....Story that touched my heart
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 whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all
gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty
yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence
but a burden. Sighing, 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 discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a
tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had
always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike him
so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro
boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading
playthings, quarrelling, 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. Tom said:
“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water
if you’ll whitewash some.”
Jim shook his head and said:
“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she
tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody.
She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go
‘long an’ ‘tend to my own business – she ‘lowed she’d ‘tend to de
whitewashin’.”
“Oh, never you mind what she
said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket – I won’t be gone
only a a minute. She won’t ever know.”
“Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Tom. Ole
missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ‘Deed she would.”
“She! She never licks anybody –
whacks ’em over the head with her thimble – and who cares for that, I’d like to
know. She talks awful, but talk don’t hurt – anyways it don’t if she don’t cry.
Jim, I’ll give you a marvel. I’ll give you a white alley!”
Jim began to waver.
“White alley, Jim! And it’s a
bully taw.”
“My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, I
tell you! But Mars Tom I’s powerful ‘fraid ole missis – ”
“And besides, if you will I’ll
show you my sore toe.”
Jim was only human – this
attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the white alley,
and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being
unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling
rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the
field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. But Tom’s energy did
not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his
sorrows multiplied. Soon 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 – the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly
wealth and examined it – bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an
exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of
pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up
the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an
inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.
He took up his brush and went
tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently – the very boy, of all
boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump
– proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was
eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by
a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a
steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street,
leaned far over to star-board 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. He 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:
“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!”
The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.
“Ship up to back!
Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.
“Set her back on the stabboard!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!” His right hand, meantime,
describing stately circles – for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.
“Let her go back on the labboard!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!” The left hand began to describe circles.
“Stop the stabboard!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let
your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that
head-line! Lively now! Come – out with your spring-line – what’re you about
there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage,
now – let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh’t! s’h’t! sh’t!”
(trying the gauge-cocks).
Tom went on whitewashing – paid
no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said: “Hi- yi !
You’re up a stump, ain’t you!”
No answer. Tom surveyed his last
touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep
and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s mouth
watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:
“Hello, old chap, you got to
work, hey?”
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
“Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t
noticing.” “Say – I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But
of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!”
Tom contemplated the boy a bit,
and said:
“What do you call work?”
“Why, ain’t that work?”
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and
answered carelessly:
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it
ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to
let on that you like it?”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I
oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new
light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and
forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there –
criticised the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more
interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a
little.”
Tom considered, was about to
consent; but he altered his mind:
“No – no – I reckon it wouldn’t
hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence – right
here on the street, you know – but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and
she wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done
very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand,
that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”
“No – is that so? Oh come, now –
lemme, just try. Only just a little – I’d let you, if you was me, Tom.”
“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun;
but Aunt Polly – well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid
wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If
you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it – ”
“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as
careful. Now lemme try. Say – I’ll give you the core of my apple.”
“Well, here – No, Ben, now don’t.
I’m afeard – ”
“I’ll give you all of it!”
Tom gave up the brush with
reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And 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. There was no lack of material; boys happened along
every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By 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. And when
the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the
morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before
mentioned,
twelve marbles,part of a jews-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 fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar
– but no dog – the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a
dilapidated old window sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle
time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of
whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted
every boy in the village.
Tom said to himself that it was
not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human
action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet
a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If 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 consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help
him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a
tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only
amusement. There 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; but if they were offered
wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
The boy mused awhile over the
substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then
wended toward headquarters to report.
