Chapter 4 (Tom Sawyer (Full Cast))

01Chapter 4.

02Mental Acrobatics.

03Attending Sunday School.

04The Superintendent.

05Showing off.

06Tom Lyonized.

07The sun rose upon a tranquil world and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction.

08Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family worship.

09It began with a prayer, built from the ground up of solid courses of scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of originality, and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

10Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to get his verses.

11Sid had learned his lesson days before.

12Tom bent all his energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.

13At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague, general idea of his lesson, but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations.

14Mary took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the fog.

15Blessed are the poor.

16Yes, poor.

17Blessed are the poor.

18In spirit.

19In spirit.

20Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they...

21They...

22Theirs.

23For theirs.

24Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

25Blessed are they that mourn, for they...

26They...

27Sh...

28For they...

29Uh...

30S...

31H...

32A...

33For they...

34S...

35H...

36Oh, I don't know what it is.

37Sh...

38Sh...

39Oh, shall.

40For they shall...

41For they shall...

42For they shall...

43Uh...

44Uh...

45Shall mourn...

46Uh...

47Uh...

48Blessed are they that shall...

49They that...

50Uh...

51They that shall mourn, for they shall...

52Uh...

53Shall what?

54Why don't you tell me, Mary?

55What do you want to be so mean for?

56Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing.

57I'm not teasing you.

58I wouldn't do that.

59You must go and learn it again.

60Don't you be discouraged, Tom.

61You'll manage it.

62And if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.

63There, now.

64That's a good boy.

65All right.

66What is it, Mary?

67Tell me what it is.

68Never you mind, Tom.

69You know if I say it's nice, it is nice.

70You bet that's so, Mary.

71All right, I'll tackle it again.

72And he did tackle it again, and under the double pressure of curiosity and prospective gain, he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a shining success.

73Mary gave him a brand-new barlow knife worth twelve and a half cents, and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations.

74True, the knife would not cut anything.

75But it was a sure enough barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that.

76Though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing mystery, and will always remain so, perhaps.

77Tom contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau when he was called off to dress for Sunday school.

78Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there.

79Then he dipped the soap in the water and laid it down, turned up his sleeves, poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door.

80But Mary removed the towel and said, Now, ain't you ashamed, Tom?

81You mustn't be so bad.

82Water won't hurt you.

83Tom was a trifle disconcerted.

84The basin was refilled.

85And this time he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution, took in a big breath, and began.

86When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of suds and water was dripping from his face.

87But when he emerged from the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask.

88Below and beyond this line there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in front and backward around his neck.

89Mary took him in hand, and when she was done with him, he was a man and a brother, without distinction of color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and his short curls wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect.

90He privately smoothed out the curls with labor and difficulty, and plastered his hair close down to his head, for he held curls to be effeminate, and his own filled his life with bitterness.

91Then Mary got out a suit of his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years.

92They were simply called his other clothes, and so by that we know the size of his wardrobe.

93The girl put him to rights after he had dressed himself.

94She buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off, and crowned him with his speckled straw hat.

95He now looked exceedingly improved and uncomfortable.

96He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked, for there was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him.

97He hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted.

98She coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them out.

99He lost his temper, and said he was always made to do everything he didn't want to do.

100But Mary said, persuasively, Please, Tom, that's a good boy.

101So he got into the shoes, snarling.

102Mary was soon ready, and the three children set out for Sunday school, a place that Tom hated with his whole heart, but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

103Sabbath school hours were from nine to half-past ten, and then church service.

104Two of the children always remained for the sermon voluntarily, and the other always remained, too, for stronger reasons.

105The church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons.

106The edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine-board tree box on top of it for a steeple.

107At the door, Tom dropped back a step, and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade.

108Say, Billy, got he out a ticket?

109Yes.

110What'll you take for her?

111What'll you give?

112Piece of licorice and a fish-hook.

113Let's see him.

114Tom exhibited.

115They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.

116Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones.

117He waylaid other boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or fifteen minutes longer.

118He entered the church now with a swarm of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat, and started a quarrel with the first boy that came handy.

119The teacher, a grave elderly man, interfered, then turned his back a moment, and Tom pulled a boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy turned around, stuck a pin in another boy presently in order to hear him say, Ouch!

120And got a new reprimand from his teacher.

121Tom's whole class were of a pattern, restless, noisy, and troublesome.

122When they came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but had to be prompted all along.

123However, they worried through, and each got his reward, in small blue tickets, each with a passage of scripture on it.

124Each blue ticket was paid for two verses of the recitation.

125Ten blue tickets equaled a red one, and could be exchanged for it.

126Ten red tickets equaled a yellow one.

127For ten yellow tickets, the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible, worth forty cents in those easy times, to the pupil.

128How many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even from a dore Bible?

129And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way.

130It was the patient work of two years, and a boy of German parentage had won four or five.

131He once recited three thousand verses without stopping.

132But the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot from that day forth.

133Every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks.

134It is possible that Tom's mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory and the éclat that came with it.

135In due course, the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between his leaves, and commanded attention.

136When a Sunday-school superintendent makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as necessary as the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert.

137Though why is a mystery, for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music is ever referred to by the sufferer.

138This superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair.

139He wore a stiff standing collar, whose upper edge almost reached his ears, and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth, a fence that compelled a straight look out ahead and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required.

140His chin was propped on a spreading cravat, which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had fringed ends.

141His boot-toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners, an effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together.

142Mr.

143Walters was very earnest of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart, and he held sacred things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar intonation, which was wholly absent on week-days.

144He began after this fashion.

145Mr.

146Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

147Mr.

148Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

149Mr.

150Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

151Mr.

152Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

153Mr.

154Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

155Mr.

156Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

157Mr.

158Walters was very earnest of the day, and he was very earnest of the day.

159He felt so many, and he felt so many, and he felt so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, and so many, far and wide, washing even to the bases of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary.

160But now every sound ceased suddenly with the subsidence of Mr.

161Walters' voice, and the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude.

162A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was more or less rare, the entrance of visitors, lawyer Thatcher, accompanied by a very feeble and aged man, a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman with iron-gray hair, and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's wife.

163The lady was leading a child.

164Tom had been restless and full of chafings and repinings, conscience-smitten, too.

165He could not meet Amy Lawrence's eye.

166He could not brook her loving gaze.

167But when he saw this small newcomer, his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment.

168The next moment he was showing off with all his might, coughing boys, pulling hair, making faces, in a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause.

169His exaltation had but one alloy, the memory of his humiliation in this angel's garden, and the record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now.

170The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.

171Walter's speech was finished, he introduced them to the school.

172The middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage, no less a one than the county judge, altogether the most august creation these children had ever looked upon.

173And they wondered what kind of material he was made of, and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might, too.

174He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away, so he had traveled and seen the world, these very eyes that looked upon the county courthouse, which was said to have a tin roof.

175The awe which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence in the branks of staring eyes.

176This was the great Judge Thatcher, brother of their own lawyer.

177Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar with the great man, and be envied by the school.

178It would have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings.

179Look at him, Jim.

180He's a-going up there.

181Jeff Say, look, he's a-going to shake hands with him.

182He is shaking hands with him.

183Jeff By jinks, don't you wish you was Jeff?

184Mr.

185Walters fell to showing off, with all sorts of official bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target.

186The librarian showed off, running hither and thither with his arms full of books, and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in.

187The young lady teachers showed off, bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly.

188The young gentleman teachers showed off with small scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to discipline.

189And most of the teachers of both sexes found business up at the library by the pulpit, and it was business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times, with much seeming vexation.

190The little girls showed off in various ways, and the little boys showed off with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings.

191And above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sum of his own grandeur, for he was showing off too.

192There was only one thing wanting to make Mr.

193Walters' ecstasy complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bible prize and exhibit a prodigy.

194Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough.

195He had been around among the star pupils inquiring.

196He would have given worlds now to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

197And now, at this time, when Hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward, with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded a Bible.

198This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky.

199Walters was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten years.

200But there was no getting around it.

201Here were the certified checks, and they were good for their face.

202Tom was therefore elevated to a place with the judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from headquarters.

203It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one.

204The boys were all eaten up with envy, but those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges.

205These despised themselves as being dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.

206The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the superintendent could pump up under the circumstances.

207But it lacked somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, perhaps.

208It was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of scriptural wisdom on his premises.

209A dozen would strain his capacity without a doubt.

210Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in her face.

211But he wouldn't look.

212She wondered.

213Then she was just a grain troubled.

214Next a dim suspicion came and went.

215Came again.

216She watched.

217A furtive glance told her worlds.

218And then her heart broke, and she was jealous and angry, and the tears came, and she hated everybody.

219Tom most of all, she thought.

220Tom was introduced to the judge, but his tongue was tied, his breath would hardly come, his heart quaked, partly because of the awful greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent.

221He would have liked to fall down and worship him if it were in the dark.

222The judge put his hand on Tom's head, and called him a fine little man, and asked him what his name was.

223The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out.

224Tom!

225Oh, no, not Tom.

226It is...

227Thomas!

228Ah, that's it.

229I thought there was more to it, maybe.

230That's very well.

231But you've another one, I dare say.

232And you'll tell it to me, won't you?

233Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas, and say, sir, said Walters.

234You mustn't forget your manners.

235Thomas Sawyer, sir.

236That's it.

237That's a good boy.

238Fine boy, fine, manly little fellow.

239Two thousand verses is a great many, very, very great many.

240And you can never be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them, for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world.

241It's what makes great men and good men.

242You'll be a great man and a good man yourself some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say it's all owing to the precious Sunday school privileges of my boyhood.

243It's all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn.

244It's all owing to the good superintendent who encouraged me and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful Bible, a splendid, elegant Bible, to keep and have, all for my own, always.

245It's all owing to right bringing up.

246That is what you will say, Thomas.

247And you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand verses.

248No, indeed, you wouldn't.

249And now, you wouldn't mind telling me and this lady some of the things you've learned.

250No, I know you wouldn't, for we are proud of little boys that learn.

251Now, no doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples.

252Won't you tell us the names of the first two that were appointed?

253Tom was tugging at a buttonhole and looking sheepish.

254He blushed now, and his eyes fell.

255Mr.

256Walter's heart sank within him.

257He said to himself, It is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest question.

258Why did the judge ask him?

259Yet he felt obliged to speak up and say, Answer the gentleman, Thomas.

260Don't be afraid.

261Tom still hung afire.

262Now I know you'll tell me, said the lady.

263The names of the first two disciples were, David and Goliath.

264Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.

265End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5