Adventures of Pinocchio

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: July 1993 [EBook #0074] [This file was last updated on March 26, 2003]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER, COMPLETE
***

This eBook was updated by Jose Menendez and David Widger [[email protected]]
from the Internet Wiretap production of July 1993

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER BY MARK TWAIN (Samuel Langhorne
Clemens)

P R E F A C E
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.

T O M S A W Y E R


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
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