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, quarreling, 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 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—anyway 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
afraid 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 starboard 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 the 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 starboard! 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! sh’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 ruther _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—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 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 beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part
of a jew’s-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.