Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  MARK TWAIN

  THE WORLD OF MARK TWAIN AND THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  Introduction

  PREFACE

  Chapter 1 - Y-o-u-u Tom—Aunt Polly Decides Upon Her Duty—Tom Practices Music — ...

  Chapter 2 - Strong Temptations—Strategic Movements— The Innocents Beguiled

  Chapter 3 - Tom as a General— Triumph and Reward—Dismal Felicity— Commission ...

  Chapter 4 - Mental Acrobatics —Attending Sunday School— The Superintendent ...

  Chapter 5 - A Useful Minister-In Church—The Climax

  Chapter 6 - Self-Examination-Dentistry- The Midnight Charm—Witches and ...

  Chapter 7 - A Treaty Entered Into—Early Lessons—A Mistake Made

  Chapter 8 - Tom Decides on His Course—Old Scenes Re-enacted

  Chapter 9 - A Solemn Situation—Grave Subjects Introduced—Injun Joe Explains

  Chapter 10 - A Solemn Oath—Terror Brings Repentance—Mental Punishment

  Chapter 11 - Muff Potter Comes Himself— Tom’s Conscience at Work

  Chapter 12 - Tom Shows His Generosity—Aunt Polly Weakens

  Chapter 13 - The Young Pirates—Going to the Rendezvous—The Campfire Talk

  Chapter 14 - Camp Life—A Sensation—Tom Steals Auu ay from Camp

  Chapter 15 - Tom Reconnoiters—Learns the Situation— Reports at Camp

  Chapter 16 - A Day’s Amusements—Tom Reveals a Secret-The Pirates Take a ...

  Chapter 17 - Memories of the Lost Heroes — The Point in Tom’s Secret

  Chapter 18 - Tom’s Feelings lnvestigated—Wonderful Dream—Becky Thatcher ...

  Chapter 19 - Tom Tells the Truth

  Chapter 20 - Becky in a Dilemma—Tom’s Nobility Asserts Itself

  Chapter 21 - Youthful Eloquence—Compositions by the Young Ladies—A Lengthy ...

  Chapter 22 - Tom’s Confidence Betrayed— Expects Signal Punishment

  Chapter 23 - Old Muff’s Friends—Muff Potter in Court-Muff Potter Saved

  Chapter 24 - Tom as the Village Hero—Days of Splendor and Nights of ...

  Chapter 25 - About Kings and Diamonds—Search for the Treasure—Dead People and Ghosts

  Chapter 26 - The Haunted House-Sleepy Ghosts —A Box of Gold—Bitter Luck

  Chapter 27 - Doubts to be Settled-The Young Detectives

  Chapter 28 - An Attempt at No. Two-Huck Mounts Guard

  Chapter 29 - The Picnic—Huck on Injun Joe’s Track—The “Revenge” Job-Aid for ...

  Chapter 30 - The Welshman Reports—Huck Under Fire-The Story Circulated-A New ...

  Chapter 31 - An Exploring Expedition—Trouble Commences—Lost in the Cave— Total ...

  Chapter 32 - Tom Tells the Story of Their Escape—Tom’s Enemy in Safe Quarters

  Chapter 33 - The Fate of Injun Joe—Huck and Tom Compare Notes—An Expedition to ...

  Chapter 34 - Springing a Secret—Mr. Jones’ Surprise a Failure

  Chapter 35 - A New Order of Things—Poor Huck— New Adventures Planned

  CONCLUSION

  ENDNOTES

  INSPIRED BY THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  FROM THE PAGES OF THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  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.

  (page 18)

  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.

  (page 18)

  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 chapter of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

  (page 26)

  Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.

  (page 43)

  “Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hooky and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn‘t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday schools!”

  (page 69)

  It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to civilization.

  (page 84)

  Homely truth is unpalatable.

  (page 126)

  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.

  (page 130)

  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.

  (page 141)

  “A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.”

  (page 202)

  Published by Barnes & Noble Books

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  www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was first published in 1876.

  Originally published in mass market format in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics

  with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,

  Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.

  This trade paperback edition published in 2008.

  Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

  Copyright @ 2003 by H. Daniel Peck.

  Note on Mark Twain, The World of Mark Twain and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

  Inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Comments & Questions

  Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics

  colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-139-3 ISBN-10: 1-59308-139-1

  eISBN : 978-1-411-43170-6

  LC Control Number 2007941536

  Produced and published in conjunction with:

  Fine Creative Media, Inc.

  322 Eighth Avenue

  New York, NY 10001

  Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

  Printed in the United States of America

  QM

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  MARK TWAIN

  Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. When Sam was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town later immortalized in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. After the death of his father, twelve-year-old Sam quit school and supported his family by working as a delivery
boy, a grocer’s clerk, and an assistant blacksmith until he was thirteen, when he became an apprentice printer. He worked for several newspapers, traveled throughout the country, and established himself as a gifted writer of humorous sketches. Abandoning journalism at points to work as a riverboat pilot, Clemens adven tured up and down the Mississippi, learning the 1,200 miles of the river.

  During the 1860s he spent time in the West, in newspaper work and panning for gold, and traveled to Europe and the Holy Land; The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It (1872) are accounts of those experiences. In 1863 Samuel Clemens adopted a pen name, signing a sketch as “Mark Twain,” and in 1867 Mark Twain won fame with publication of a collection of humorous writings, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches. After marrying and settling in Connecticut, Twain wrote his best-loved works: the novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and the nonfiction work Life on the Mississippi. Meanwhile, he continued to travel and had a successful career as a public lecturer.

  In his later years, Twain saw the world with increasing pessimism following the death of his wife and two of their three daughters. The tone of his later novels, including The Tragedy of Pudd‘nhead Wilson and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, became cynical and dark. Having failed as a publisher and suffering losses from ill-advised investments, Twain was forced by financial necessity to maintain a heavy schedule of lecturing. Though he had left school at an early age, his genius was recognized by Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University in the form of honorary doctorate degrees. He died in his Connecticut mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.

  THE WORLD OF MARK TWAIN AND THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

  1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born prematurely in Florida, Missouri, the fourth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens.

  1839 The family moves to Hannibal, the small Missouri town on the west bank of the Mississippi River that will become the model for the setting of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

  1840 American newspapers gain increased readership as urban popula- tions swell and printing technology improves.

  1847 John Clemens dies, leaving the family in financial difficulty. Sam quits school at the age of twelve.

  1848 Sam becomes a full-time apprentice to Joseph Ament of the Missouri Courier.

  1850 Sam’s brother Orion, ten years his senior, returns to Hannibal and establishes the Journal; he hires Sam as a compositor. Steamboats become the primary means of transport on the Mississippi River.

  1852 Sam edits the failing Journal while Orion is away. After he reads local humor published in newspapers in New England and the Southwest, Sam begins printing his own humorous sketches in the journal. He submits “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” to the Carpet-Bag of Boston, which publishes the sketch in the May issue.

  1853 Sam leaves Hannibal and begins working as an itinerant printer; he visits St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. His brothers Orion and Henry move to Iowa with their mother.

  1854 Transcendentalism flourishes in American literary culture; Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden.

  1855 Sam works again as a printer with Orion in Keokuk, Iowa.

  1856 Sam acquires a commission from Keokuk’s Daily Post to write humorous letters; he decides to travel to South America.

  1857 Sam takes a steamer to New Orleans, where he hopes to find a ship bound for South America. Instead, he signs on as an ap prentice to river pilot Horace Bixby and spends the next two years learning how to navigate a steamship up and down the Mississippi. His experiences become material for Life on the Mississippi and his tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

  1858 Sam’s brother Henry dies in a steamboat accident.

  1859 Samuel Clemens becomes a fully licensed river pilot.

  1861 The American Civil War erupts, putting an abrupt stop to river trade between North and South. Sam serves with a Confederate militia for two weeks before venturing to the Nevada Territory with Orion, who had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as secretary of the new Territory.

  1862 After an unsuccessful stint as a miner and prospector for gold and silver, Clemens begins reporting for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada.

  1863 Clemens signs his name as “Mark Twain” on a humorous travel sketch printed in the Territorial Enterprise. The pseudonym, a riverboat term meaning “two fathoms deep,” connotes barely navigable water.

  1864 After challenging his editor to a duel, Twain is forced to leave Nevada and lands a job with a San Francisco newspaper. He meets Artemus Ward, a popular humorist, whose techniques greatly influence Twain’s writing.

  1865 Robert E. Lee’s army surrenders, ending the Civil War. While prospecting for gold in Calaveras County, California, Twain hears a tale he uses for a story that makes him famous; originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” it is published in New York’s Saturday Press.

  1866 Twain travels to Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union; upon his return to California, he delivers his first public lecture, beginning a successful career as a humorous speaker.

  1867 Twain travels to New York, and then to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamer Quaker City; during five months abroad, he contributes to California’s largest paper, Sacramento’s Alta California, and writes several letters for the New York Tri bune. He publishes a volume of stories and sketches, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.

  1868 Twain meets and falls in love with Olivia (Livy) Langdon. His overseas writings have increased his popularity; he signs his first book contract and begins The Innocents Abroad, sketches based on his trip to the Holy Land. He embarks on a lecture tour of the American Midwest.

  1869 Twain becomes engaged to Livy, who acts as his editor from that time on. The Innocents Abroad, published as a subscription book, is an instant success, selling nearly 100,000 copies in the first three years.

  1870 Twain and Livy marry. Their son, Langdon, is born; he lives only two years.

  1871 The Clemens move to Hartford, Connecticut.

  1872 Roughing It, an account of Twain’s adventures out West, is pub lished to enormous success. The first of Twain’s three daughters, Susy, is born. Twain strikes up a lifelong friendship with the writer William Dean Howells.

  1873 Ever the entrepreneur, Twain receives the patent for Mark Twain’s Self-Pasting Scrapbook, an invention that is a commercial success. He publishes The Gilded Age, a collaboration with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes the post-Civil War era.

  1874 His daughter Clara is born. The family moves into a mansion in Hartford in which they will live for the next seventeen years.

  1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is published.

  1877 Twain collaborates with Bret Harte—an author known for his use of local color and humor and for his parodies of Cooper, Dickens, and Hugo—to produce the play Ah Sin.

  1880 Twain invests in the Paige typesetter and loses thousands of dol lars. He publishes A Tramp Abroad, an account of his travels in Europe the two previous years. His daughter Jean is born.

  1881 The Prince and the Pauper, Twain’s first historical romance, is pub lished.

  1882 Twain plans to write about the Mississippi River and makes the trip from New Orleans to Minnesota to refresh his memory.

  1883 The nonfiction work Life on the Mississippi is published.

  1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a book Twain worked on for nearly ten years, is published in England; publication in the United States is delayed until the following year because an illustration plate is judged to be obscene.

  1885 When Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published in America—by Twain’s ill-fated publishing house, run by his nephew Charles Webster—controversy immediately surrounds the book. Twain also publishes the memoirs of his friend former President Ulysses S. Grant.

  1888 He receives an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale University.

  1889 H
e publishes A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the first of his major works to be informed by a deep pessimism. He meets Rudyard Kipling, who had come to America to meet Twain, in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York.

  1890 Twain’s mother dies.

  1891 Financial difficulties force the Clemens family to close their Hart ford mansion; they move to Berlin, Germany.

  1894 Twain publishes The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, a dark novel about the aftermath of slavery, which sells well, and Tom Sawyer Abroad, which does not. Twain’s publishing company fails and leaves him bankrupt.

  1895 Twain embarks on an ambitious worldwide lecture tour to restore his financial position.

  1896 He publishes Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and Tom Sawyer, Detective. His daughter Susy dies of spinal meningitis.

  1901 Twain is awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Yale.

  1902 Livy falls gravely ill. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a stage adap tation of the novel, opens to favorable reviews. Though he is credited with coauthorship, Twain has little to do with the play and never sees it performed. He receives an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Missouri.

  1903 Hoping to restore Livy’s health, Twain takes her to Florence, Italy.

  1904 Livy dies, leaving Twain devastated. He begins dictating an un even autobiography that he never finishes.

  1905 Theodore Roosevelt invites Twain to the White House. Twain enjoys a gala celebrating his seventieth birthday in New York. He continues to lecture, and he addresses Congress on copyright is sues.