Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Abroad
CHAPTER I. TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES
DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasnt. It only just pisoned him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybody hurrahd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had always been hankering to be.
For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM.
Well, I dont know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadnt been for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, and kind o good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty years hed been the only man in the village that had a reputation I mean a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time. And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say My land! Did you ever! My goodness sakes alive! and all such things; but he couldnt pull away from it, any more than a fly thats got its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didnt go for much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings, and then the old man again and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out the other.
You see, Parsons travels happened like this: When he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for somebody he didnt know, and there wasnt any such person in the village. Well, he didnt know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him a conniption. The postage wasnt paid on it, and that was another thing to worry about. There wasnt any way to collect that ten cents, and he reckond the govment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadnt collected it. Well, at last he couldnt stand it any longer. He couldnt sleep nights, he couldnt eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he dasnt ask anybodys advice, for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the govment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the place itd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didnt know what, and if he had been a stranger they wouldve lynched him.
Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldnt stand it any longer; so he made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the whole govment, and say, Now, there she is do with me what youre a mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family that must starve and yet hadnt had a thing to do with it, which is the whole truth and I can swear to it.
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of villages and four cities. He was gone most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him and there theyd stand and gawk, and hed gabble. You never see anything like it.
Well, there wasnt any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler; some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound in Toms leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didnt set still as hed orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that HE had in Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along.
Nats adventure was like this; I dont know how true it is; maybe he got it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID know how to tell it. He could make anybodys flesh crawl, and hed turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they couldnt stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to the Presidents house with his letter, and they told him the President was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat most dropped, it made him so sick. His horse was put up, and he didnt know what to do. But just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his chance. He rushes out and shouts: A half a dollar if you git me to the Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!
Done! says the darky.
Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nats feet was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldnt keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows, and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, Dont you fret, Ise gwine to git you dah in time, boss; Is gwine to do it, sho! for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldnt hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see that if he hadnt had the hack he wouldnta got there in time, nor anywhere near it.