't ever know.

28Oh, I dazzle it, Mars Tom.

29Old missus, she taken tarred her head off me.

30Deed she would.

31She, she never licks anybody, whacks them over the head with her thimble, and who cares for that I'd like to know.

32She talks awful, but talk don't hurt.

33Anyways, it don't if she don't cry.

34Jim, I'll give you a marble.

35I'll give you a white alley.

36Jim began to waver.

37White alley, Jim, and it's a bully tar.

38My, that's a mighty gay marvel.

39I tell you, but Mars Tom, I was powerful afraid of old missus.

40And besides, if you will, I'll show you my sore toe.

41Jim was only human.

42This attraction was too much for him.

43He put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound.

44In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail in a tingling rear.

45Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand, and triumph in her eye.

46But Tom's energy did not last.

47He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied.

48Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work.

49The very thought of it burnt him like fire.

50He got out his worldly wealth and examined it, bits of toys, marbles, and trash.

51Enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom.

52So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys.

53At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him, nothing less than a great magnificent inspiration.

54He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work.

55Ben Rogers hove in sight presently, the very boy of all boys whose ridicule he had been dreading.

56Ben's gait was the hop, skip, and jump, proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high.

57He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious swoop at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat.

58As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard, and rounded to, ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance, for he was personating the big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water.

59He was boat and captain and engine bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane deck, giving the orders and executing them.

60Stop her, sir.

61Ting-a-ling-ling.

62The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

63Ship up to back.

64Ting-a-ling-ling.

65His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

66Set her back on stabber.

67Ting-a-ling-ling.

68Chow.

69Chow-ow-ow-chow.

70His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles, for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.

71Let her go back on the stabber.

72Ting-a-ling-ling.

73Chow-chow.

74The left hand began to describe circles.

75Stop the stabber.

76Ting-a-ling-ling.

77Stop the leopard.

78Come ahead on the stabber.

79Stop her.

80Let your outside turn over slow.

81Ting-a-ling-ling.

82Chow-ow-ow.

83Get out that head-line.

84Lively now.

85Come out with your spring-line.

86What are you about there?

87Take a turn around the stump with the bite of it.

88Stand by that stage now.

89Let her go.

90Done with the engine, sir.

91Ting-a-ling-ling.

92Sh-t.

93Sh-t.

94Sh-t.

95Trying the gauge cocks.

96Tom went on whitewashing, paid no attention to the steamboat.

97Ben stared a moment, and then said, Hi-hi.

98You're a stump, ain't you?

99No answer.

100Tom surveyed his last touch with an eye of an artist.

101Then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result as before.

102Ben ranged up alongside of him.

103Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work.

104Ben said, Hello, old chap.

105You got to work, hey?

106Tom wheeled suddenly and said, Why, it's you, Ben.

107I weren't noticing.

108Say, I'm going in a swimming, I am.

109Don't you wish you could?

110But of course you'd rather work, wouldn't you?

111Of course you would.

112Tom contemplated the boy a bit and said, What do you call work?

113Why, ain't that work?

114Tom resumed his whitewashing and answered carelessly, Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain't.

115All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer.

116Oh, come now.

117You don't mean to let it on that you like it.

118The brush continued to move.

119Like it?

120Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it.

121Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?

122That puts the thing in a new light.

123Ben stopped nibbling his apple.

124Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth, stepped back to note the effect, added a touch here and there, criticized the effect again.

125Ben, watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed.

126Presently, he said, Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.

127Tom considered, was about to consent, but he altered his mind.

128No, no, I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben.

129You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence, right here on the street, you know.

130But if it was the back fence, I wouldn't mind, and she wouldn't.

131Yeah, she's awful particular about this fence.

132It's got to be done very careful.

133I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.

134No, is that so?

135Oh, come on now, let me just try.

136Only just a little.

137I'd let you, if you was me, Tom.

138Ben, I'd like to, honest engine.

139But Aunt Polly...

140Well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him.

141Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid.

142Now don't you see how I'm fixed?

143If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it...

144Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful.

145Now, let me try.

146Say, I'll give you the car my apple.

147Well, here...

148No, Ben, now don't.

149I'm afeard.

150I'll give you all of it.

151Time gave up the brush, with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.

152And while the late steamer, Big Missouri, worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents.

153There was no lack of material.

154Boys happened along every little while.

155They came to jeer, but remained to whitewash.

156By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair, and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with, and so on and so on, hour after hour.

157And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor, poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.

158He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a Jew's harp, a piece of blue bottle glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar, but no dog, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

159He had had a nice, good idle time all the while, plenty of company, and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.

160And if he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

161Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world after all.

162He had discovered a great law of human action without knowing it.

163Namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

164If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consisted of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

165And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement.

166There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line in the summer because the privilege costs them considerable money.

167But if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and then they would resign.

168The boy mused a while over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.

169End of chapter 2