Chapter 5 (Tom Sawyer (Full Cast))

01Chapter 5.

02A Useful Minister in Church.

03The Climax.

04About half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon.

05The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision.

06Aunt Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her, Tom being placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible.

07The crowd filled up the aisles.

08The aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days.

09The mayor and his wife, for they had a mayor there, among other unnecessaries.

10The justice of the peace.

11The widow Douglas.

12Fair, smart, and forty.

13A generous, good-hearted soul, and well-to-do.

14Her hill mansion, the only palace in the town.

15And the most hospitable, and much the most lavish, in the matter of festivities that St.

16Petersburg could boast.

17The bent and venerable major and Mrs.

18Ward.

19Lawyer Riverson, the new notable from a distance.

20Next, the bell of the village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heartbreakers.

21Then all the young clerks in town in a body.

22For they had stood in the vestibule, sucking their cane heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gauntlets.

23And last of all came the model boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as if she were cut glass.

24He always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons.

25The boys all hated him, he was so good, and besides he had been thrown up to them so much.

26His white handkerchief was hanging out his pocket behind, as usual on Sundays, accidentally.

27Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had as snubs.

28The congregation being fully assembled now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church, which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery.

29The choir always tethered and whispered all through the service.

30There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was now.

31It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.

32The minister gave out the hymn and read it through with a relish, and a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country.

33His voice began on a medium key, and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, or it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word, and then plunged down as if from a springboard.

34Shall I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail through bloody seas?

35He was regarded as a wonderful reader.

36At church sociables he was always called upon to read poetry, and when he was through the ladies would lift up their hands, and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and wall their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, Words cannot express it.

37It is too beautiful, too beautiful for this mortal earth.

38After the hymn had been sung, the Reverend Mr.

39Sprague turned himself into a bulletin-board, and read off notices of meetings and societies and things, till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of doom, a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities, away here in this age of abundant newspapers.

40Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

41And now the minister prayed.

42A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details.

43It pleaded, For the church, and the little children of the church, for the other churches of the village, and for the village itself, for the county, for the state, for the state officers, for the United States, for the churches of the United States, for Congress, for the President, for the officers of the government, for poor sailors tossed by stormy seas, for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and oriental despotisms, for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see, nor ears to hear withal, for the heathen in the far islands of the sea, and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good.

44Amen.

45There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down.

46The boy, whose history this book relates, did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it, if he even did that much.

47He was restive all through it.

48He kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously, for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old and the clergyman's regular roots over it.

49And when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it, and his whole nature resented it.

50He considered additions unfair and scoundrelly.

51In the midst of the prayer, a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him, and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view, scraping its wings with its hind legs, and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coattails, going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe.

52However, this time he was really interested for a little while.

53The minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium, when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them.

54But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy.

55He only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the onlooking nations.

56His face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.

57Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.

58Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had, and got it out.

59It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws, a pinch-bug, he called it.

60It was in a percussion-cap box.

61The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger.

62A natural fillip followed.

63The beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth.

64The beetle lay there, working its helpless legs, unable to turn over.

65Tom eyed it and longed for it.

66But it was safe out of his reach.

67Other people, uninterested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too.

68Presently a vagrant poodle-dog came idling by, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet weary of captivity, sighing for change.

69He spied the beetle, the drooping tail lifted and wagged.

70He surveyed the prize, walked around it, smelled at it from a safe distance, walked around it again, grew bolder, and took a closer smell.

71Then lifted up his lip and began a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it.

72Made another, and another.

73Began to enjoy the diversion, subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments.

74Grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded.

75His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy.

76Who seized it?

77There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away and lit on his back once more.

78The neighbouring spectators shook with gentle inward joy.

79Several faces went behind ferns and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy.

80The dog looked foolish, and probably felt so, but there was resentment in his heart too, and a craving for revenge.

81So he went to the beetle, and began a wary attack on it again, jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his forepaws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again.

82But he grew tired once more after a while, tried to amuse himself with a fly, but found no relief, followed an ant around with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that, yawned, sighed, forgot that beetle entirely, and sat down on it.

83Then there was a wild yelp of agony, and the poodle went sailing up the aisle.

84The yelps continued, and so did the dog.

85He crossed the house in front of the altar.

86He flew down the other aisle.

87He crossed before the doors.

88He clambered up the home stretch.

89His anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light.

90At last the franting sufferer sheared from its course and sprang into its master's lap.

91He flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

92By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill.

93The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end, for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a really facetious thing.

94It was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.

95Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service, when there was a bit of variety in it.

96He had but one marring thought.

97He was willing that the dog should play with his pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off.

98End of chapter 5 End of chapter 5