Tom Sawyer Abroad/Chapter 1

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 p'isoned him for more. That was all the effects it had. You see, when we three came 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 Tom Sawyer had always been hankerin' to be.

For a while he was satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. You see, he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but land! they just knuckled to the dirt before Tom.

Well, I don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, and kind of good-hearted, and silly, and bald-headed, on accounts of his age, and 'most about the talkiest old animal I ever see. For as much as thirty years he'd been the only man in the village that had a ruputation—I mean a ruputation for being a traveler—and of course he was mortal proud of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had told about that journey over a million times, and enjoyed it every time; and now comes along a boy not quite fifteen and sets everybody gawking and admiring over his travels, and it just give the poor old thing the jim-jams. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say "My land!" "Did you ever?" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all them sorts of things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on his same old travels and work them for all they were worth; but they was pretty faded and didn't go for much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings, and then the old man again—and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to sweat out the other.

You see, Parsons' travels happened like this. When he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, there was a letter come for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village. Well, he didn't know what to do nor how to act, and there the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him the dry gripes. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and he reckoned the Gov'ment would hold him responsible for it, and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he dasn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person he asked for the advice might go back on him and let the Gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor, but that didn't do no good: if he happened to see a person standing over the place it give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would set up that night till the town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of course people got to avoiding him, and shaking their heads and whispering, because the way he was looking and acting they judged he had killed somebody or done something they didn't know what—and if he had been a stranger they would 'a' lynched him.

Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he made up his mind to pull out for Washington and just go to the President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay her down before the whole Gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is—do with me what you're a mind to; though as heaven is my judge, I am an innocent man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law, and leaving behind me a family which must starve and yet ain't had a thing to do with it, which is the truth, and I can swear to it."

So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and took him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land, and lots of villages, and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him—and there they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it.

Well, there wasn't any way, now, to settle which was the greatest traveler; some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangersome adventures, and try to get ahead that way. That bullet-wound in Tom's leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he done the best he could; done it at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set still, as he'd orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp whilst Nat was painting up the adventure that he had one day in Washington; for Tom never let go that limp after his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along.

Nat's adventure was like this—and I will say this for him, that he did know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near as I can remember:

He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President was up to the Capitol and just going to start for Philadelphia—not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just then along comes a nigger driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his chance. He rushes out and shouts:

"A half a dollar if you git me to the Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!"

"Done!" says the nigger.

Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went, a-ripping and a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under the coach and his head and shoulders bobbing inside, through the windows, and knowed he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled, and lashed the horses, and said, "Don't you fret—I's gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it sho'!" for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and of course he couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went ripping along, and everybody just petrified and cold to see it; and when they got to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered out, and then they hauled him out, and he was all dust and rags, and barefooted; but he was in time, and just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't 'a' got there in time, nor anywhere near it.

It was a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.

Well, by-and-by Tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of other things turning up for the people to talk about—first a horse-race, and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on top of that a big auction of niggers, and on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom to speak of, and you never see a person so sick and disgusted. Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day out, and when I asked him what was he in such a state about, he said it 'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.

So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free and generous that way. There's plenty of boys that's mighty good and friendly when you've got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's style—I can say that for him. There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvveling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, the make a mouth at you and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to do is to wait. Jake Hooker always done that way, and it warn't two years till he got drownded.

Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. It was a crusade.

"What's a crusade?" I says.

He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says:

"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"

"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see no use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any occasion for them. There was Lance Williams, he learnt how to talk Choctaw, and there warn't ever a Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a patent-right, there ain't no money in it. Bill Thompson he—"

"Patent-right!" he says. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war."

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no; he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm:

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land—there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the rights of it, no way. I says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to—"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm—it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we oughtn't to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see. Now, if I had a farm and another person—"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down worldly business, that's all it is—it's all you can say for it; but this is higher—this is religious, and totally different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly! it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers—dey mos' sholy is. I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't run across none dat acts like dat."

It made Tom hot, and he says:

"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance. If either of you knowed anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur de Lyon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulloyn, and lots more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world hacked and hammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time—and yet here's a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than they did! Talk about cheek!"

Well, of course that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while; then he says:

"Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'ze ef dey didn't know, dey ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so, ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done him no harm. Dat's it, you see. Ef we uz to go 'mongst 'em, jist us three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's jist like yuther people en niggers—don't you reckon dey is? Why, dey'd give it, I know dey would, en den—"

"Then what?"

"Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we can't kill dem po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice—I knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom—'deed I knows it perfectly well. But ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fambly dat's over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en—"

"Oh, shut your head! you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject, and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate."

Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm, and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the how of it—that was all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it was because we was ignorant—yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying that; but, land! that ain't no crime, I should think.

But he wouldn't hear no more about it; just said if we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies, and come back across the world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him.

But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up no rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.

Now, Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's books, which he was always reading. And it WAS a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could 'a' raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would 'a' got licked. I took the books and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it.