Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-fifth chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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Today we'll be concluding the Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Chapter 35 the Reader may Rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St.

Petersburg, so vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible.

It was talked about gloated over glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement.

Every haunted house in St.

Petersburg, in the neighboring villages, was dissected Planck by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure.

And not by boys, but men.

Pretty grave, unromantic men too, some of them.

Wherever Tom and Huck appeared, they recorded, admired, stared at.

The boys were not able to remember that there were marks had possessed weight before, but now their sayings were treasured and repeated.

Everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable.

They had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things.

Moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality.

The village paper published biographical sketches of the boys.

The widow Douglas put Huck's money out at 6%, and Judge Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request.

Each lad had an income.

Now that was simply prodigious a dollar for every weekday in the year and half of the Sundays.

It was just what the minister got no.

It was what he was promised.

He generally couldn't collect it.

A dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in those simple days and clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter.

Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom.

He said that no commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave.

When Becky told her father and strict confidence how Tom had taken her whipping at school, the judge was visibly moved.

And when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the judge said with a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, magnanimous lie, a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast.

With George Washington's lauded truth about the Hatchet.

Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that she went straight off and told Tom about it.

Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier someday, he said.

He meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school in the country in order that he might be ready for either career or both.

Huxon's wealth and the fact that he was now under the widow Douglas's protection introduced him into society.

No dragged him into it.

Hurled him into it, and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear.

The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart to know for a friend.

He had to eat with a knife and fork.

He had to use napkin, cup and plate.

He had to learn his book.

He had to go to church.

He had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth.

Whithersoever.

He turned the bars and shackles of civilization, shut him in and bound him hand and foot.

He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up missing for 48 hours.

The widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress.

The public were profoundly concerned.

They searched high and low.

They dragged the river for his body.

Early the third morning, tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hog's heads down behind the abandoned slaughterhouse.

And in one of them he found the refugee.

Huck had slept there.

He had just breakfast upon some stolen odds and ends of food and was lying off now in comfort with his pipe.

He was unkempt, uncomed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made him picturesque.

In the days when he was free and happy.

Tom routed him out told him the trouble he had been causing and urged him to go home.

Huck's face lost its tranquil content and took a melancholy cast.

He said, don't talk about it, Tom.

I've tried it and it don't work.

It don't work, Tom.

It ain't for me.

I ain't used to it.

The widow's good to me and friendly, but I can't stand them ways.

She makes me get up just at the same time every morning.

She makes me wash.

They comb me all to thunder.

She won't let me sleep in the woodshed.

I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom.

They don't seem to any air get through them somehow.

And they're so rotten nice that I can't set down nor laid down nor roll around anywheres I can't.

Slid on a cellar door for well, it appears to be years.

I got to go to church and sweat and sweat.

I hate them ornery sermons.

I can't catch a fly in there.

I can't chaw.

I got to wear shoes all Sunday.

The widow eats by a bell.

She goes to bed by a bell.

She gets up by a bell.

Everything so awful.

Regular body can't stand it.

Well, everybody does that way, Huck.

Tom, it don't make no difference.

I ain't everybody and I can't stand it.

It's awful to be tied up so and grub.

Comes too easy.

I don't take no interest in vittles that way.

I got to ask to go of fishing.

I got to ask to go in a swimming.

Darned if I ain't got to ask to do everything.

Well, I got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort.

I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out a while every day to get a taste in my mouth or I'd had died, Tom.

The widow wouldn't let me smoke.

She wouldn't let me yell.

She wouldn't let me gape nor stretch nor scratch before folks.

Then with a spasm of special irritation and injury and dad fetch it.

She prayed all the time.

I never see such a woman.

I had to shove, Tom.

I just had to.

And besides, that school's going to open and I'd have had to go to it.

Well, I wouldn't stand that, Tom.

Looky here, Tom.

Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be.

It's just worry and worry and sweat and sweat and a wishing you was dead all the time.

Now these clothes suit me and this borrow suits me.

And I ain't ever going to shake them anymore.

Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't been for that money.

Now you just take my share of it along with urine and give it $0.10 sometimes, not many times, because I don't give a durn for a thing that is tolerable hard to get.

And you go and beg off for me with the widow.

Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that.

Taint fair and besides, if you'll try this thing just a while longer, you'll come to like it.

Like it?

Yes, the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough.

No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed smothery houses.

I like the woods and the river and the hog's heads, and I'll stick to them, too.

Blame it all.

Just as we'd got guns in a cave and I'll just fix to rob here.

This durn foolishness has got to come up and spile it all.

Tom saw his opportunity.

Looky here, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning robber.

No.

Oh, good licks.

Are you in real deadwood earnest, Tom?

Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here.

But, Huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable.

You know, Huck's joy was quenched.

Can't let me in, Tom.

Didn't you let me go for a pirate?

Yes, but that's different.

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.

Now, Tom Hat, you always been friendly to me.

You wouldn't shut me out, would you, Tom?

You wouldn't do that, now, would you, Tom Hawk?

I wouldn't want to, and I don't want to.

But what would people say?

Why'd, they say Tom Sawyer's gang pretty low characters in it.

They'd mean you huck.

You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't.

Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle.

Finally he said, well, I'll go back to the widow for a month and tackle it and see if I can come to stand it.

If you'll let me belong to the gang, Tom.

All right, huck.

It's a whiz.

Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the widow to let up on you a little.

Huck will you, Tom?

Now, will you?

That's good.

If she'll let up on some of the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private and crowd through her bust.

When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?

Oh, right off.

We'll get the boys together and have the initiation tonight.

Maybe have the witch have the initiation.

What's that?

It's to swear to stand by one another and never tell the gang secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders and kill anybody in all his family.

That hurts.

One of the gang.

That's gay.

That's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you.

Well, I bet it is.

And all that swearing's got to be done at midnight in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find.

A haunted house is the best.

But they're all ripped up now.

Well, midnight's good.

Anyway.

Tom yes, so it is.

And you've got to swear on a coffin and sign it with blood.

Now, that's something like why, it's a million times bullier than pirating.

I'll stick to the widow till I rot, Tom.

And if I get to be a regular ripper of a robber and everybody talking about it, I reckon she'll be proud.

She snaked me in out of the wet.

Conclusion so endeth this chronicle.

It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here.

The story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man.

When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop.

That is, with a marriage.

But when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live and are prosperous and happy?

Someday it may seem worthwhile to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be.

Therefore, it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the first bite of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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