Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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Today we'll be continuing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Chapter Two Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh and brimming with life.

There was a song in every heart, and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips.

There was a cheer in every face and a spring in every step.

The locust trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.

Cardiff Hill beyond the village and above it was green with vegetation.

As it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land dreamy, reposeful and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long handled brush.

He surveyed the fence and all gladness left him, and a deep melancholy settled upon his spirit 30 yards of board fence 9ft high.

Life to him seemed hollow, an existence but a burden.

Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank, repeated the operation, did it again, compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree box.

Discouraged, Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail and singing Buffalo Gals.

Bringing water from the town.

Pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes before, but now it did not strike him so.

He remembered that there was company at the pump, boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, rusting, trading, playthings, quarreling, fighting skylarking and he remembered that although the pump was only 150 yards off, jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hour, and even then, somebody generally had to go after him.

Tom said, Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some.

Jim shook his head and said, can't Mars Tom.

Oh, Mrs.

She told me I got to go and get this water and not stop fooling round with anybody.

She said she spent Mars Tom gwynn to ask me to whitewash, and so she told me go long and tend to my own business.

She loud she'd tend to to whitewash in oh, you never mind what she said, Jim.

That's the way she always talks.

Give me the bucket.

I won't be gone only a minute.

She won't ever know.

Oh, I dastant mars tom.

Oh, Mrs.

She'd taken tarred ahead off in me deed she would she she never licks anybody.

Wax him over the head with her thimble.

And who cares for that, I'd like to know.

She talks awful, but talk don't hurt anyways.

It don't if she don't cry, Jim, I'll give you a marvel.

I'll give you a white alley.

Jim began to waver.

White alley, Jim, and it's a bully ta.

My dad's a mighty game marvel, I tell you, but Mars Tom ice powerful Fridal misses.

And besides, if you will, I'll show you my sore toe.

Jim was only human.

This attraction was too much for him.

He put down his pail, took the white alley and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound.

In another moment, he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear.

Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last.

He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied.

Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work.

The very thought of it burnt him like fire.

He got out his worldly wealth and examined it bits of toys, marbles and trash.

Enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom.

So he returned his straightened means to his pocket and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys.

At this dark and hopeless moment, an inspiration burst upon him, nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work.

Ben Rogers hove in sight.

Presently the very boy of all boys whose ridicule he had been dreading.

Ben's Gait was the hop, skip, and jump, proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high.

He was eating an apple and giving a long melodious whoop at intervals followed by a deep toned ding dong dong.

Ding dong dong for he was personating a steamboat as he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to the starboard, and rounded to ponderously and with laborious, pomp and circumstance.

For he was impersonating the big Missouri and considered himself to be drawing 9ft of water.

He was boat and captain and engine belt combined.

So he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane deck, giving the orders and executing them.

Stop her, sir.

Tingling Ling.

The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

Ship up back.

Tingling Ling.

His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

Set her back on the stabbard.

Tingling Ling.

Chow.

Chi wow chow.

His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles, for it was representing a 40 foot wheel.

Let her go.

Back on the lab board.

Tingling Ling.

Chow.

Chow.

Chow.

The left hand began to describe circles.

Stop the stabbard.

Tingling Ling.

Stop the labyard.

Come ahead on the stabbard.

Stop her.

Let your outside turnover slow.

Tingling Ling.

Chow.

Ow.

Ow.

Get out that headline.

Lively now.

Come out with your spring line.

What are you about there?

Take a turn round that stump with the bride of it.

Stand by that stage.

Now.

Let her go.

Done with the engine, sir.

Tinga.

Ling.

Ling.

Trying to gauge Cox.

Tom went on whitewashing paid no attention to the steamboat.

Ben stared a moment and then said Hay.

You're up a stump, ain't you?

No Answer.

Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist.

Then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result.

As before.

Ben ranged up alongside of him.

Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work.

Ben said.

Hello, old chap.

You got to work.

Hey.

Tom wheeled suddenly and said, why, it's you, Ben.

I weren't noticing.

Say I'm going in a swimming.

I am.

Don't you wish you could?

But of course, you'd rather work, wouldn't you, Quartz?

You Would.

Tom contemplated the boy a bit and said, what do you call work?

Why ain't that work?

Tom resumed his whitewashing and answered carelessly.

Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain't.

All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer.

Oh, come now.

You don't mean to let on that you like it.

The brush continued to move.

Like It?

Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it.

Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?

That put the thing in a new light.

Ben stopped nibbling his apple.

Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth, stepped back to note the effect, added a touch here and there.

Criticized the effect again.

Then watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed.

Presently He Said, Say, Tom, Let Me Whitewash a little, tom considered was about to consent, but he altered his mind.

No, no, I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben.

You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence right here on the street, you know.

But if it was the back fence, I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't yeah, she's awful particular about this fence.

It's got to be done very careful.

I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe 2000 that can do it the way it's got to be done.

No.

Is that so?

Oh, come now.

Let me just try.

Only just a little.

I'd let you if it was me, Tom, then I'd like to, honest.

But Aunt Polly well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him.

Sid wanted to do it and she wouldn't let Sid now don't you see how I'm fixed?

If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it oh, shocks.

I'll be just as careful.

Now, let me try.

Say I'll give you the core of my apple.

Well here.

No, Ben.

Now don't I'm a feared.

I'll give you all of it.

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.

And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple and planned the slaughter of more innocence.

There was no lack of material.

Boys happened along every little while they came to Jeer but remained to whitewash.

By the time Ben was worn out, tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair.

And when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with.

And so on and so on, hour after hour.

And when the middle of the afternoon came from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning, tom was literally rolling in wealth.

He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a Jews harp, a piece of blue bottle glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers.

A kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar but no dog, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice good idle time all the while.

Plenty of company.

And the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.

If he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

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.

If he'd 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.

And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling ten pens or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement.

There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four horse passenger coaches 20 or 30 miles on a dainty line in the summer because the privilege costs them considerable money.

But if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and then they would resign.

The boy mused a while over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then went toward headquarters to report.

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 next bite of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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