by Twain, Mark
“What do we want them dry for, Tom?”
But he was listening at Sid’s door, to hear if he was snoring. Then he slipped in there and got Sid’s clothes and fetched them and hung them out of the window till they was soaked, then he carried them back and come to bed. So then I understood. We snuggled up together, and pulled up the blankets, and wasn’t overly comfortable, but of course we had to stand it. After a long thinking spell, Tom says—
“Huck, I believe I’ve got it. I know where I can get the measles. We’ve all got to have them some time or other anyway, and I better have them now, when they can do some good.”
“How?”
“Aunt Polly wouldn’t let Sid and Mary stay in the house if we had measles here; she would send them to uncle Fletcher’s—it’s the only place.”
I didn’t like the idea, it made me half sick; and I says—
“Tom, don’t you do it; it’s a fool idea. Why, you might die.”
“Die, you pelican? I never heard such foolishness. Measles never kills anybody except grown people and babies. You never heard of a case.”
I was worried, and tried to talk him out of it, and done my best, but it didn’t do any good. He was full of it, and bound to try it, and wanted me to help him; so I give it up and said I would. So he planned it out how we was to manage it, and then we went to sleep.
We got up dry, but Sid’s things was wet; and when he said he was going to tell on us, Tom told him he could go and tell, as fast as he wanted to, and see if him and his wet clothes could beat our dry ones testifying. Sid said he hadn’t been out, but knowed we had, becuz he seen us. Tom says—
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are always walking in your sleep and dreaming all kinds of strange things that didn’t happen, and now you are at it again. Can’t you see, perfectly plain, it’s nothing but a dream? If you didn’t walk, how comes your clothes wet? and if we did, how comes ourn dry?—you answer me that.”
Sid was all puzzled and mixed up, and couldn’t make it out. He felt of our clothes, and thought and thought; but he had to give it up. He said he judged he could see, now, it was only a dream, but it was the amazingest vividest one he ever had. So the conspiracy was saved, and out of a close place, too, and Tom said anybody could see it was approved of. And he was awed about it, and said it was enough to awe anybody and make them better, to see the inscrutable ways that that conspiracy was watched over and took care of, and I felt the same. Tom resolved to be humbler and gratefuller from this out, and do everything as right as he could, and said so; and after breakfast we went down to Captain Harper’s to get the measles, and had a troublesome time, but we got it. We didn’t go at it the best way at first, that was the reason. Tom went up the back stairs and got into the room all right, where Joe was laying sick, but before he could get into bed with him his mother come in to give him the medicine, and was scared to see him there, and says—
“Goodness gracious, what are you doing here! Clear out, you little idiot, don’t you know we’ve got the measles?”
Tom wanted to explain that he come to ask how Joe was, but she shoo’d and shoo’d him to the door and out, and wouldn’t listen, and says—
“Oh, do go away and save yourself. You’ve frightened the life out of me, and your aunt Polly will never forgive me, and yet it’s nobody’s fault but yourn, for not going to the front door, where anybody would that had any sense of discretion,” and then she slammed the door and shut Tom out.
But that give him an idea. So in about an hour he sent me to the front door to knock and fetch her there; and she would have to go, becuz the children was with the neighbors on account of the measles, and the captain out at his business; and so, whilst I kept her there asking her all about Joe for the Widow Douglas, Tom got in the back way again and got into bed with Joe, and covered up, and when she come back and found him there, she had to drop down in a chair or she would a fainted; and she shut him up in another room until she sent word to aunt Polly.
So aunt Polly was frightened stiff, and shook so she could hardly pack Sid and Mary’s things. But she had them out of the house in a half an hour and into the tavern to stay there over night and take the stage for her brother Fletcher’s at four in the morning, and then went and fetched Tom home, and wouldn’t let me come in the house; and she hugged him and hugged him, and cried, and said she would lick him within an inch of his life when he got well.
So then I went up on the hill to the Widow’s, and told Jim, but he said it was a right down smart plan, and he hadn’t ever seen a plan work quicker and better; and Jim warn’t worried, he said measles didn’t amount to anything, everybody has them and everybody’s got to; so I stopped worrying, too.
After a day or two Tom had to go to bed and have the doctor. Me and Jim couldn’t work the conspiracy without Tom, so we had to let it lay still and wait, and I reckoned it was going to be dull times for me for a spell. But no, Tom warn’t hardly to bed before Joe Harper’s medicine fetched his measles out onto the surface, and then the doctor found it warn’t measles at all, but scarlet fever. When aunt Polly heard it she turned that white she couldn’t get her breath, and was that weak she couldn’t see her hand before her face, and if they hadn’t grabbed her she would have fell. And it just made a panic in the town, too, and there wasn’t a woman that had children but was scared out of her life.
But it crossed off the dull times for me, and done that much good; for I had had scarlet fever, and come in an ace of going deef and dumb and blind and baldheaded and idiotic, so they said; and so aunt Polly was very glad to let me come and help her.
We had a good doctor, one of them old fashioned industrious kind that don’t go fooling around waiting for a sickness to show up and call game and start fair, but gets in ahead, and bleeds you at one end and blisters you at the other, and gives you a dipperful of castor oil and another one of hot salt water with mustard in it, and so gets all your machinery agoing at once, and then sets down with nothing on his mind and plans out the way to handle the case.
Along as Tom got sicker and sicker they shut off his feed, and closed up the doors and windows and made the room snug and hot and healthy, and as soon as the fever was warmed up good and satisfactry, they shut off his water and let him have a spoonful of panada every two hours to squench his thirst with. Of course that is dreadful when you are burning up, and nice cool water there for other people to drink and you can’t touch it but need it more than anybody else; so Tom arranged to wink when he couldn’t stand it any longer, and I watched my chance and give him a good solid drink when aunt Polly’s back was turned; and after that it was more comfortable, for I kept an eye out sharp and filled him up every time he wunk. The doctor said water would kill him, but I knowed that when you are blazing with scarlet fever you don’t mind that.
Tom was sick two weeks, and got very bad, and then one night he begun to sink, and sunk pretty fast. All night long he got worse and worse, and was out of his head, and babbled and babbled, and give the conspiracy plumb away, but aunt Polly was that beside herself with misery and grief that she couldn’t take notice, but only just hung over him, and cried, and kissed him and kissed him, and bathed his face with a wet rag, and said oh, she could not bear to lose him, he was the darling of her heart and she couldn’t ever live without him, the world wouldn’t ever be the same again and life would be so empty and lonesome and not worth while; and she called him by all the pet names she could think of, and begged him to notice her and say he knowed her, but he couldn’t, and once when his hand went groping about and found her face and stroked it and he took it for me, and said “good old Huck,” she was broken-hearted, and cried so hard and mourned so pitiful I had to look away, I couldn’t bear it. And in the morning when the doctor come and looked at him and says, kind of tender and low, “He doeth all things for the best, we must not repine,” she—but I can’t tell it, it would a made anybody cry to see her. Then the doctor motioned, and the preacher was there and had been praying, and we all went a
nd stood around the bed, waiting and still, and aunt Polly crying, and nobody saying anything. Tom was laying with his eyes shut, and very quiet. Then he opened them, but didn’t seem to notice, much, or see anything; but they kind of wandered about, and fell on me; and steadied there. And one of them begun to sag down, went shut, and t’other one begun to work and twist, and twist and work, and kind of squirm; and at last he got it, though pretty lame and out of true—it was a wink. I jumped for the fresh cold water, tin pail and all, and says “Hold up his head!” and put it to his lips, and he drunk and drunk and drunk—the very first I had had a chance to give him in a whole day and night. The doctor said, “Poor boy, give him all he wants, he is past hurting, now.”
It warn’t so. It saved him. He begun to pull back to life again from that very minute, and in five days he was setting up in bed, and in five more was walking about the floor; and aunt Polly was that full of joy and gratefulness that she told me, private, she wished he would do something he had no business to, so she could forgive him; and said she never would a knowed how dear he was to her if she hadn’t come so near losing him; and said she was glad it happened and she’d got her lesson, she wouldn’t ever be rough on him again, she didn’t care what he done. And she said it was the way we feel when we’ve laid a person in the grave that is dear to us and we wish we could have them back again, we wouldn’t ever say anything to grieve them any more.
Chapter 4
ALL THE first week that Tom was sick he wasn’t very sick, and then for a while he was, and after that he wasn’t, again, but was getting well; so he lost only the between-time. Both of the other times he worked on the conspiracy—first to get it all shaped out so me and Jim could finish it if he died, and leave it behind him for his monument; and the other time to boss it himself. So the minute I come down to help take care of him he said he wanted some type, and to learn how to set them up; and told me to go to Mr. Baxter about it. He was the foreman of the printing office, and had Mr. Day and a boy under him and was one of the most principal men in the town, and looked up to by everybody. There warn’t nothing agoing for the highsting up of the human race but he was under it and a-shoving up the best he could—being a pillow of the church and taking up the collection, Sundays, and doing it wide open and square, with a plate, and setting it on the table when he got done where everybody could see, and never putting his hand anear it, never pawing around in it the way old Paxton always done, letting on to see how much they had pulled in; and he was Inside Sentinel of the Masons, and Outside Sentinel of the Odd Fellows, and a kind a head bung-starter or something of the Foes of the Flowing Bowl, and something or other to the Daughters of Rebecca, and something like it to the King’s Daughters, and Royal Grand Warden to the Knights of Morality, and Sublime Grand Marshal of the Good Templars, and there warn’t no fancy apron agoing but he had a sample, and no turnout but he was in the procession, with his banner, or his sword, or toting a bible on a tray, and looking awful serious and responsible, and yet not getting a cent. A good man, he was, they don’t make no better.
And when I come he was setting at his table with his pen, and leaning low down over a narrow long strip of print with wide margins, and he was crossing out most everything that was in it and freckling-up the margins with his pen and cussing. And I told him Tom was sick and maybe going to die, and—
There he shut me off sudden, and says, prompt and warm—
“Him die? We can’t have it. There’s only one Tom Sawyer, and the mould’s busted. Can I do anything? Speak up.”
I says—
“Tom says, can he have—”
“Yes; he can have anything he wants. Speak out,” he says, all alive and hearty and full of intrust.
“He’d like to have about a handful of old type that you hain’t got any use for, and—”
Then he broke in again and sung out to Mr. Day, and says—
“Tell the devil to go to hell and fetch a hatful; and quick about it.”
It give me the cold shivers to hear him. In about a minute Mr. Day says—
“The devil says hell’s empty, sir.”
“All right, fetch a hatful of pie.”
That made my mouth water, and I was glad I come. Then the boy fetched a couple of oyster cans full of old type; it had to be old, there warn’t any new in the place; and Mr. Baxter told him to fetch a stick and a rule.1 And last, he told him to fetch an old half-case, which he done; it was the size of a wash-board, and was all separated up into little square boxes. Then they pasted A’s and B’s and C’s and so on on the boxes, to show which boxes they belonged in—two sets, capital letters and little ones; and Mr. Baxter told the boy to go with me and help carry the things and learn Tom how to set the type. And he done it.
He learnt Tom, and Tom set up all the type in the oyster cans and then put all the letters where they belonged in the case, setting up in bed and using up about two days at it. Bright? Tom Sawyer? I should reckon so. Inside of five days he had learnt himself the whole trade, and could set up type as well as anybody; and I can prove what I am saying. Becuz, that day he set up this, and I took it over and Mr. Baxter printed it, and when he took up the print he was astonished, and said so; and give me a copy for myself, and one for Tom, and I’ve got mine yet.
COMPOSITION
The noble art of Printing called by some typography the art preservative of Arts was first discovered up a lane in a tower by cutting letters on birch pegs not knowing they woud print and not expecting it but they did by accident hence the German name for type to this day Buchstaben although made of metal ever since let all the nations bless the name to Guttingburg and Fowst which done it a Men
TOM SAWYER
Printer
When Mr. Baxter printed it and took it up and looked at it the tears come in his eyes, and he says—
“Derned if any comp. in christiandum can lay over it but old Day, and he can’t when he’s sober.”
It made Tom mighty proud when I told him, and well it might. But the strain of composing of it out of his head thataway, and setting it up without anybody’s help, and the general excitement of it and anxiousness it cost him to get it ackurate, was too many for him and knocked him silly and laid him out, and the sickness went for him savage; and so that was the last thing he ever done till the day the doctor says—
“Huck, he’s convalescent.”
I warn’t prepared, and fell flat in my tracks where I was. But when they throwed water on me and I come to and they told me what the doctor was trying to mean when the word fell out of him, I see it warn’t so bad as I reckoned.
Now some boys quits repenting as soon as they are getting well, and goes to getting worldly again, and judging they hadn’t ought to have got flustered so soon, it wasn’t necessary, but it warn’t so with Tom, he said he had a close shave and ought to be grateful to Providence, and was; and man’s help warn’t worth much, and man’s wisdom warn’t anything at all—look at ourn, he says.
“Look at ourn, Huck. We went for measles. It shows how little we knowed and how blind we was. What good was measles, when you come to look at it? None. As soon as it’s over you wash up the things and air out the house and send for the children home again, and a person has been sick all for nothing. But you take the scarlet fever and what do you find? You scour out the place, and burn up every rag when it’s over and you’re well again, and from that very day no Sid and no Mary can come anear it for six solid useful weeks. Now who thought of scarlet fever for us, Huck, and arranged it, when we was ignorant and didn’t know any better than to go for measles? Was it us? You know it warn’t. Now let that learn you. This conspiracy is being took care of by a wiser wisdom than ourn, Huck. Whenever you find yourself getting untrustful and worried, don’t you be afraid, but recollect about the scarlet fever, and remember that where that help come from there’s more to be had. All you want is faith; then everything will come out right, and better than you can do it yourself.”
Well, it did look so; there wasn’t an
y way to get around it. It was the scarlet fever that saved the game and kept Sid up country, and it wasn’t us that thought of it.
It was real summer by now, and Tom was well and hearty, and the weather and everything suitable and ready for us to go ahead. So we took our little printing office over to the island to have it handy any time we might want it; and I fished all the afternoon, and smoked and swum and napped, whilst Tom took his chisels and things and one of his blocks, and carved this on it.
Then he dabbed it over with black ink, and dampened some white printer’s paper and laid it on, and a piece of blanket on that and a heavy smooth block on top of that and give it a good hammering with his mallet, and then took off the paper and it was printed very beautiful, but by gracious it was all wrong-end first and you had to stand on your head to read it. Well, it beat me, and it beat Tom. There warn’t any way to understand how it come like that. We took and looked at the block, but the block was all right, it was only the printing that was crazy. We printed it again, but it come wrong again, just the same. So then we studied it out and judged we had got at the trouble this time; we put the paper underneath and turned the block upside down on it and printed it. But it never done any good; it was as crazy as it was before.
Tom said that when he set up type in the stick it read from left to right and upside down, but he hadn’t reckoned Mr. Baxter would leave it so, but would fix it right before he printed it, and of course he done it, becuz it was right when it come back printed, but we couldn’t learn that juglery out of our own heads, we would have to wait and get him to tell us the secret; and we reckoned he would, if we swore we wouldn’t tell anybody; and Tom was willing to do that, and so was I.
Tom was ever so disappointed, after all his hard work, and I was very sorry for him, to see him setting there all tired and idle and low spirited; but all of a sudden he got excited and glad, and said it was the luckiest thing that ever happened, and the very thing for a conspiracy, becuz it was so strange and grisly and mysterious, and looked so devilish; and said it would scare the people twice as much as it would if it was in its right mind, and all ship-shape and regular, the common old way; and says—