Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-second chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
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Take it chapter by chapter, one bite at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for wordline by.
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One bite at a time.
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Today we'll be continuing The Adventures of.
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Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
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Chapter 22 tom joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance.
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Being attracted by the showy character of their regalia, he promised to abstain from smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member.
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Now he found out a new thing, namely that 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.
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Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear.
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The desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order.
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4 July was coming, but he soon gave that up.
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Gave it up before he had worn his shackles over 48 hours and fixed his hopes upon old Judge Fraser, justice of the Peace, who was apparently on.
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His deathbed and would have a big.
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Public funeral since he was so high an official during three days.
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Tom was deeply concerned about the judge's condition and hungry for news of it.
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Sometimes his hopes ran high, so high that he would venture to get out his regalia and practice before the looking glass.
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But the judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating.
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At last he was pronounced upon the mend and then convalescent.
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Tom was disgusted and felt a sense of injury, too.
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He handed in his resignation at once, and that night the judge suffered a relapse and died.
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Tom resolved that he would never trust a man like that again.
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A funeral was a fine thing.
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The cadets paraded in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy.
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Tom was a free boy again.
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However, there was something in that.
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He could drink and swear now, but found to his surprise that he did not want to.
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A simple fact that he could took the desire away, and the charm of it.
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Tom presently wondered, to find that his coveted vacation was beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands.
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He attempted a diary, but nothing happened during three days, and so he abandoned it.
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The first of all the minstrel shows came to town and made a sensation.
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Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were happy for two days.
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Even the glorious fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained hard.
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There was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in the world, as Tom supposed Mr.
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Benton, was an actual United States senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment, for he was not 25ft high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.
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A circus came.
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The boys played circus for three days afterward in tents made of rag carpeting.
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Admission three pins for boys, two for girls.
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And then circusing was abandoned.
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A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came and went again and left the village duller and drearier than ever.
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There were some boys and girls parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between the ache harder.
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Becky Thatcher was gone to constanople home to stay with her parents during vacation, so there was no bright side to life anywhere.
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The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery.
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It was a very cancer for the permanency and pain.
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Then came the measles.
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During two long weeks, Tom lay a prisoner dead to the world and its happenings.
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He was very ill.
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He was interested in nothing.
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When he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature.
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There had been a revival, and everybody had got religion, not only the adults, but even the boys and girls.
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Tom went about hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere.
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He found Joe Harper studying a testament and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle.
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He sought Ben Rogers and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracks.
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He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning.
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Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression.
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And when in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn, and was received with a scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home into bed, realizing that he alone of all the town, was lost forever and forever.
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And that night there came on a terrific storm with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning.
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He covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in horror of suspense for his doom, for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him.
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He believed he attacked the forbearance of the powers above to the extremity of endurance, and that this was the result.
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It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up of such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself.
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By and by, the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its object.
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The boy's first impulse was to be grateful and reform.
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His second was to wait, for there might not be any more storms.
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The next day the doctors were back.
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Tom had relapsed the three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age.
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When he got abroad at last, he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was.
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He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as a judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder in the presence of her victim, a bird.
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He found Joe Harper and Huck Synop and Alley eating a stolen melon.
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Poor lads.
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They, like Tom, had suffered a relapse.
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Thank you for joining Bite at a.
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Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and.
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I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
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Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at Bite at a Timebooks.com and check out the shop.
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Social media as well.
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Take a look in the broken.
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Let's see what we can find.
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Taking chapter by chapter, one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.
