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TOM SAWYER ABROADby Mark Twainfree illustrated Tom Sawyer ebook CHAPTER I.
TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES
DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all
them adventures? I mean the adventures we had
down the river, and the time we set the darky 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 effect 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, it
made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had
always been hankering 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
o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account
of his age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see.
For as much as thirty years he'd been the only man in
the village that had a reputation -- I mean a reputation
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
admiring and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give
the poor old man the high strikes. 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 such 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 were 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 beat out
the other. innocence abroad by mark twain You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When
he first got to be postmaster and was green in the busi-
ness, there come a letter 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 a conniption. 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 reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him respon-
sible 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 da'sn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person
he asked for 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 did no good; if he
happened to see a person standing over the place it'd
give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with
suspicions, and he would sit 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 terrible, they didn't know what, and if he
had been a stranger they would've 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 it 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 that must starve and yet
hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the whole
truth and I can swear to it."
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboat-
ing, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the
way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get
to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of vil-
lages 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 what-
ever 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 dangerous 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 bucked the best he could; and 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 while Nat was painting up
the adventure that HE had in Washington; for Tom
never let go that limp when his leg got well, but prac-
ticed it nights at home, and kept it good as new right
along.
ORBuy "The Mark Twain Collection" and receive all 45 of the ebooks for only $9.95 Ebook Titles: - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- TOM SAWYER ABROAD
- TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
- THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
- 1601
- A Burlesque Autobiography
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- A Dog's Tale
- A Horse's Tale
- A TRAMP ABROAD
- Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
- Carnival of Crime in CT
- Christian Science
- Complete Letters of Mark Twain
- Curious Republic of Gondour
- Double Barrelled Detective
- Essays on Paul Bourget
- Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
- Extracts From Adam's Diary
- FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
- FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
- Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again
- How Tell a Story and Others
- In Defence of Harriet Shelley
- Innocents Abroad
- IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
- LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
- MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
- Mark Twain's Speeches
- On the Decay of the Art of Lying
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc v1
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc v2
- Rambling Idle Excursion
- Roughing It
- Sketches New and Old
- THE $30,000 BEQUEST and Other Stories
- The American Claimant
- The Gilded Age
- The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
- The Mysterious Stranger
- The Prince and the Pauper
- The Stolen White Elephant
- The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Those Extraordinary Twins
- WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN
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