Anarrative that appeals to readers of eighty as well as eight,The Adventures of Tom Sawyerhas become one of the world’s best known and best loved books. Variously called “the idyll of Hannibal,” “a phantasy of boyhood,” “a children’s classic,” “a masterpiece of juvenile fiction,” and “a prose epic,” it was perhaps most aptly described by Mark Twain himself when he wrote that “Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose form to give it a worldly air.”¹ These words of the author catch the polarities of the book: its pastoral atmosphere and its insistent concern with the...

“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 lookedthroughthem 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...

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff 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.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of...

Tom presented himself before aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open window in a pleasant rearward apartment which was bed-room, breakfast-room, dining room and library combined. The balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knitting—for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. Her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered to see him...

The sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction. Breakfast over, aunt Polly had family worship; it 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 of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to “get his verses.” Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his energies to the memorizing of five verses;...

About half past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt 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. The crowd filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days;...

Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.

Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague possibility. He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he investigated again. This time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he began to encourage them...

The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat,...

Tom dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small “branch” two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading...

At half past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark. Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness little scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The...

The two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet.

“If we can only get to the old tannery, before we break down!” whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths, “I can’t...

Close upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenenly electrified with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph; the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have thought strangely of him if he had not.

A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter—so the story ran. And it was said that a belated...

One of the reasons why Tom’s mind had drifted away from its secret troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to “whistle her down the wind,” but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father’s house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was...

Tom’s mind was made up, now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blamehimfor the consequences—why shouldn’t they? what right had the friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of...

When tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation. Beaded dew-drops stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck still slept.

Now, far away in the...

A few minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering up stream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through...

After dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on Friday morning.

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as...

But there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil Saturday afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly’s family, were being put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all conscience. The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a burden to the children. They had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them up.

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the deserted school-house yard, and feeling very melancholy....

That was tom’s great secret—the scheme to return home with his brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of invalided benches.

At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to Tom, and very attentive to his wants....

Tom arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising market:

“Tom, I’ve a notion to skin you alive!”

“Auntie, what have I done?”

“Well, you’ve done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an old softy, expecting I’m going to make her believe all that rubbage about that dream, when lo and behold you she’d found out from Joe that you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom I don’t know what is...

There was something about aunt Polly’s manner, when she kissed Tom, that swept away his low spirits and made him light-hearted and happy again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his manner. Without a moment’s hesitation he ran to her and said:

“I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I’m so sorry. I won’t ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever I live—please make up, won’t you?”

The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:

“I’ll thank...

Vacation was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good showing on “Examination” day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle now—at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins’s lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny...

Tom joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by the showy character of their “regalia.” He promised to abstain from smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he found out a new thing—namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in...

At last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred—and vigorously: the murder trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and his fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as “feelers’ he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver...

Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world’s credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.

Tom’s days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights...

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he...

About noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; Huck was measurably so, also—but suddenly said

“Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?”

Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted his eyes with a startled look in them

“My! I never once thought of it, Huck!”

“Well I didn’t neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was Friday.”

“Blame it, a body can’t be too careful, Huck. We might...

The adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom’s dreams that night. Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure, and four times it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away—somewhat as if they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There...

That night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the alley or left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home, with the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, Huck was to come and “maow,” whereupon he would slip out and try the keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch...

The first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news—Judge Thatcher’s family had come back to town the night before. Both Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment, and Becky took the chief place in the boy’s interest. He saw her and they had an exhausting good time playing “hi-spy” and “gully-keeper” with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was completed and crowned in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed pic-nic, and she consented. The child’s delight...

As the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welchman’s door. The inmates were asleep but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a window

“Who’s there!”

Huck’s scared voice answered in a low tone:

“Do please let me in! It’s only Huck Finn!”

“It’s a name that can open this door night or day, lad!—and welcome!”

These were strange words to the vagabond boy’s ears, and the pleasantest he...

Now to return to Tom and Becky’s share in the pic-nic. They tripped along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar wonders of the cave—wonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names, such as “The Drawing Room,” “The Cathedral,” “Aladdin’s Palace,” and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses and mottoes with which the rocky walls had...

Tuesday afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St. Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner’s whole heart in it; but still no good news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking...

Wthin a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiffloads of men were on their way to McDougal’s cave, and the ferry-boat, well filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore fudge Thatcher.

When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free world outside. Tom...

Huck said:

“Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain’t high from the ground.”

“Shucks, what do you want to slope for?”

“Well I ain’t used to that kind of a crowd. I can’t stand it. I ain’t going down there, Tom.”

“O, bother! It ain’t anything. I don’t mind it a bit. I’ll take care of you.”

Sid appeared.

“Tom,” said he, “Auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody’s been fretting about you. Say—ain’t this grease and clay, on your clothes?”

“Now Mr....

The reader may rest satisfied that Tom’s and Huck’s windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted” house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure—and not by boys, but men—pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck...

So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of aboy,it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of aman.When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of...

Tom Sawyer Abroadis by no means another “hymn to boyhood.” Rather, it is a witty but elementary attempt at science fiction that borrows generously from Jules Verne. Although separate incidents are ingeniously contrived, there is little overall suspense, and the story, instead of building to a climax, collapses in a shamelessly perfunctory ending. The characters exhibit the same flat and somewhat absurd qualities that they do in the last twelve chapters ofHuckleberry Finn.And even though Huck is the narrator, the style only occasionally reaches the level of folk poetry it so frequently attains inHuckleberry Finn.And...

Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean the adventures we had down the river the time we set the nigger Jim free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn’t. It only just pisoned him for more. That was all the effects it had. You see, when we three come back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybody hurrah’d and shouted, and some got drunk, it made us heroes, and that was what...

Well tom got up one thing after another, but they all had sore places in them somewheres and he had to shove them aside. So at last he was most about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted to go down and sec what it looked like, but couldn’t make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn’t go he mightn’t ever have another chance to see...

We went to sleep about four o’clock and woke up about eight. The Professor was setting back there at his end looking glum. He pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp set, and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.

There was one thing that kept bothering me,...

And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep, and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves. All around us was a ring, a perfectly round ring, where the sky and the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring, it was, and we right in the dead centre of it. Plum in the centre. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn’t seem to git past that centre no way; I couldn’t see that we ever gained...

We tried to make some plans, but we couldn’t come to no agreement. Me and Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far towards England that we might as well go there and come back in a ship and have the glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, and then we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers and...

I was so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I made straight for my locker-bunk and stretched myself out there. But a body couldn’t git back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft. And mind you, it was a considerable strain on that balloon to lift the fleas, and reminded Torn of Mary had a little lamb its fleas was white as snow, but these wasn’t; these was the dark-complected kind, the kind that’s always hungry and ain’t particular,...

Noon!” says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the difference didn’t amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of us or right south of us, one or t’other, and he reckoned by the weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the...

We had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the Desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn’t high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown, in the Desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting towards dawn you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.

We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and now and then gazing off across the Desert to see if anything was stirring, and then down at...

Still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand. Most of the Professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new way that somebody had just invented, the rest was fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in the coolish weather. Ours was all right till we stayed down so long amongst the dead people. That spoilt the water, and it ripened up the beefsteak to a degree that was just right for an Englishman, Tom said, but was most too...

Tom said it happened like this.

A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now, he run across a camel driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some ams. But the camel driver he asked to be excused. The dervish says

“Don’t you own these camels?”

“Yes, they’re mine.”

“Are you in debt?”

“Who—me? No.”

“Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain’t in debt,...

We went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon was touching the ground on the other side of the Desert, we see a string of little black riggers moving across its big silver face. You could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it just to have company, though it warn’t going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at, next morning when the sun...

The next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don’t make no difference when you are hungry, and when you ain’t it ain’t no satisfaction to eat, anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain’t no particular drawback, as far as I can see.

Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a north-east course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says

“It’s the Pyramids of Egypt.”

It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I...

By and by we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the Pyramids, and we dumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of the Pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday school said, but he was gone, now, somebody had got him. But I didn’t take no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts there, of...

IN 1895, with sales obviously in mind, Mark Twain turned once more to his popular boys. For the locale of the new narrative—“Tom Sawyer, Detective”—he selected the places made famous inTom SawyerandHuckleberry Finn;for the action he simply took over a seventeenth-century Danish family tragedy and converted it into a detective story. Making a detective of Tom, we may assume, was done to exploit the enormous market for detective fiction that Sherlock Holmes had developed and that Mark Twain himself had just invaded withPudd’nhead Wilson.¹ But despite such a combination of elements with popular...

Well, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom’s uncle Silas’s farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look...

We had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a sternwheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana-way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis: not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

A pretty lonesome boat; there warn’t but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was...

From that time out, we was with him most all the time, and one or t’other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his...

Well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up towards Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room up stairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall whilst we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a...

We didn’t get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we never stopped on our road but made a break for the sycamores as tight as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we could go to Brace’s and find out how things was, there. It was getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of us;...

We tramped along behind Jim and Lcm till we come to the back stile where old Jim’s cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn’t afeard, any more, and was going to climb over, but Tom says:

“Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!”

“What’s the matter?” says I.

“Matter enough!” he says. “Wasn’t you expecting we would be the first to tell the family who it is that’s been...

Benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt Polly, and then aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so sad and...

It warn’t very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn’t seem to notice it was going on, which wasn’t her usual style; me and Tom had a plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn’t had much sleep, and whenever she’d lift her head a little and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they...

In the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity amongst them. They had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn’t ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him he was so uncommon and romantic. His signs warn’t no good; people couldn’t understand them and he prob’ly couldn’t himself,...

Them awful words froze us solid. We couldn’t move hand or foot for as much as a half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old aunt Sally she done the same, but poor things they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their right minds that they didn’t hardly know what they was about. With Tom it was awful; it most petrified him to think maybe he had got...

Well, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because the old man warn’t sleeping much, and was walking in his sleep considerable, and so he got to looking fagged and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles...

In sorting out Mark Twain’s manuscripts after he died, Albert Bigelow Paine, the first editor of the Mark Twain Estate, came upon one written in the form of a Boy’s diary. Because the first two pages were missing, Paine gave it the following simple identification on page 3: “Boy’s manuscript. Probably written about 1870.” Ever since, the diary has been known as Boy’s Manuscript,” and Paine’s dating has been generally accepted, especially since the ink, paper, and handwriting have been found to be characteristic of that year. Apparently Paine did not realize the significance of the sketch forThe Adventures...

On 5 July 1875 Mark Twain wrote W.D. Howells that he had just completedThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer.He estimated that the story was “about 900 pages of MS., & may be 1000 when I shall have finished ‘working up’ vague places. . .” (MTHL,pp. 91–92). He asked Howells to read the work and judge whether it properly ended with Tom as a boy and to “point out the most glaring defects” in the writing (MTHL,pp. 92). Howells granted the request on 6 July, and on 13 July Mark Twain wrote that he had telegraphed his...

The first six illustrations reproduced below appeared in the first American edition ofThe Adventures of Tom Sawyerand, aside from the headcuts and most tailpieces, were the only illustrations not indicated by any marginal notation in the manuscript. The illustrations were on pp. 91, 253, 254, 255, 257, and 261 (in the context of pp. 97, 220, 221, 221, 223, and 226 in the present edition). The sequence of cut numbers inscribed in the manuscript did not account for the six illustrations, which were therefore probably added at a relatively late stage of the production. However, the publisher's prospectus...

Two complete manuscripts ofThe Adventures of Tom Sawyersurvive. The first, Mark Twain’s ink holograph manuscript, became printer’s copy for the first American edition (Hartford: American Publishing Company, [December] 1876); the second, a copy of the original inscribed by two secretaries, became printer’s copy for the first English edition (London: Chatto and Windus, [June] 1876). Two later American editions (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1894 ; and Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1899 [issued under another imprint thereafter]) appeared in Mark Twain’s lifetime, and both derived from the first American edition without authorial revision or a return to the original manuscript....

The copy-text for the present edition is Mark Twain’s ink holograph manuscript.¹ No typescript is known to survive, although such a form of the text, containing Mark Twain’s revisions, became printer’s copy for all or part of the first three authorized printings: theSt. Nicholasmagazine version (published in six monthly installments from November 1893 through April 1894);² the last four chapters of the first American book edition (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1894); and the entire first English edition (London: Chatto &. Windus, 1894). Two later American editions (New York: Harper & Brothers,1896; and Hartford: American Publishing...

Nearly three-fourths (chapters 1–10) of the manuscript of “Tom Sawyer, Detective” and a typescript of that portion are extant.¹ Presumed later typescripts, which became printer’s copy for the edition inHarper’s New Monthly Magazine(August-September 1896), the last four chapters of the first American book edition (New York: Harper & Brothers, [November] 1896), and the entire first English edition (London: Chatto & Windus, [December 1896] 1897), are not known to survive. One later American edition (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1899 [issued under another imprint thereafter]) appeared in Mark Twain’s lifetime, and it derived from the first American book edition...